Isn’t this moving the goalposts, though? I mean, the response to the first statement is ‘of course’, and to the second, ‘of course not’. Yet, the two statements are not in opposition to one another: yes, Christ is ‘now’ glorified, and yes, the Eucharist at the Last Supper was transubstantiated. Still, these are two distinctly different assertions – why are you creating a dichotomy of one against the other?
It is not my intention to create a dichotomy, but rather to reassure those who seem deeply puzzled and troubled should such dichotomy exist (
Did Jesus hold his glorified body at the last supper? How could he do so if his body was not yet glorified? My head hurts).
I myself am not bothered by such questions. As I noted, I am not one to say the *
Lord God through whom everything was made… *could not transubstantiate bread into his not yet glorified body. Heck I would not even say he could not transubstantiate bread into his glorified body, even in his pre-glorified state – I am not going to put such limits on the
Lord God through whom everything was made…
Yet, if this is true, doesn’t mean that there is a particular difference between the Eucharist of the Last Supper and every subsequent Eucharist? (To tell the truth, I think GreenWhiteBlue’s question is the most insightful: is the substance of Christ’s unglorified body different than the substance of Christ’s glorified body? I have to admit, I’ve got to think about that one for a bit…)
I would say substance of Christ’s pre-glorified body
is identical to the substance of his glorified body.
In discussions of transubstantiation I am quite willing to admit the difficulty of explanation, because the
only example of transubstantiation that I know is the confection of the Eucharist. I cannot point to other examples to make it easier to understand.
But I
do offer people an example of a substance remaining the same while the accidents change, and that is you, yourself (or me, or anyone else you care to, but I am going to point at
you 
).
You are not the same person you were when
you were an infant, nor a child, nor one year ago, nor one second ago. In the intervening times,
you have taken in resources, expelled wastes, thought new thoughts, created new memories, et cetera. But you’ve never ceased being
you, have you? Or if you claim that you have so ceased, when did you stop being the
you of yesteryear and become the
you of today? How did you know?
In the same way I would argue that Christ’s pre-glorified body and his glorified body are of the same substance.
tee
As I wrote above, I do not have a problem with the conjecture that transubstantiation makes present Christ’s body as it is. Today, that means his glorified body, but at the Last Supper, it was his pre-glorified body. And I think it is safe to say that at the Last Supper Our Lord had at least begun his suffering and passion, in anticipation of the events soon to come to fruit.