Explaining the Eucharist

[jacobaer]

My wife is a Christian but not Catholic.

We have finally entered into a discussion about Catholic teaching, and I am trying to show her how it was the Bible that confirmed to me that Catholic teaching is correct, and that is why I returned to the Church after 30 years of being a Protestant. (This drives Bible-only Christians crazy since they think that they have a lock on what is “Biblical,” and that the Catholic Church is “unbiblical.”)

Anyway, she brought up the Eucharist. She asked how we can believe that the bread and wine becomes Jesus, and still look like and smell like and taste like…bread and wine.

I said that when Jesus was on earth, people could not tell just by looking at him that He was God. He looked like a man. He sounded like a man. He smelled like a man. He felt like a man. But He was still God in the flesh. I said to her that it is the same with the Eucharist.

Question: Is my analogy correct?

I know that Jesus is both God and man (the hypostatic union). But the Eucharist is completely God, it is not God and the elements at the same time. Or am I confused?

Thanks,
Gene

 

[Lion_of_Narnia]

My wife is a Christian but not Catholic.

We have finally entered into a discussion about Catholic teaching, and I am trying to show her how it was the Bible that confirmed to me that Catholic teaching is correct, and that is why I returned to the Church after 30 years of being a Protestant. (This drives Bible-only Christians crazy since they think that they have a lock on what is “Biblical,” and that the Catholic Church is “unbiblical.”)

Anyway, she brought up the Eucharist. She asked how we can believe that the bread and wine becomes Jesus, and still look like and smell like and taste like…bread and wine.

I said that when Jesus was on earth, people could not tell just by looking at him that He was God. He looked like a man. He sounded like a man. He smelled like a man. He felt like a man. But He was still God in the flesh. I said to her that it is the same with the Eucharist.

Question: Is my analogy correct?

I know that Jesus is both God and man (the hypostatic union). But the Eucharist is completely God, it is not God and the elements at the same time. Or am I confused?

Thanks,
Gene

Close, but not completly correct. Jesus Christ is also fully Man as well as fully God. Wheras the Body and Blood only have the appearences (or “accidents” to use Aquinas) of bread and wine–but they are no longer bread and wine–even if you take those appearences down to the quantum/string theory level.

 

[Verbum_Caro]

Hi Gene,

Great analogy!

Not only would it be considered “correct”, but you would be in good company by making it. St. Thomas Aquinas makes the same analogy in his hymn Adoro Te Devote, here is the relevant portion:

Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore,
Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more,
See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart
Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.

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.

On the cross thy godhead made no sign to men,
Here thy very manhood steals from human ken:
Both are my confession, both are my belief,
And I pray the prayer of the dying thief.

That last bit is where St. Thomas draws the analogy between the hiddenness of Divinity in the Incarnation and the hiddenness of humanity (and Divinity) in the Eucharist.

Your calrification, however, is also very good (and essential), in so far as Christ is both God and Man by the Incarnation but in the Eucharist He is not both God, Man and bread. The substance of bread (or wine) is entirely converted into the substance of Christ, there is no bread left.

God bless you and your wife,
VC

 

[Pax]

jacobaer,

I think your analogy is a good one but all analogies have their limitations. I suspect that your wife will have many more questions concerning the Eucharist. You may find it helpful to search the various threads on this forum pertaining to the Eucharist. Just about every imaginable argument and point has been covered on these threads pertaining to the true presence.

Beyond that you might want to get Scott Hahn’s book The Lambs Supper. This and other books written on the Eucharist may prove helpful to your wife. I would also suggest that you expose her to the writings of the Early Church Fathers so that she can see that the earliest Christians also believed in the “real presence.”

I hope this helps.

 

[Della]

I always find it odd that “Bible only” Christians accept certain concepts, such as the hypostatic union for which there is no direct scripture verse, but bulk at the Real Presence when there is clear biblical support for it.

Show her passages such as 1 Cor. 11:23-29 in which Paul tells us in no uncertain terms the consequences of receiving Holy Communion unworthily. Would he have said such a thing if it was only a “symbol” and not the actual Body and Blood of Christ?

Show her John 6:53-58 in which Jesus himself tells us that his body is real food and his blood real drink.

And the Gospel accounts of the Last Supper (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) in which Jesus declared: “This is my body…this is my blood.”

We believe in the Real Presence because Jesus and the Apostles taught it and lived it not because we know precisely how the words of consecration make Christ present and turn plain bread and wine into his Body and Blood. We believe in it as firmly as we believe in the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, which are also mysteries of faith that no man can fully explain or understand.

 

[jacobaer]

Lion, Verbum, Pax and Della,

Thanks to all of you for your (name removed by moderator)ut.

You’ve basically cleared this up in my mind. The analogy is good only up to a point.

Grace and peace,
Gene