Another Question About Transubstantiation

[fide]

Hope - Jesus gave His disciples the true Eucharist, even before the resurrection and glorification happened historically. God is above time, and can operate outside of time, and can act in our present in anticipation of events in our future. He did this, theologians understand, also in applying the redemption merited by His passion before it happened, to the conception of His mother-to-be, Mary. In this way she was saved from all sin even at the moment she was conceived, by the merits of her Son-to be on the Cross-to-come.

 

[Hope1960]

Hope - Jesus gave His disciples the true Eucharist, even before the resurrection and glorification happened historically. God is above time, and can operate outside of time, and can act in our present in anticipation of events in our future. He did this, theologians understand, also in applying the redemption merited by His passion before it happened, to the conception of His mother-to-be, Mary. In this way she was saved from all sin even at the moment she was conceived, by the merits of her Son-to be on the Cross-to-come.

Are you saying that Jesus in the first Eucharist at the Last Supper was glorified?

 

[Wesrock]

fide:

Hope - Jesus gave His disciples the true Eucharist, even before the resurrection and glorification happened historically. God is above time, and can operate outside of time, and can act in our present in anticipation of events in our future. He did this, theologians understand, also in applying the redemption merited by His passion before it happened, to the conception of His mother-to-be, Mary. In this way she was saved from all sin even at the moment she was conceived, by the merits of her Son-to be on the Cross-to-come.

Are you saying that Jesus in the first Eucharist at the Last Supper was glorified?

I remember an old topic on this, and it boiled down to what we mean by glorified. What definition do you mean by glorified?

 

[Hope1960]

I remember an old topic on this, and it boiled down to what we mean by glorified. What definition do you mean by glorified?

Was able to walk through walls, glowing like the Transfiguration, being numerous places at once etc.

 

[fide]

Yes, the real presence - Christ as He IS now - has been made present with us, for us in Eucharist, first instituted at the Last Supper, in His resurrected and glorified Body.

 

[Hope1960]

Yes, the real presence - Christ as He IS now - has been made present with us, for us in Eucharist, first instituted at the Last Supper, in His resurrected and glorified Body.

Even though He hadn’t died and risen yet?

 

[fide]

Yes. Again, God is above/outside of time, He is not constrained to it, but can act outside of both time and space - both being His creations which require His will to even exist and to continue to exist! Time and/or space do not rule Him, He rules them. He wanted to ordain His first priests and to establish their sacramental work in Holy Eucharist - and so He did.

We are very much bound to time and space - we operate in them as a fish in water, and can hardly imagine being outside of them, and free of them. But with God, not so.

Blockquote

 

[halogirl]

I heard a nice analogy last week: light as a particle and a wave at the same time . Just as the host is now the Body Blood etc just we can’t observe it all at once

 

[otjm]

I don’t think that it is any more difficult to deal with that than it is to deal with the Incarnation, or God giving Christ’s salvific act to Mary at to her conception. All three are matters we receive on faith, not on intellectual understanding.

Which is another way of saying I believe your former priest. God is outside time; so it is not impossible; just difficult to comprehend, as our experience is almost always “in time”.

 

[otjm]

we mean the body Christ had after the resurrection. and yes, that is not a particularly satisfactory answer; but all we have to rely on are the testimonies of those who saw and experienced Him after the Resurrection’ they did not have a specific answer so much as they had an experiential answer.

the best way to grasp it is to read the Gospels after the resurrection. Mark has two scenes (and gives all of two sentences to the disciples on the road to Emmaus; typical Mark); Luke mentions him appearing (not coming to, or entering into a room); John has the most information. Read carefully (the mind can do interesting things, such as reading a word and replacing it with another). Luke, in Acts refers to Christ “appearing to them”. He came and he went, but not as you and I do; He invited Thomas to stick fingers into his wounds; He “broke bread”. That pretty much sums up what we know; sometimes people recognized Him immediately, sometimes they seem to spend an hour or more with Him without recognizing Him until the end of their time with Him.

 

[Wesrock]

Yes. Again, God is above/outside of time, He is not constrained to it, but can act outside of both time and space - both being His creations which require His will to even exist and to continue to exist! Time and/or space do not rule Him, He rules them. He wanted to ordain His first priests and to establish their sacramental work in Holy Eucharist - and so He did.

We are very much bound to time and space - we operate in them as a fish in water, and can hardly imagine being outside of them, and free of them. But with God, not so.

Blockquote

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.

 

[Wesrock]

we mean the body Christ had after the resurrection. and yes, that is not a particularly satisfactory answer; but all we have to rely on are the testimonies of those who saw and experienced Him after the Resurrection’ they did not have a specific answer so much as they had an experiential answer.

I asked, because some theologians have spoken of Jesus’ glorification in a different sense, and there was a very long and heated topic about it some time ago.

 

[KevinK]

Wouldn’t Jesus be able to walk through walls, glorified or not? He walked on water.

 

[Wesrock]

Wouldn’t Jesus be able to walk through walls, glorified or not? He walked on water.

Yes, he could have, through his divinity. But his human nature was not glorified in that way until after the resurrection, and all those who will be saved after the resurrection will have their human natures glorified in the same way and be able to do such things.

 

[runningdude]

When we eat Jesus’ body are we actually eating his hair, toes, hands etc?

No

Please include a source for your reply…

15+ years of private study.

 

[Gorgias]

He did not try to make it easy then, and I think it is a disservice to try to do so now.

I’m not “trying to make it easy”; I’m just trying to keep ya’ll from making it harder to accept.

the scandal of consuming His Body caused deflections and abandonment of him in Jn 6

That scandal was due to the misunderstanding of the crowd that He was asking them to gnaw on HIs flesh. He was not. Are you trying to reinstate that misunderstanding? If so, then I would assert that it’s you, not I, who is obfuscating…

Isn’t concomitance what Lutherans believe?

No, you’re thinking of “consubstantiation.”

But during the Last Supper He gave His non resurrected body to His disciples.

No, at the Last Supper, Jesus gave the substance of His body in the Eucharist, just as in any Eucharist at any time.

Yes, the real presence - Christ as He IS now - has been made present with us, for us in Eucharist, first instituted at the Last Supper, in His resurrected and glorified Body.

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.

@Wesrock has this one right, @fide. See ST III.81.3 for Aquinas’ discussion.

 

[Hope1960]

Wouldn’t Jesus be able to walk through walls, glorified or not? He walked on water.

I don’t know. Did he?

 

[Hope1960]

F

No, at the Last Supper, Jesus gave the substance of His body in the Eucharist, just as in any Eucharist at any time.

My former priest said that Aquinas was rarely wrong but that he was wrong about this.

 

[fide]

Wesrock - You wrote,

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.

Do you have an authoritative/magisterial source for this statement? Please share that if you do.

 

[Rob2]

I’ll stay with what I quoted earlier from the Catechism : , “The signs of bread and wine become, in a way surpassing understanding , the Body and Blood of Christ.”

And the translation of the hymn Adoro te devote by the Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins :

Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived:
How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed;
What God’s Son has told me, take for truth I do;
Truth himself speaks truly or there’s nothing true.

Every “solution” poses another problem .

It’s best to leave well alone and trust the words of Jesus .