The Catholic Church still teaches that the Eucharist is the true Body and Blood of Jesus, Christ, who is really and substantially present under the appearances of bread and wine, in order to offer himself in the sacrifice of the Mass and to be received as spiritual food in Holy Communion.
The term, "real presence", applies very specifically here: the Church believes that Jesus is really present, body and soul and divinity, in each morsel, every drop, of the apparent bread and wine. Eucharist, itself, is defined as "thanksgiving", since, at the Last Supper, when Jesus instituted this sacrament, he gave thanks. The Church sees in it a connection to the Passover and the Seder: a meal of thanksgiving, a meal for a journey.
The Orthodox Church holds a very similar teaching; the Anglican, Lutheran, and other Christian churches also hold this basic teaching, in some way or to some extent. Other Christian churches hold Communion to be a purely symbolic, but significant, ritual. It would have been easier on public relations had the Catholic Church simply taught the Eucharist as a symbol. People understand symbols, especially in the context of ritual. We understand the flag, the hand held to the breast, and the playing of the anthem.
But, for the Church, it’s not that easy. We believe that, when Jesus said, "This is my body; this is the cup of my blood", he really meant it, in some ineffable way. In his Gospel, John describes Jesus teaching at the synagogue in Capernaum, on the Sea of Galilee, saying: "I am the bread come down from heaven. My flesh is real food; my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."
Many of the followers were disturbed by these words: "This is a hard saying; who can endure it?" But, rather than re-phrasing his words, he asked them, almost in a challenge: "Does it shake your faith?" Afterwards, those shaken stopped following him. He did not send an apostle after them to explain what he had really meant to say; instead, he asked those who remained, "Will you also leave me?" They didn’t. Instead, they became the first ordinaries.
In one of her letters, the writer Flannery O’Connor described a curious encounter:
I was once, five or six years ago, taken to have dinner with Mary McCarthy……. She departed the Church at the age of 15 and is a Big Intellectual. ...I hadn’t opened my mouth once, there being nothing for me in such company to say… Having me there was like having a dog present who had been trained to say a few words but overcome with inadequacy had forgotten them.
Well, ... the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. [McCarthy] said that when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the "most portable" person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one.
I then said, in a very shaky voice, "Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it." That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.
It was O’Connor’s habit to state things in the bluntest manner. Of course, the Church sees a host of symbols and allusions in the Eucharist; yet, these are the signs, not the real substance, of the sacrament – a thing of intensity and mystery that O’Connor confesses. You could spend a lifetime just reading texts written over the centuries devoted to the subject; but, at the end of such a life, you would still not fully grasp the subject.
This is where faith comes in. Either you have received something beyond all understanding – held, as it were, God in your hand – or you have received a wafer of almost tasteless, unleavened bread and, perhaps, a sip of fruity red wine – the psychological understanding of which is, maybe, a fascinating matrix of delusion.
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