If there were question of the vagaries of many Nominalists, as, e.g., that a bilocated person could be living in Paris and at the same time dying in London, hating in Paris and at the same time loving in London, the impossibility would be as plain as day, since an individual, remaining such as he is, cannot be the subject of contrary propositions, since they exclude one another. ), and especially to the deep symbolical meaning contained in the mingling, inasmuch as thereby are represented the flowing of blood and water from the side of the Crucified Savior and the intimate union of the faithful with Christ (cf. Funk, Der Kommunionritus in his Kirchengeschichtl. It was in this purely mystical manner that the Greeks themselves explained the meaning of the Epiklesis at the Council of Florence (Mansi, Collect. 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Hence the bread must have become the Body of Christ, i.e. between the Consecration and the Communion, whereas in the case of the other sacraments both the confection and the reception take place at the same instant. at Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, and this custom was still prevalent in the sixth century [cf. Those who heard the words of Institution were not learned Rationalists, possessed of the critical equipment that would enable them, as philologists and logicians, to analyze an obscure and mysterious phraseology; they were simple, uneducated fishermen, from the ordinary ranks of the people, who with childlike navet hung upon the words of their Master and with deep faith accepted whatever He proposed to them. Although both may occur as the result of a special grace, its true nature is manifested in a certain cheerful and willing fervor in all that regards Christ and His Church, and in the conscious fulfillment of the duties of ones state of life, a disposition of soul which is perfectly compatible with interior desolation and spiritual dryness. Presupposing what is self-evident, that there is question neither of a conscious sacrilegious Communion nor a lack of imperfect contrition (attritio), which would altogether hinder the justifying effect of the sacrament, theologians incline to the opinion, that in such exceptional cases the Eucharist can restore the soul to the state of grace, but all without exception deny the possibility of the reviviscence of a sacrilegious or unfruitful Communion after the restoration of the souls proper moral condition has been effected, the Eucharist being different in this respect from the sacraments which imprint a character upon the soul (baptism, confirmation, and Holy orders). They continue to hold a deep spiritual significance for Christians around the world. The sect of the Luciferians was founded by an apostate deacon named Hilary, and possessed neither bishops nor priests; wherefore St. Jerome concluded (Dial. The case assumes a different aspect, when wholly external contrary propositions, relating to position in space, are used in reference to the bilocated individual. Thus the Trinity, Incarnation, and Eucharist are really welded together like a precious chain, which in a wonderful manner links heaven with earth, God with man, uniting them most intimately and keeping them thus united. Since, however, the allegorical sense of the Alexandrians did not exclude the literal, but rather supposed it as a working basis, the realistic phraseology of Clement (Paed., I, vi), of Origen (Contra Celsum, VIII, xiii, 32; Hom. Therefore the above-mentioned appositional phrases directly exclude every possibility of a figurative interpretation. The latter is the souls mode of presence in the human body. The reason the physicality of the sacrament is important is because, in the action itself, we witness to our heart of faith. Now, the glorified Christ, Who dieth now no more (Rom., vi, 9), has an animate Body through whose veins courses His lifes Blood under the vivifying influence of the soul. A strictly logical conclusion from the words of promise: he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me, this Totality of Presence was also the constant property of tradition, which characterized the partaking of separated parts of the Savior as a sarcophagy (flesh-eating) altogether derogatory to God. By leavened bread (Lat., fermentum,Gk., zumos) is meant such wheaten bread as requires leaven or yeast in its preparation and baking, while unleavened bread (Lat., azyma,Gk., azumon) is formed from a mixture of wheaten flour and water, which has been kneaded to dough and then baked. Cardinal Bellarmine (De Euchar., I, 3), moreover, calls attention to the fact, and rightly so, that if in Christs mind the manna was a figure of the Eucharist, the latter must have been something more than merely blessed bread, as otherwise the prototype would not substantially excel the type. Holy Communion is the most important of all the sacraments. (a) The first element is wheaten bread (pans triticeus), without which the confection of the Sacrament does not take place (Missale Romanum: De defectibus, 3). ; Hom. as something permanent (cf. annihilation and creation, but of one single act, since, according to the purpose of the Almighty, the substance of the bread and wine departs in order to make room for the Body and Blood of Christ. This is St. Paul (I Cor., xi, 27 sq. The Eucharist symbolizes the new covenant given by God to his followers. Schanz, Die Lehre von den hl. the necessity of fasting. Although the manna, a type of the Eucharist, was indeed eaten with the mouth, it could not, being a transitory food, ward off death. Nevertheless a turning-point occurred in his life. the substratum or subject which sustains the phenomena. WebThe Eucharist is nothing less than Jesus Christ. The Church gathers to remember and to re-present the sacrifice of Christ in which we share through the action of the priest and the power of the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, a very ancient law of the Church which, however, has nothing to do with the validity of the sacrament, prescribes that a little water be added to the wine before the Consecration (Decr. Nothing hinders our interpreting the first part [John, vi, 26-48 (51)] metaphorically and understanding by bread of heaven Christ Himself as the object of faith, to be received in a figurative sense as a spiritual food by the mouth of faith. Judae, n. 6), and John Damascene (De fid. Wheat and Grapes. Scripturally considered, the necessity of a special priesthood with the power of validly consecrating is derived from the fact that Christ did not address the words, Do this, to the whole mass of the laity, but exclusively to the Apostles and their successors in the priesthood; hence the latter alone can validly consecrate. This general and fundamental principle, which entirely abstracts from the duality of the species, must, nevertheless, be extended to each of the species of bread and wine. The necessity of the natural sense is not based upon the absurd assumption that Christ could not in general have resorted to the use of figures, but upon the evident requirements of the case, which demand that He did not, in a matter of such paramount importance, have recourse to meaningless and deceptive metaphors. The presence of Jesus in the elements of bread and wine has been variously interpreted in actual, figurative, or symbolic senses, but the sacramental sense, as the anamnesis, or memorial before God, of the sacrificial offering on the cross once and for all, has always been accepted. WebThe Holy Eucharist is the most important sacrament according to Greek Orthodox Christianity. Wheat and grapes are two important symbols in the Eucharist, representing the bread and wine consecrated during the celebration. Transubstantiation, however, is not a conversion simply so called, but a substantial conversion (conversio substantialis), inasmuch as one thing is sub stantially or essentially converted into another. When, therefore, He Who is All Truth and All Power said of the bread: This is my body, the bread became, through the utterance of these words, the Body of Christ; consequently, on the completion of the sentence the substance of bread was no longer present, but the Body of Christ under the outward appearance of bread. 086 079 7114 [email protected]. The Eucharist symbolises the new covenant given by God to his followers. (Cf. xcviii, n. 9). I Peter, ii, 5), that every layman was qualified, as the appointed representative of the faithful, to consecrate the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The investigation into the precise nature of the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, whose existence Protestants do not deny, is beset with a number of difficulties. The argument from tradition is supplemented and completed by the argument from prescription, which traces the constant belief in the dogma of the Real Presence through the Middle Ages back to the early Apostolic Church, and thus proves the anti-Eucharistic heresies to have been capricious novelties and violent ruptures of the true faith as handed down from the beginning. Being true bread, the Host must be baked, since mere flour is not bread. ], that the most ancient of Churches was indifferent as to the use of wine, and more concerned with the action of eating and drinking than with the elements of bread and wine, loses all its force in view not only of the earliest literature on the subject (the Didache, Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Cyprian), but also of non-Catholic and apocryphal writings, which bear testimony to the use of bread and wine as the only and necessary elements of the Blessed Sacrament. No doubt, too, Christ adhered unconditionally to the Jewish custom of using only wheaten bread in the Passover Supper, and by the words, Do this for a commemoration of me, commanded its use for all succeeding times. Hence Christ is present in the sacrament with His Flesh and Blood, Body and Soul, Humanity and Divinity. A third element is usually required, known as the commune tertium, which, even after conversion has taken place, either physically or at least logically unites one extreme to the other; for in every true conversion the following condition must be fulfilled: What was formerly A, is now B. A very important question suggests itself as to whether the definition should further postulate the previous non-existence of the last extreme, for it seems strange that an existing terminus a quo, A, should be converted into an already existing terminus ad quem, B. The Church maintains an easier position in the controversy respecting the use of fermented or unfermented bread. The Eucharist (from the Greek eucharistia for thanksgiving) is the central act of Christian worship and is practiced by most Christian churches in some form. If, however, the word rock in this passage is stripped of all that is material, it may be understood in a spiritual sense, because the Apostle himself is speaking of that spiritual rock (petra spiritalis), which in the Person of the Word in an invisible manner ever accompanied the Israelites in their journeyings and supplied them with a spiritual fountain of waters. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. If it be true that a few Catholic theologians (as Cajetan, Ruardus Tapper, Johann Hessel, and the elder Jansenius) preferred the figurative interpretation, it was merely for controversial reasons, because in their perplexity they imagined that otherwise the claims of the Hussite and Protestant Utraquists for the partaking of the Chalice by the laity could not be answered by argument from Scripture. During the While Roman Catholic theology maintains that the recitation of the words of institution (This is my Body and This is my Blood) constitutes the Eucharist as a sacrament, Eastern theology has taught that the invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the elements (Greek epiklsis) is part of the essential form of the Eucharist. The question may eventually be reduced to this, whether or not the sacramentality is to be sought for in the Eucharistic species or in the Body and Blood of Christ hidden beneath them. Suffice it to say that, besides the Didache (ix, x, xiv), the most ancient Fathers, as Ignatius (Ad. Through the Sacraments, God shares his holiness with us so that we, in turn, can make the world holier. The High Church Anglicans (especially since the Anglo-Catholic Oxford movement of the 19th century) and the Lutherans (who affirm the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in, with, and under the bread and wine) adhere most closely to the traditions of Catholic eucharistic doctrine and practice. Yet, even prescinding from the fact that in the Aramaic tongue the copula est is usually omitted and that such an omission rather makes for its strict meaning of to be, Cardinal Wiseman (Home Syriaca., Rome, 1828, pp. v, n. 21) obliged communicants to observe the most scrupulous care in conveying the Sacred Host to their mouths, so that not even a crumb, more precious than gold or jewels, might fall from their hands to the ground; how Caesarius of Arles taught that there is just as much in the small fragment as in the whole; how the different liturgies assert the abiding integrity of the indivisible Lamb, in spite of the division of the Host; and, finally, how in actual practice the faithful partook of the broken particles of the Sacred Host and drank in common from the same cup.

Since in the process of corruption those elementary substances return which correspond to the peculiar nature of the changed accidents, the law of the indestructibility of matter, notwithstanding the miracle of the Eucharistic conversion, remains in force without any interruption. The reasons of congruity advanced by the Greeks in behalf of leavened bread, which would have us consider it as a beautiful symbol of the hypostatic union, as well as an attractive representation of the savor of this heavenly Food, will be most willingly accepted, providedonlythat due consideration be given to the grounds of propriety set forth by the Latins with St. Thomas Aquinas (III, Q. lxxiv, a. They are divided into three categories: sacraments of initiation, sacraments of healing and sacraments of service. For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed (John, vi, 54-56). Yet as the disappearance of the latter is not attributable to annihilation properly so called, so there is no need of postulating creation, strictly so called, to explain the formers coming into existence. Abstracting from the three criteria, mentioned above, which have reference either to the nature of the case, or to the usages of common parlance, or to some convention previously agreed upon, there remains a fourth and last of decisive significance, namely: when a complete substance is predicated of another complete substance, there can exist no logical relation of identity between them, but only the relation of similarity, inasmuch as the first is an image, sign, symbol, of the other. XIII, can. Since they have not as yet attained to the use of reason, they are free from the obligation of positive laws; consequently, the only question is whether Communion is, like Baptism, necessary for them as a means of salvation. For [enim] this is my Blood. Here the act of drinking is evidently neither the cause nor the conditio sine quae non for the presence of Christs Blood. It matters little what the terms are, provided the things signified by them are rightly understood. Other titles are used, such as the Lords Supper (Coena Domini), Table of the Lord (Mensa Domini), the Lords Body (Corpus Domini), and the Holy of Holies (Sanctissimum), to which may be added the following expressions, now obsolete and somewhat altered from their primitive meaning: Agape (Love-Feast), Eulogia (Blessing), Breaking of Bread, Synaxis (Assembly), etc. ii), according to the promise of Christ: He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up on the last day. Hence the chief reason why the ancient Fathers, as Ignatius (Ephes., 20), Irenaeus (Adv. It becomes the bread and body of Jesus through Transubstantiation. Now the Council of Trent under pain of anathema, solemnly rejects such a necessity (Sess. WebSolved by verified expert. The quintessence of these doctrinal decisions consists in this, that in the Eucharist the Body and Blood of the God-man are truly, really, and substantially present for the nourishment of our souls, by reason of the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, and that in this change of substances the unbloody Sacrifice of the New Testament is also contained. The most important thing about the Eucharist? It becomes the bread and body of Jesus through The Eucharist has formed a central rite of Christian worship. the former must have been converted into the latter. Essentially tallying with the Zwinglian interpretation, this new meaning is equally untenable. That the idea of conversion of corporeal matter into a spirit can in no way be entertained, is clear from the material substance of the Eucharistic Body itself.

The species undoubtedly belong to the essence of the sacrament, since it is by means of them, and not by means of the invisible Body of Christ, that the Eucharist possesses the outward sign of the sacrament. The first group of interpreters, with Zwingli, discovers a figure in the copula est and renders it: This signifies (est=signi ficat) my Body. 35. His encouraging example was soon followed by other theologians, as Stephen of Autun (d. 1139), Gaufred (1188), and Peter of Blois (d. about 1200), whereupon several ecumenical councils also adopted this significant expression, as the Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215), and the Council of Lyons (1274), in the profession of faith of the Greek Emperor Michael Palaeologus. This, however, would be but one more marvel of Gods omnipotence. thou hast the words of eternal life. In addition to this, uninterrupted tradition, whether it be the testimony of the Fathers or the practice of the Church, shows wheaten bread to have played such an essential part, that even Protestants would be loath to regard rye bread or barley bread as a proper element for the celebration of the Lords Supper. Although the separation of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Logos, is, absolutely speaking, within the almighty power of God, yet their actual inseparability is firmly established by the dogma of the indissolubility of the hypostatic union of Christs Divinity and Humanity. We may in fact go a step farther and assert, that the words of Institution constitute the only and wholly adequate form of the Eucharist and that, consequently, the words of the Epiklesis possess no inherent consecratory value. WebThe Eucharist has always been one of the most important aspects of Christianity. The Real Presence is evinced, positively, by showing the necessity of the literal sense of these words, and negatively, by refuting the figurative interpretations. in Joan., IV, xvii) beautifully represents this mystical union as the fusion of our being into that of the God-man, as when melted wax is fused with other wax.
Epiphanius, De hwr., xlix, 79); and in the Middle Ages the Albigenses and Waldenses ascribed the power to consecrate to every layman of upright disposition. By the very fact that the Eucharistic mystery does transcend reason, no rationalistic explanation of it, based on a merely natural hypothesis and seeking to comprehend one of the sublimest truths of the Christian religion as the spontaneous conclusion of logical processes, may be attempted by a Catholic theologian. This third case would be in perfect accordance with the two foregoing, were we per impossibile permitted to imagine that Christ were present under the appearances of bread exactly as He is in heaven and that He had relinquished His natural mode of existence. It is evident that tradition has understood the mandate of Christ in this sense and in no other. If it be further asked, whether these appearances have any subject at all in which they inhere, we must answer with St. Thomas Aquinas (III, Q. lxxvii, a. there remain here for a more detailed consideration two principal truths: (I) The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist; and (II) The Eucharist as a Sacrament. As has already been mentioned above, the deacons were accustomed in the Early Church to take the Blessed Sacrament to those who were absent from Divine service, as well as to present the Chalice to the laity during the celebration of the Sacred Mysteries (cf.

In its multifarious wanderings from the old beaten path, being consistently forced with the denial of Christs Divinity to abandon faith in the Real Presence also, modern criticism seeks to account for the text along other lines. According to Aquinas, the Eucharist really contains the flesh and blood of Christ, which are miraculously changed as it is celebrated.