Another Question About Transubstantiation

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Wesrock, If what you write is true, that:
The Eucharistic celebration at the Last Supper was not with Christ’s body glorified (as in, the glorification all of the saved can expect to have after the Resurrection and that Christ had after his), it was his body as it was then, at the time he celebrated it.
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If that is true, then the Last Supper was not the first celebration of the Mass, and the apostles did not receive Holy Eucharist, nor the gift of eternal life given therein in His eternal, resurrected and glorified Body.

As St. John Paul II wrote (Ecclesia De Eucharistia), concerning the consequences of the presence of the resurrected and glorified Christ in Holy Eucharist (which the disciples would not have received at the Last Supper, if you were correct in your understanding):
  1. Christ’s passover includes not only his passion and death, but also his resurrection. This is recalled by the assembly’s acclamation following the consecration: “We proclaim your resurrection”. The Eucharistic Sacrifice makes present not only the mystery of the Savior’s passion and death, but also the mystery of the resurrection which crowned his sacrifice. It is as the living and risen One that Christ can become in the Eucharist the “bread of life” (Jn 6:35, 48), the “living bread” (Jn 6:51).
  2. The acclamation of the assembly following the consecration appropriately ends by expressing the eschatological thrust which marks the celebration of the Eucharist (cf. 1 Cor 11:26): “until you come in glory”. The Eucharist is a straining towards the goal, a foretaste of the fullness of joy promised by Christ (cf. Jn 15:11); it is in some way the anticipation of heaven, the “pledge of future glory”. In the Eucharist, everything speaks of confident waiting “in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ”.
    Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life: they already possess it on earth, as the first-fruits of a future fullness which will embrace man in his totality. For in the Eucharist we also receive the pledge of our bodily resurrection at the end of the world: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (Jn 6:54). This pledge of the future resurrection comes from the fact that the flesh of the Son of Man, given as food, is his body in its glorious state after the resurrection. With the Eucharist we digest, as it were, the “secret” of the resurrection. For this reason Saint Ignatius of Antioch rightly defined the Eucharistic Bread as “a medicine of immortality, an antidote to death.”
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Hope1960 said:
When we eat Jesus’ body are we actually eating his hair, toes, hands etc? Please include a source for your reply.
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As St. Pope Paul VI taught in 1965, mysterium fidei, the presence is real but not in the manner in which bodies are in a place:
… and not just in the estimation of Church belief but in reality, since once the substance or nature of the bread and wine has been changed into the body and blood of Christ, nothing remains of the bread and the wine except for the species—beneath which Christ is present whole and entire in His physical “reality,” corporeally present, although not in the manner in which bodies are in a place.
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https://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_03091965_mysterium.html
 
fide said:
If that is true, then the Last Supper was not the first celebration of the Mass, and the apostles did not receive Holy Eucharist, nor the gift of eternal life given therein in His eternal, resurrected and glorified Body.
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That’s not true. Again, @fide, I direct you to the Summa Theologiae (III.81.3), where Aquinas discusses this question. Is it authoritative, magisterial teaching? No; Aquinas wasn’t a bishop. However, Aquinas is a good source. 😉

Let’s get to your claim, though: does the Eucharist necessarily mean ‘glorified body’, and if it does not, is it not the Eucharist? In Ecclesia de Eucharistia, paragraph 12, we read: “Jesus did not simply state that what he was giving them to eat and drink was his body and his blood; he also expressed its sacrificial meaning and made sacramentally present his sacrifice which would soon be offered on the Cross for the salvation of all.”

It goes on to include, as you cite, not only His suffering and death, but also His resurrection. So… if He anticipates His resurrection, does He anticipate His glorified body? Aquinas’ answer is ‘no’, since His body at that point is not impassible. In that Eucharist, it seems, He invites the Apostles to share in his Passion and anticipate His resurrection, whereas for all other Eucharists, He invites us to share in His Passion, Death, and Resurrection.

In your quote, you miss the fact that you’ve skipped from paragraph 15 and moved to paragraph 18. Let’s look at the opening to that paragraph:
  1. The acclamation of the assembly following the consecration appropriately ends by expressing the eschatological thrust which marks the celebration of the Eucharist (cf. 1 Cor 11:26): “ until you come in glory ”.
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So, the context of paragraph 18 is the Eucharistic Liturgy celebrated by the Church. Which, I’m sure you’ll agree, takes place following the Resurrection. Therefore, if we’re to believe Aquinas, then I think we’d say (with him) that Christ’s impassible body is what is consecrated on our altars today.

I think I’d make allowance for both assertions, then: passible at the Last Supper, impassible now.
 
fide said:
If that is true, then the Last Supper was not the first celebration of the Mass, and the apostles did not receive Holy Eucharist, nor the gift of eternal life given therein in His eternal, resurrected and glorified Body.
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Man still partook of the divine nature, as it was still Jesus body, blood, soul, and divinity.

Aquinas writes, On the contrary, As Innocent III says (De Sacr. Alt. Myst. iv), “He bestowed on the disciples His body such as it was.” But then He had a passible and a mortal body. Therefore, He gave a passible and mortal body to the disciples. . . . For it is manifest that the same body of Christ which was then seen by the disciples in its own species, was received by them under the sacramental species. But as seen in its own species it was not impassible; nay more, it was ready for the Passion. Therefore, neither was Christ’s body impassible when given under the sacramental species.
 
Gorgias:
  1. Aquinas is not infallible; neither are all interpretations of his writings.
  2. “ until you come in glory ” refers to the end times - not the current state of His Body. He will come in glory from glory, in His Body, yes.
Do you see the crucial implication of resurrection glory and eternal life, in His teachings on Eucharist in Jn 6? JPII was explicit about these, in his teaching that I cited. Those who have not eaten His resurrected Body do, in fact, have no eternal life in their bodies. His resurrected Body - which was a mortal Body at birth - is by the resurrection, an eternal body. According to your understanding, if I read you rightly, those who ate His Body and drank His Blood at the Last Supper, would have eaten and drunk mortal flesh - not the Bread of eternity. Do you see that?
 
Wesrock - I believe that Aquinas was wrong on this point. As I read Innocent III, however, I would not say that he was wrong - only that Aquinas understood him wrongly. Jesus “bestowed on the disciples His body such as it was” in eternity - which was and is His (resurrected) eternal human body.

The teaching in Jn 6 is explicit, concerning the part of His flesh and blood in the communication of eternal life to His hearers - not His divine nature, but His (glorified, resurrected) human nature - His Body - which was first mortal, but was eternal by virtue of the resurrection and glorification.
 
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There is no dogma here, so far as I know. The most popular opinion follows Aquinas: that it was his passible body. But I don’t believe there is any doctrinal error to disagree.
 
Concerning dogma - certainly the dogma on the issue is firm concerning the celebration of Holy Eucharist/the Mass. If you are right on this point, then there was no Mass - no Eucharist - at the last Supper, and that is contrary to Catholic teaching. I see no way to avoid seeing that understanding (His mortal flesh was communicated at the Last Supper) as a contradiction to Catholic teaching; the Last Supper would not then be the first celebration of Holy Eucharist, to be imitated in the Church forever after. Such a (false) conclusion seems inescapable. Would you agree that that is very problematic?
 
fide said:
Concerning dogma - certainly the dogma on the issue is firm concerning the celebration of Holy Eucharist/the Mass. If you are right on this point, then there was no Mass - no Eucharist - at the last Supper, and that is contrary to Catholic teaching. I see no way to avoid seeing that understanding (His mortal flesh was communicated at the Last Supper) as a contradiction to Catholic teaching; the Last Supper would not then be the first celebration of Holy Eucharist, to be imitated in the Church forever after. Such a (false) conclusion seems inescapable. Would you agree that that is very problematic?
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At the Last Supper there was a real transubstantiation. The apostles partook of Christ’s body, blood, and soul, and indeed also became partakers of the divinity, and had a true communion with Christ. I really see no issue here. The Baptism of Christ in the Jordan was not our baptism, either. That the body of Christ made present in the Eucharist was passible then and impassible in celebrations thereafter do not seem problematic at all, and you seem to be overextending Ecclesia De Eucharistia, which has to do with the Church’s celebration since.
 
fide said:
if I read you rightly, those who ate His Body and drank His Blood at the Last Supper, would have eaten and drunk mortal flesh - not the Bread of eternity. Do you see that?
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No. What I see is that they ate and drank the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. Divinity of Jesus Christ. 😉
fide said:
If you are right on this point, then there was no Mass - no Eucharist - at the last Supper, and that is contrary to Catholic teaching.
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No. That does not follow from the discussion.
fide said:
I see no way to avoid seeing that understanding (His mortal flesh was communicated at the Last Supper) as a contradiction to Catholic teaching
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Body. Blood. Soul. Divinity.
fide said:
Would you agree that that is very problematic?
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Nope.
 
So, it was his body, blood, soul and divinity because Jesus transcends time?
 
It does not trouble you that with your understanding, NONE of this concerning Holy Eucharist applied to the Last Supper - NONE of this was true for the disciples’ First Mass?
Ecclesia De Eucharistia #18. … Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life: they already possess it on earth, as the first-fruits of a future fullness which will embrace man in his totality. For in the Eucharist we also receive the pledge of our bodily resurrection at the end of the world: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (Jn 6:54). This pledge of the future resurrection comes from the fact that the flesh of the Son of Man, given as food, is his body in its glorious state after the resurrection. With the Eucharist we digest, as it were, the “secret” of the resurrection…
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fide said:
It does not trouble you that with your understanding, NONE of this concerning Holy Eucharist applied to the Last Supper - NONE of this was true for the disciples’ First Mass?
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When the context of Ecclesia paragraph 18 is post-Resurrection Liturgies of the Church? No. Why does it not trouble you that you’re taking it out of context?
 
Because the Church presumes to teach that the Last Supper was the first Eucharist, and she does NOT give a disclaimer that the First Eucharist, by the way, was radically - substantially - essentially different from every other one since then. Nevertheless it remains the foundational institution of the sacrament. That, to my mind, would be absurd.
 
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The substance and the essence of His eternal living resurrected and glorified body is different from that of His mortal non-eternal body.
 
fide said:
The substance and the essence of His eternal living resurrected and glorified body is different from that of His mortal non-eternal body.
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So Jesus was no longer a true man after the resurrection? Was his human nature glorified or was he now a new nature?
 
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fide said:
Wesrock - I believe that Aquinas was wrong on this point. As I read Innocent III, however, I would not say that he was wrong - only that Aquinas understood him wrongly. Jesus “bestowed on the disciples His body such as it was” in eternity - which was and is His (resurrected) eternal human body.

The teaching in Jn 6 is explicit, concerning the part of His flesh and blood in the communication of eternal life to His hearers - not His divine nature, but His (glorified, resurrected) human nature - His Body - which was first mortal, but was eternal by virtue of the resurrection and glorification.
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The eternal life Jesus refers to in John 6 is the gift of sanctifying grace which is a participation in the divine nature and which God infuses into our souls in baptism or in the sacrament of penance if we have had the misfortune of losing sanctifying grace through mortal sin. We do not partake of the eucharist before being baptized which is the door to the sacraments or if after baptism we fall into mortal sin, we are suppose to confess our sins in the sacrament of penance before partaking of the eucharist again. The eucharist is food and drink for the spiritual life of the soul so it presupposes that the soul is not dead in sin but has life, i.e., sanctifying grace. Similarly, people who are dead do not eat and drink but only the living. So, partaking of the eucharist in holy communion is to the spiritual life of the soul what bodily food and drink is for the natural life of our bodies, namely, to keep them alive. It is in this sense, Jesus said “For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed…he who eats this bread will live for ever.”

Jesus’ body and blood as body and blood is not grace or eternal life. It is in this sense, Jesus said “it is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” For the natural life of our body only has life through the spiritual soul which is the form of the body and animates the body which is made out of matter and makes it a living body. Jesus’ flesh and blood are instrumental causes of grace through which Jesus bestows grace on us from his soul as the head of his mystical body as it is written “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth…And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace.” Jesus’ human nature is the instrumental cause of the grace we receive from him while his divine nature is the source and principle cause of grace.
 
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