What Kind of Body and Blood are Received in the Eucharist?

 

 

 

Last week I wrote about the kind of body a risen body is. One would need to read this entry first before considering further discussion of our relationship with the Risen Body of Christ. Ultimately, Easter reminds us that we are united to Christ, the Risen Lord, and we share in his Resurrection now (in certain ways) and will share fully in his Resurrection at the end of time.

 

Now there are several ways we are in relationship with the Risen Body of Christ even in this world. I examine one of those ways here in our receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist. Jesus is quoted in John 6 as saying "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will have no life in me." When the author of John wrote his version of the Gospel, he knew that Jesus was speaking of the Eucharist.

 

The question of what Jesus means when he says "eat my flesh and drink my blood..." even in the context of the Eucharist, still vexes and confuses a number of people today. In a Yahoo Forum, the question was raised about "Christians being cannibals"  The so-called "Best Answer" stated:

"Only Roman Catholics who believe the elements miraculously change into the body and blood of Christ during Mass would be cannibals - IF that doctrine was true! But if it is not true, then they are simply eating a wafer and wine even though they imagine it has been changed."

Another Forum participant said "They [Catholics] only pretend he is present"

 

None of these mistaken opinions are true: we are not cannibals when we eat the Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood nor are we merely eating a wafer and drinking wine and nothing else nor are we "pretending" Christ is present in the Eucharist.

What St. Augustine wrote about some of the disciples in John 6, who misunderstood Jesus and deserted him, is relevant to these kind of opinions just quoted:

St. Augustine

"Their understanding of that saying was silly, their thoughts were materialistic (carnal), and hence they believed that the Lord was about to cut pieces from his flesh and give them to them...[But what Jesus meant was this:] Understand what I have said in a spiritual manner: not this body which you see, will you eat, and this blood which they will shed who crucify me, will you drink. What I commended was a kind of sacrament: understood spiritually it will give you life. Although the sacrament must be celebrated in a manner that is visible, it must be understood in a manner that is invisible." (From Augustine's Commentary on Psalm 98, but with a note on John 6; emphasis added)

St. Augustine needs to be carefully understood here. When Augustine says we need to understand Jesus’ words about eating his flesh and blood in a spiritual way does not deny the reality of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. I am always amazed when "spiritual" people seem to deny that the spiritual is "really real" when it comes to the Eucharist! They seem to need some kind of physical proof that Jesus is really present in the Eucharist. Evidently for them the physical is what's "really real"!

St. Thomas Aquinas commented on the above quote from Augustine:

"When Augustine says, ‘You will not be eating this body which you see,’ he does not intend to exclude the reality of Christ’s body; what he does rule out is that they would eat it under the same form in which they are looking at it [i.e., in its earthly form, before the Resurrection]...[Augustine did not mean that] the body of Christ is in this sacrament only as a ‘mystical symbol.’ Rather, he meant that Christ’s body is there spiritually, that is, invisibly and by the power of the Spirit. (Summa Theologiae, IIIa.75.1, ad primum)

That which is "spiritual," which for Christians means that which comes from the Holy Spirit, is certainly real, actually ultimately real, for God in both Spirit and Real.

 

I do believe that if we first affirm that it is the Risen Body and Blood of Jesus that we are receiving in the Eucharist, and if we then distinguish carefully between Jesus' physical body before his Resurrection and his Risen Body after his Resurrection,  we can avoid some of the misunderstandings of his Body and Blood in the Eucharist having to be real as an earthly physical body and blood.

There is a sense in which the Risen Christ’s Presence in the Eucharist is "physical," because the Resurrection of the Body means that we don’t lose our bodies in death, but they will be raised and transformed into a new and glorious body like that of the Risen Christ,  and whatever remains in a "physical sense" so transcends our earthly reality as to be considered "heavenly’:

"Christ’s Resurrection was not a return to earthly life...In his risen body he passes from the state of death to another life beyond time and space. At Jesus Resurrection his body is filled with the power of the Holy Spirit: he shares the divine life in his glorious state, so that St. Paul can say that Christ is ‘the man of heaven.’" (Catechism of the Catholic Church #s645 & 646)

 

I wrote last week about a proposed concept of a "transphysical" body, so see that.

 

 

 

Now we receive the Risen Christ in the Eucharist; we therefore are not cannibals, since we receive a spiritual and not a mortal flesh and blood in the Eucharist. St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas certainly believed that Christ is really present in the Eucharist (according to the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence). But as they affirm, Christ does not give us his body and blood in its earthly state, before the Resurrection; rather Christ gives us his transformed (transfigured) and risen body: Therefore the Catechism states:

"What material food produces in our bodily life, Holy Communion wonderfully achieves in our spiritual life. Communion with the flesh of the risen Christ, a flesh ‘given life and giving life through the Holy Spirit,’ preserves, increases, and renews the life of grace received at baptism." (CCC#1392; emphasis added)

Our belief in the Real Presence of Christ does not require us to believe in stories of bleeding hosts or earthly flesh commingled with the Eucharist! Such phenomena, whatever they may be, are not the body and blood of Christ given to us in the Eucharist, since it is the Risen Christ we receive in the Eucharist.

The point of all this, I would argue, is that on Sunday, especially, the Day of Resurrection, the whole Church gathers to really encounter the Risen Christ. How can one miss Mass without a good excuse if he or she really believes what the Church teaches: that the Risen Christ is Really Present in our Eucharist?

Also, by receiving him in Holy Communion, we recall our ongoing communion in the Risen Christ. This has implications beyond our hope that we will share in the Resurrection of the dead after our physical death. There is a spiritual principle given here: it is a reminder that when we die with Christ we shall also rise with Christ. When we die spiritually (and really) to sin, to selfishness, to self-centeredness, to prejudice, pride, discrimination, and all else that is not an expression of God’s love, we are promised that this leads to the new and transformed life represented in the Resurrection of Christ. We share in part in this Risen life , even now!

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