Eschatological Transubstantiation

[FrKimel]

These two articles may be of interest:

Eschatological Transubstantiation

and

The Risen Christ and the Language of God

 

[po18guy]

Thank you! Very interesting reads. It occurs to me that God is Mystery and man (i.e. nature) abhors a mystery. Thus, man seeks forever to understand and describe that which is beyond his current capability to either describe or understand.

I think the phrase “partakers of the Divine nature” may help illuminate the difference between Peter touching the flesh that could not be eaten, and we, who are commanded to take and eat the substance of Christ and thereby partake of that Divine nature which is somehow contained in the Eucharist. Both points of contact, Peter’s and ours, have their distinct meaning, but at the resurrection on that first day of the week, everything changed.

A few years back, as I received the Holy Eucharist, there was a flash of inspiration or enlightenment regarding the hypostatic union. I cannot describe that moment’s content, but neither will I ever forget it. In a very limited sense, I guess, it was an imperfect type of hypostatic union - a foreshadowing.

 

[Michael_Mayo]

I am suggesting that the consecrated host exists at a level of reality at which the questions of whether it is bread cannot relevantly be asked; our language breaks down when we try to speak of it, just as it does in the case of God. What happens at the consecration is not that the proper description of the host shifts within our language (from “bread” to “Body of Christ”) but that it no longer becomes possible to give an account of it within our language at all. (p. 152)

That is something to chew on.

 

[ssancho]

I am suggesting that the consecrated host exists at a level of reality at which the questions of whether it is bread cannot relevantly be asked; our language breaks down when we try to speak of it, just as it does in the case of God. What happens at the consecration is not that the proper description of the host shifts within our language (from “bread” to “Body of Christ”) but that it no longer becomes possible to give an account of it within our language at all. (p. 152)

That is something to chew on.

This idea sounds like it contradicts the doctrine of transubstantiation, which states, according to CCC 2nd edition §1376, “…by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood…”

 

[Michael_Mayo]

This idea sounds like it contradicts the doctrine of transubstantiation, which states, according to CCC 2nd edition §1376, “…by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood…”

Yes, we are able to give “account for it” to some degree. See also in #1374 The mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as "the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend."199 In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist “the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.” “This presence is called ‘real’ - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be ‘real’ too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present.”

The author of the article takes us into the technical philosophical language of most of us really do not fully grasp.