To RobNY,
I’ve have heard it said before that transubstantiation means receiving the substance of the Glorified Body of Christ, but as to what “substance” actually means in this context I am still uncertain about. Thomas Aquinas, if I’m correct, taught this, and its ambiguity left me incredibly puzzled.
This is very difficult to understand. I advise you to pray for understanding.
Not to condescend to you, but just to relate to you, at this time in your life, around 13, there are huge amounts of developments going on physically and mentally. I’m sure you know that. From about your age, and in the next few years I know my mental abilities sharpened incredibly. The mind’s ability to engage in abstract thinking increases tremendously over this time. I know this personally because looking back I can see how much I’ve developed, for instance, from 14 to 16. So if you have trouble, don’t sweat it. Try your best, let it percolate up there in your head, pray about it.
First, have you read
the catechism on the Eucharist? If not, read it. Paragraphs 1373-1376 refer to transubstantiation.
Second, if you were refer me directly to the Thomas Aquinas passages you are referring to, I’d be glad to help you.
“Substance” is a philosophical term. It’s a lot like the term, ‘form.’ I recommend
reading Parts 4 and 5 of Aristotle’s Categories here. It’s difficult but it might help.
Substance refers to what something, “is.” I realize this is abstract. In Aristotle’s philosophy, there is substance, and there are accidents. Substance has primary being, and the accidents have secondary being supported on the substance. Accidents exist only on a subject. What are the accidents? As Aristotle says, “quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, or affection.”
To sketch my meaning roughly, examples of substance are ‘man’ or ‘the horse’, of quantity, such terms as ‘two cubits long’ or ‘three cubits long’, of quality, such attributes as ‘white’, ‘grammatical’. ‘Double’, ‘half’, ‘greater’, fall under the category of relation; ‘in a the market place’, ‘in the Lyceum’, under that of place; ‘yesterday’, ‘last year’, under that of time. ‘Lying’, ‘sitting’, are terms indicating position, ‘shod’, ‘armed’, state; ‘to lance’, ‘to cauterize’, action; ‘to be lanced’, ‘to be cauterized’, affection. (Part 4)
A substance is a thing. You are a substance. Try to think of substance as what a thing
is. Sub is, “under,” it is what it underneath a thing, what underlies it and makes it what it is. The accidents are those things which are not essentially what something
is, they are perceptible. We can see, touch, taste, hear and smell accidents, and by these senses measure, etc. them. But the, ‘what it is’ of a thing is not something we can perceive with our senses, but rather something we understand with our minds. You don’t, for instance,
see “tableness.”
With the Eucharist, let’s start with bread and wine. We can touch, taste, feel, see, smell the bread. When we do this we are interacting with the accidents of the bread. We are not perceiving with our sense organs, however, the “breadness” of the bread.
What happens at the consecration is that the, “breadness” underlying the accidents of the bread is changed wholly over to Christ’s Body. So that what happens is we have the accidents of bread sensibly present, and yet the substance of bread no longer exists, but instead, the substance of Christ. But, since the accidents of the bread still exist it still appears to be bread.
Let me be clear-- if you take a microscope and zoom in on the Eucharist you are
not going to see little bits of Christ. It still totally and completely appears to be bread. However, on a level deeper than the sensible, really on the level of being as being, it is Christ.
Have I confused you more?
My heavens, you put some adults’ spiritual articulation to shame–namely my own!
Will you pray for me? I must make use of the great prayer I found in Mark 9:27: “I believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!”