Eucharist- real presence

[dallas_r]

Hey guys!

I was discussing real presence in the Eucharist with some of my protestants and they brought up a good question. If the wafer is truly Christ’s body, how would he break it while he was living? It’s not like he walked out of the Lord’s Supper missing 10 toes and 2 fingers. I do believe in the presence of Christ in the wafer but I thought this was a question I just needed to ask.

 

[TheCatholicKnight]

To me, it seems like the protestant doesn’t truly understand the nature of the Eucharist, or what the Real Presence actually means for that fact.

The Eucharist is Christ’s Body, Period. Not a specific part of the body, but simply His flesh. This is a very common misconception, where people will try and presume that when we say Body, we mean a specific part of him.

That’s a simple explanation, if you have anymore questions please ask.

(P.S. Make sure next time that you don’t use language like “presence of Christ in the wafer”, because that can imply that the “wafer” (or at least what appears to us to be a wafer) still has an element of something that isn’t Christ. Not trying to call you out, just want to make sure to correct that now, otherwise, like me, you make be corrected even harsher in the future )

 

[Spyridon]

The miracles of the loaves and fish prefigure the Eucharist, using heavy Eucharistic language and themes.

The fish and bread miraculously and spontaneously instantly “grow back” once a piece of ripped off and handed out.

It prefigures the One Body of Christ in the Eucharist continually feeding the entire Church and never being taken away or subtracted from.

 

[dallas_r]

Thanks for the correction!

 

[MtnDwellar]

Every morsel of the Eucharist is completely Christ, His body, soul and divinity.

 

[Joe_5859]

Those questions are really not much different from the pagan misunderstandings of the Eucharist that had them viewing the first Christians as cannibals.

The Eucharist contains the sacramental Presence of Christ, not a physical presence in the sense that we are breaking off Christ’s fingers and toes every time we celebrate Mass.

 

[setarcos]

I don’t understand this. Where is God not to be found? Can I point somewhere and say…God is not over there? Is God not present everywhere? Not just presumably in the wafer of the Eucharist? One poster says Christ is not physically present in the Eucharist but only sacramentally? Another says the Eucharist IS Christ’s flesh. Yet I thought that was the emphasis…that Christ’s body IS physically present in the Eucharist? By definition this IS cannibalism isn’t it? Every morsel is completely Christ? Why even bother to put the leftovers into the tabernacle if the whole church must be infused with Eucharistic dust? Is this merely supposed to be a display of reference? Why all this hogwash about transubstantiation anyways? Why isn’t the Eucharist and wine detectable as blood and flesh to our senses? Why not let blood be blood and flesh be flesh instead of using the theory of incidents and accidents from Aristotle’s conceptions to explain what our senses don’t sense? Isn’t that why God gave us senses, To utilize in distinguishing between the qualities of one object and another so we don’t say…try to eat a rock because someone says its meatloaf? Why would God say…drink this, it tastes like wine but its actually my blood, tastes like unleavened bread but its actually my flesh, when these things actually exist (blood, flesh) detectable by our senses? And why is it I’ve seen Priests get noticeably “buzzed” from sacramental wine when blood would have no similar effect on a person? Aristotle didn’t prefigure modern scientific abilities apparently because experiment performed on sacramental wine and wafer has detected no appreciable difference in molecular structure from what they are…merely bread and wine, how are we to account for this fact? Do these things not attest to the power being in the symbol?
What other miracle has God done which has been claimed but cannot be sensed for what it is? What if Christ had said to the leper " Your cured…you’ll still have lesions and suffer greatly but you no longer have leprosy so celebrate and praise me." Who would have claimed he created a miracle? Who would have followed him because of witnessing this?

 

[runningdude]

Same way he does now - he is still living! It will is one of the mysteries of faith that Christ could hold himself!

 

[PJM]

THANKS this is a easy one:grin:

For GOD time does NOT exist; EVERYTHING to GOD is "[present-time]

FROM FR HARDON’S DICTIONARY

"

OMNISCIENCE. God’s knowledge of all things. Revelation discloses that the wisdom of God is without measure (Psalm 146:5). And the Church teaches that his knowledge is infinite.

The primary object of divine cognition is God himself, whom he knows immediately, that is, without any medium by which he apprehends his nature. He knows himself through himself.

The secondary objects of divine knowledge are everything else, namely the purely possible, the real, and the conditionally future. He knows all that is merely possible by what is called the knowledge of simple intelligence. This means that, in comprehending his infinite imitability and his omnipotence, God knows therein the whole sphere of the possible.

He knows all real things in the past, present, and the future by his knowledge of vision. When God, in his self-consciousness, beholds his infinite operative power, he knows therein all that he, as the main effective cause, actually comprehends, i.e., all reality. The difference between past, present, and future does not exist for the divine knowledge, since for God all is simultaneously present.

By the same knowledge of vision, God also foresees the future free acts of the rational creatures with infallible certainty. As taught by the Church, “All things are naked and open to His eyes, even those things that will happen through the free actions of creatures” (Denzinger 3003). The future free actions foreseen by God follow infallibly not because God substitutes his will for the free wills of his creatures but because he does not interfere with the freedom that he foresees creatures will exercise. (Etym. Latin omnis, all + scire, to know.) End Quotes