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Ignatius
Guest
The same way He turned water into wine, He turned bread and wined into His body and blood. He didn’t have to die to do this.
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Abu
Guest
Of course, because the doubt of Faith1960 ignores the power of Jesus the Christ – the same almighty power of whom Quadratus writes (circa 123 A.D.) that in his day there were still persons around who had been cured or raised from the dead by Jesus – prime witnesses. [Eusebius, *Church History, 4.3, 1.2; See Free From All Error, Fr W. Most, p 12].
His miracles “were so frequent, the eyewitnesses so numerous, and the evidence so stark, that not even Christ’s enemies disputed the fact of their occurrence. Instead they ascribed them to the power of the devil, or defied Him to perform another one in His own favour.” (See Mt 12:24; 27:39-42; Jn 11:47). Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine, Sheehan/Joseph, Saint Austin Press, 2001, p 104].
The documents of Scripture are historical. Further, historically, the documents of Scripture relate that the man Jesus claimed to be sent by God, claimed to be God, proved His claim by His miracles and His Resurrection, and established His Church on St Peter to continue His teaching until the end of time.
Not only are the facts of Jesus miracles recorded by His own Apostles who were present – Saints Matthew and John were companions of Christ, and Saints Mark and Luke lived in constant contact with His contemporaries.
Why should there be any doubt whatsoever that that same Jesus could change bread and wine into His Body and Blood as carefully testified to, when that same Jesus, as God the Son, worked so many other miracles?
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Blue_Horizon
Guest
Personally, when things get philosophically over-zoomed (and we are so close we don’t really know what we are looking at anymore), I tend to zoom way out and just untuit the big picture before zooming back in again.
I think the heart of the Eucharist at the last supper is that Jesus is literally sacrificing and sharing his whole life with his Apostles (and us) in an intimate act of “becoming one flesh” with us far deeper than that of conjugal intimacy.
However, before his death I do not believe Jesus was yet fully glorified by the Father so how could his body be even in a hidden glorified state? If so he could not be killed.
So if at the Last Supper Jesus gave us all he was capable of giving and that excluded his glorified body that is fine with me.
And if we today receive all that Jesus is now capable of giving (which includes his glorified body) that is just as good it seems to me.
And if the Eucharist is in fact a timeless and unchanging gift then his Glorified Body was there even for the Apostles in anticipation of the Cross. And that’s fine with me too.
Fact is, nobody really seems to know and I don’t think the Church has ever felt it a burning issue that needs to be discerned and defined.
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AmbroseSJ
Guest
So, your question, maybe, is about how the Sacrifice of the Bread and Wine, which was the Body and Blood of Jesus could be real before the actual Sacrifice on Calvary?
But if that is the case, then how is it, that today we celebrate the Sacrifice of the Mass, when the actual sacrifice was 2000 years ago? Is that real?
However, I might be misunderstanding your question. You don’t articulate why the death of Jesus MUST precede his offering of the Sacrifice of Himself in the Eucharist at the Last Supper.
If possible, consider the real difficulty that is present to YOU, rather than depending on someone else to give voice to it. The other person may have an entirely different difficulty, although it may appear similar to yours.
It would also help to know if this difficulty is also undermining your faith in the Eucharist, or if it is just a curious speculation for which you would like an answer.
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AmbroseSJ
Guest
What I must always return to, is that Our Lord was the Holy Incarnation. He was absolutely in a hidden state, ordinarily, as the Transfiguration attests. But you object that if so, he could not be killed. But what you must bear in mind, is that the Holy Incarnation, the Person of Jesus Christ, was a hypostasis of a fully human body, capable of suffering and death, joined to the Divine Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity. If the Incarnation of Jesus Christ was not capable of suffering and death, then His Sacrifice would be made null and void. However, although His Body was fully human, and capable of suffering and death, exactly like ours, He (Jesus Christ) was still a Hypostasis with the Divine Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity. That ALONE, makes all speculation about what the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, was or was NOT able to do entirely a Sacramental Mystery.
So therefore, although at the Last Supper, Jesus was possessed of a suffering and mortal body, it would have NO bearing on what the Hypostasis was capable of accomplishing IN THAT FLESH.
Recall to mind, that Our Blessed Mother remained an Immaculate Virgin both before and after the birth of Our Lord. This miraculous birth is no less a wonder than Jesus appearing in His glorified Body in the locked room after His Resurrection.
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Gorgias
Guest
Again, no. The question isn’t whether the Eucharist at the Last Supper was ‘real’, although that’s what everyone seems to be spinning the question as. :banghead:
That’s an easy answer.
The presentation of Christ’s sacrifice to the Father happens outside of time. It is an eternal reality. Therefore, when we celebrate the Eucharist, we are re-presenting the sacrifice of the Son to the Father. We are not ‘re-crucifying Christ’; we are simply entering into the reality of the eternal presentation of Christ’s sacrifice to His Father.
Actually, the fact that the Last Supper precedes the sacrifice is what makes this a difficult question to answer. I’ve been going back to some resources (and looking to pick up a new book or two) to help answer this question. Here’s the timeline:
- Holy Thursday: Christ offers the Eucharist to those at the Passover meal & commands the apostles to do this, likewise, as a memorial.
- Good Friday: Christ is sacrificed for us (temporally).
- Eternally, but tied to Good Friday: Christ, the 2nd Person of the Trinity, offers Himself as sacrifice to the Father.
- Every Mass since the beginning of the Church: Christ’s sacrifice is re-presented to the Father. Christ is sacramentally present in the Eucharist – that is, the substance of His glorified body is truly present in the Eucharist.
If our understanding of the Eucharist, as it’s been celebrated since the beginning of the Church, is that Christ’s glorified body is sacramentally present, then is it likewise our understanding that it was Christ’s glorified body that was sacramentally present at the Last Supper?
(I answer ‘yes’. Others have answered ‘no’, but provided nothing to back up that assertion. There was the one really good objection that Christ’s glorified body – which proceeds from the not-glorified, Incarnate body – cannot be said to have existed eternally (in the same way that we would say that Jesus Incarnate did not come into existence until 1 A.D. or so). However, I’m this close to saying, “no, I stick with my original assertion. It is Christ’s glorified body that’s sacramentally present at the Last Supper,” but I want to do a bit more reading before I do so. Intuitively, it seems to me that it’s not beyond Christ’s power to reach ‘forward’ in time in order to provide the sacramental presence of His glorified body – which is eternally presented to the Father – so that the apostles might share in the sacramental sacrifice on Holy Thursday, even though that’s ‘prior’ to His sacrifice on Good Friday.)
But, back to the question: can the sacramental re-presentation of the sacrifice pre-exist the sacrifice itself? It’s not a problem for the re-presentation to ‘pre-exist’ the presentation of the sacrifice (after all, both are eternal!), but can the re-presentation reach forward prior to the sacrifice itself? (I think that the answer is ‘yes’ – after all, as we’ve seen asserted here, Christ is God, so nothing is impossible to Him. However, this seems to raise an additional difficulty: if it’s no great shakes to assert that the sacramental re-presentation of the sacrifice can pre-exist (in time) the sacrifice itself, then why can the effects of the presentation of the sacrifice (i.e., the possibility of salvation) not pre-exist the sacrifice itself? After all, the doctrine of the Limbus Patrum explicitly asserts that those who died before Christ’s (temporal) life had to ‘wait’ until His sacrifice in order to attain to heaven.)
We seem to be on the horns of a dilemma here. It seems to me that the answer is that Christ willed that the Eucharist be available to His people, and given its connection to the Passover, He instituted the Eucharist prior to His temporal death, in order that it might be made available following His temporal death.
Good point, although it seems that Faith and I are asking the same question. She might be asking additional questions, but we both seem to be asking this same one question.
Invalid assertion. Is our desire to study theology “just a curious speculation”? :nope:
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Gorgias
Guest
Ouch. You’re opening a whole new can of worms, it seems. The ‘Transfiguration’ (that is, when Christ μετεμορφώθη (‘metamorphed’) before the Apostles), is a change of form – that is, of appearance. In other words, He showed His true divine form. However, that has less to do with the Eucharist than it might seem at first blush. The Eucharist cannot exist without the Body of Christ. The Transfiguration is possible because Christ is likewise ‘True God’; and that ‘divine form’ is what was made visible to the Apostles. What was ‘hidden’ was not the ‘Holy Incarnation’ – after all, that was visible to all: what was not perceived (since ‘hidden’ smacks at Gnosticism) was that in the Incarnation, God had taken human form.
Right: that objection doesn’t hold water. His reality as God doesn’t trump the possibility of His human death.
Fair enough. And, the question being asked here is simply, “what, exactly, did the Hypostatis accomplish in the Eucharist of the Last Supper?” My answer (I think) will be, “it accomplished the sacramental re-presentation of the Son to the Father, in the substance of His glorified body sacramentally present in the Eucharist (in exactly the same way that it’s present in every Eucharistic celebration since the beginning of the Church).”
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Faith1960
Guest
This is soooooo way over my head. So Jesus was holding His body and gave it to disciples even though He hadn’t died yet and wasnt glorified because he transcends time?
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AmbroseSJ
Guest
Let’s draw an analogy. If you pledge to give $500 to your local PBS station over the course of the next year, when is the actual sacrifice being made? Is it when you make the pledge, or is it when you dole out each individual payment throughout the year?
Some might insist that it is at the time you make the pledge, because that is when the decision (the act of the will) was made to give up that money. Still others with a legalistic bent might agree, since that is when the contract was entered into. Yet others might suppose that each individual payment was the real sacrifice.
But of all those people, would ANY of them say that the initial pledge is a “re-presentation” of the actual sacrifice? I don’t see how they could, since there was no initial presentation yet.
Likewise, in my opinion, I don’t see how it is logical to call the Last Supper an anachronistic re-presentation of the sacrifice. It was in fact the pledge or as some might say, the actual beginning of the sacrifice which was concluded on Good Friday.
That is why I said earlier, that the Last Supper “if it were possible” was a more perfect Eucharist, than today’s. Although I hastily insist that there is no such real possibility, since both at the Last Supper and today, we have Our Lord’s Body and Blood.
Now in all this I admit that I am arguing from the viewpoint that the Body and Blood of Jesus that was present in the Eucharist, at the Last Supper was His own suffering mortal body and blood. However, I am not sure you are wrong either, inasmuch as the Incarnation is a Sacramental Mystery, which leaves much that is unknown or perhaps even unknowable during this pilgrimage of ours.
I would be interested to learn whether you find any Magisterial doctrines on this exact question. In lieu of that, maybe any Patristic writings touching this subject.
But in my own mind, and as far as I know, it is self-evident to me that Jesus gave Himself, as he was then and there, in the Eucharist at the Last Supper.
I see no need that he be in a futuristic glorified body that has time-travelled back to the Last Supper. Indeed it seems both unnecessary and contrary to any Biblical texts.
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Gorgias
Guest
In a way, yes, that’s my take on it, although I think I’d explain it differently.This is soooooo way over my head. So Jesus was holding His body and gave it to disciples even though He hadn’t died yet and wasnt glorified because he transcends time?
First, we have to understand what the Eucharist is. The explanation that the Church offers is ‘transubstantiation,’ which is a subtle discussion, since it stands on a philosophical understanding of what we – as humans – are.
Then, once we understand the difference between our ‘accidents’ (that is, the physical appearances we have) and our ‘substance’ (that is, what we ‘are’), we can explain what happens in the Eucharist at a Catholic Mass.
However, the difficulty comes in harmonizing that explanation with an explanation of how that could have happened on Holy Thursday. I think I’m cool with saying “he’s God, so He was able to bring His glorified body into union with the accidents of bread and wine, on Holy Thursday, even though His glorified body wasn’t physically visible to us until after His resurrection, and even though His very sacrifice didn’t happen until the next day (i.e., Good Friday).”
Remember: when a priest ‘holds’ the Eucharist, what he physically ‘holds’ is the physical accidents of bread and wine; when consecrated, these become the sacramental presence of Christ’s glorified body, under the species (i.e., appearance) of bread and wine. Is it impossible to state that Christ Himself held bread and wine, which likewise were transubstantiated by the sacramental presence of Himself? I don’t think so.
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Faith1960
Guest
Do you mean that Jesus transubstantiated the bread and wine Himself even though He wasnt dead and glorified?
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Ignatius
Guest
Did you think God Incarnate was bound by time? He Created Time, Time is subject to Him, not the other way around.
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Faith1960
Guest
What’s your definition of “sacramental presence”?
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Gorgias
Guest
When a priest confects the Eucharist at Mass, here’s what he’s really doing:
- He calls on God to sanctify the bread and wine, asking Him to send down the Holy Spirit so that these may become the Body and Blood of Christ.
- He prays the words with which Christ instituted the first Eucharist at the Last Supper.
Christ’s glorified body exists in heaven – it is eternal. That’s why it’s possible both to do this today (2000 years later) and over and over again – it’s not a normal human body, it’s a glorified body.
Look at those two things a priest does, again. Jesus could do the first, Himself, since He’s God. And He did the second (the prayers), as is recorded in the Gospels.
So, we conclude, He was able to do what He did at the Last Supper, even though it bends our minds to try to come to terms with it. He made his glorified body sacramentally present at the Last Supper. What he ‘held’ – physically – was the accidents of bread and of wine. What those actually were was His sacramental presence. It sounds weird to say it that way, but it’s not really all that surprising. If God – who creates every thing – was able to ‘create’ Himself in the Incarnation, is it less surprising that Christ could ‘hold’ Himself in the Eucharist?
If your hangup is with Jesus ‘holding His glorified body’, then let me ask you a question: what happened in Emmaus? When the disciples recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread, weren’t they really recognizing the Eucharist? And if so, wasn’t Jesus “holding His glorified body” at that point, too? Does the Emmaus story cause you similar heartburn?
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Gorgias
Guest
A ‘physical’ presence doesn’t need any explanation, right? It’s pretty straightforward to us what that is. What it means is that a person is present in a way that has physical extension, in a moment of time. In other words, I can point to a location (in three dimensions) and to a point in time, and say, “the physical matter of Gorgias is right here, at this location, in this point in time.” And, of course, we’d all agree on what that means, and it wouldn’t confuse us.
A sacramental presence, though, means something different. A sacrament is a sign that actually does what it symbolizes. We might want to unpack that a bit: a stop sign is a person’s way to tell you to stop. It might bring to mind the penalties you might incur if you don’t stop, but it doesn’t make you stop. Rather, you – yourself! – cause your car to stop; the sign is just a symbol of the authority of the government to regulate your driving.
In a slightly different way, a spike strip (like you see at rental car places) is a sign. It, too, doesn’t make you stop. However, if you drive over it, the effect of the spikes going through your tires will – eventually! – make it impossible for you to keep driving! Yet, the spikes don’t make you stop: they just make it very clear what will happen if you choose not to stop.
A sacrament is a special kind of sign: it actually brings about what it symbolizes. When we see the water of baptism and hear “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, this sign that we’ve seen and heard actually does cause the regeneration to occur. In the same way, when we see bread and wine and hear the words of Institution, these really do cause the Eucharist to be present.
Christ isn’t present in physical accidents – after all, the physical accidents that are present are still the accidents of bread and of wine. However, He is truly present. The way (or ‘mode’) in which He’s present is sacramentally. His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity is really present – sacramentally, through the sign of the Eucharist. (His ‘substance’ replaces the substance of bread and the substance of wine, and this is why we say He’s present.)
However, there’s no physical presence that’s discernable through physical properties – instead, there’s sacramental presence. It is real, but not physical (in the way that you and I are physical).
Now… cue the folks who hate to hear that distinction between ‘physical’ and ‘sacramental’, because they think that it argues against ‘real’ presence: in three… two… one…
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Faith1960
Guest
No. Im not that familiar with that story, and at the rate im going, thats probably a good thing.When a priest confects the Eucharist at Mass, here’s what he’s really doing:
In doing so, the substance of Christ’s glorified body becomes present in the visible elements, in such a way that they are no longer ‘bread’ and ‘wine’, but are truly Christ (sacramentally present in His substance of His glorified body).
- He calls on God to sanctify the bread and wine, asking Him to send down the Holy Spirit so that these may become the Body and Blood of Christ.
- He prays the words with which Christ instituted the first Eucharist at the Last Supper.
Christ’s glorified body exists in heaven – it is eternal. That’s why it’s possible both to do this today (2000 years later) and over and over again – it’s not a normal human body, it’s a glorified body.
Look at those two things a priest does, again. Jesus could do the first, Himself, since He’s God. And He did the second (the prayers), as is recorded in the Gospels.
So, we conclude, He was able to do what He did at the Last Supper, even though it bends our minds to try to come to terms with it. He made his glorified body sacramentally present at the Last Supper. What he ‘held’ – physically – was the accidents of bread and of wine. What those actually were was His sacramental presence. It sounds weird to say it that way, but it’s not really all that surprising. If God – who creates every thing – was able to ‘create’ Himself in the Incarnation, is it less surprising that Christ could ‘hold’ Himself in the Eucharist?
If your hangup is with Jesus ‘holding His glorified body’, then let me ask you a question: what happened in Emmaus? When the disciples recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread, weren’t they really recognizing the Eucharist? And if so, wasn’t Jesus “holding His glorified body” at that point, too? Does the Emmaus story cause you similar heartburn?
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Blue_Horizon
Guest
I do not believe this is the traditional approach to solving such issues.
It could also be argued that it is more consistent with well developed traditional theological systems that Jesus, by whatever mechanism, was assumed to be as effectively unglorified as any other man. Like us in all things but sin.
Also, glorification is a gift totally unrelated to even our preternatural human endowments (lost by sin). I am not even sure it could be said that Jesus had exercise of the preternatural gifts even if he had them in “hidden” fashion. Perhaps someone else can clarify this interesting side-issue.
Anyways,
to start talking of “hidden glorification” simply to solve one or two difficulties (and so create many more difficulties) is a somewhat unnecessary multiplying of causes which most philosophers would find un-harmonious theologising (ie the principle of Ockham’s Razor).
Of course it is a mystery, but that doesn’t mean we cannot speculate - and the tide of traditional speculation would be against you I observe.
Aquinas for example could have leaned back on an easy “hidden glorification” approach when solving other such issues yet chose to reject such solutions in favour of more robust theologising in harmony with Jesus’s observed practical kenosis.
I am not saying you are wrong (who on earth knows anyhow), just that it is quite an open question and the tide of tradition on this point is agin you from my readings.
Re the Transfiguration and Aquinas:
“The words quoted prove, not that the clarity of Christ was not that of glory, but that it was not the clarity of a glorified body, since Christ’s body was not as yet immortal.”
In other words the glory was by way of a miracle, not by way of natural power of some sort of hidden glorified body.
Likewise I suggest re the Last Supper - no glorified body there folks.
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AmbroseSJ
Guest
Blue Horizon:
I was never contending that Jesus had a “hidden glorification.” Those are your words, not mine. I said “a hidden state.” It is in your quote. By that I meant the Incarnation is a Sacramental Mystery (also in your quote.)
Further, my opinion has NEVER been that Jesus was in this “hidden glorification” in order to solve the alleged problem of Jesus having a glorified body at the Last Supper in the Eucharist. I have never considered that to be any sort of problem. I have been arguing the exact opposite. That Jesus was present in the Eucharist in His Body, as it was, then and there; that it was unnecessary that Jesus have a glorified body in order to consecrate the Eucharist at the Last Supper.
It’s pretty hard when your allies try to prove you are arguing for the adversary’s side!
You misunderstand.
I was never contending that Jesus had a “hidden glorification.” Those are your words, not mine. I said “a hidden state.” It is in your quote. By that I meant the Incarnation is a Sacramental Mystery (also in your quote.)
Further, my opinion has NEVER been that Jesus was in this “hidden glorification” in order to solve the alleged problem of Jesus having a glorified body at the Last Supper in the Eucharist. I have never considered that to be any sort of problem. I have been arguing the exact opposite. That Jesus was present in the Eucharist in His Body, as it was, then and there; that it was unnecessary that Jesus have a glorified body in order to consecrate the Eucharist at the Last Supper.
It’s pretty hard when your allies try to prove you are arguing for the adversary’s side!
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Gorgias
Guest
Right. You’re just saying that, since He is God (and that divine nature was present in Him always), he was able to confect the Eucharist. No problems there.
Yet, that isn’t the question: the question isn’t “by what power could Jesus confect the Eucharist” – it’s “was the Eucharist the same ‘Eucharist’ at the Last Supper as in every Mass offered by the Church?” And if so, doesn’t that imply that the substance of Jesus’ glorified body is what was given in the Eucharist at the Last Supper? (You seem to keep avoiding addressing that question.)
I don’t think that anyone has been arguing that He wasn’t present in the Eucharist. Why do you continue to beat that dead horse?
Let’s get a bit more precise. I’m not stating that “without a glorified body, Jesus did not have the capacity to consecrate the Eucharist at the Last Supper,” as you seem to be asserting here. Rather, I’m asking about the Eucharist itself. The Eucharist does not consist of the divine nature of Christ (solely) – it is “Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity”. Therefore, what are we saying about the body of Christ is the question at hand. Is it the substance of the (glorified) body of Christ in Mass on Sunday? If so, isn’t it, too, the substance of the glorified body of Christ at the Last Supper?
Don’t worry. You’re not even arguing against the assertions I’m making, so I’m under no illusion that you’re arguing for them…!It’s pretty hard when your allies try to prove you are arguing for the adversary’s side!
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AmbroseSJ
Guest
I really don’t understand how you say that I am avoiding your question. I have answered it very specifically so many times. I have said categorically over and over that it was my opinion that it WAS NOT the substance of Jesus’ GLORIFIED BODY that was given in the Eucharist AT THE LAST SUPPER.
Instead I have said it was HIS BODY, AS IT WAS, THEN AND THERE. You even quoted me saying it!
I really do have a perfect signature quote for this thread.
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