A lot of what you wrote went over my head but…are you saying I’m right?
Even as a Latin Rite Catholic, I personally don’t see any thing wrong with what you wrote in the O.P.
My original post was to someone who appears to be trying to force St. Thomas’s terminology onto church teaching about the Eucharist… They appear to think a stricter definition of some kind is needed. I don’t see the logic in their assertion; for they seem to be over-interpreting church teaching in a very myopic/systematic sense.
A Latin rite Catholic is only bound to believe what the Ecumenical councils have strictly defined, and The Ecumenical councils did not use most of St. Thomas’s definitions.
As far as I know, you would be justified in holding your opinion even in a Roman rite / Catholic setting.
We are required to believe that Jesus is present in the Eucharist: Body, Blood, soul, and divinity. I think you have done absolutely nothing to deny any of those truths.
IMHO. Jesus is in the Eucharist in his entire incarnational form with no “part” lacking. That does not mean, however, that his whole body is present there in the Eucharist alone. I can give a couple of examples:
You and I as Catholics of different rites, are “part” of Jesus’ body. (St. Paul says, a body has many parts…and he means us.) but my fingernails are not to be found “somewhere” inside the Eucharistic host. etc. Nor would I expect Jesus’ hair to be there somewhere… etc. or your toes.
What the church requires is that the “substance” of Jesus is found in the host, and I don’t mean in a quantitative sense. I DON’T mean that cutting the host up, physically cuts Jesus up in a way that half a host is half a Jesus and that we “hurt” him.
What I mean is that whatever is required to make a body be Jesus’ body, is what has happened to the host.
I don’t know if this will help; but in marriage, a man and a wife are said to become “one flesh.” The idea is that something uniquely masculine and feminine and HUMAN is transferred from one spouse to the other; reciprocally. In general, Genesis calls this “substance” the “slime of the earth” and sometimes calls it the “substance of a man”;
Perhaps you recall the words “Remember man you are dust, and to dust you shall return”? Well… a husband and wife share this dust in at least two ways.
We can get too fixated on the technical details and grossed out; but what I want to focus on is that the two become one flesh by the transference of a life giving substance. A husband shares with his wife, and she shares with him; not always equally, every time; not in a quantitative sense, and not everything in the “substance” is life itself. We’re not God… but mysteriously, it works out that through the transfer of mere bodily substance; that the two are joined very intimately into one.
Sometimes, this leads to new life in a child. Sometimes it does not. (a kiss can transfer substance, but generally does not cause pregnancy).
But always, the husband and wife are united bodily by the transfer.
Now, with that in mind: Read the passage from the bible where Paul talks about what Jesus has done for us, and understand that what Jesus has done for us has the same exact effect as sexual union does between a man and wife:
For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, 30
because we are members of his body.
w 31“For this reason a man shall leave [his] father and [his] mother
and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
x
32This is a great mystery,
but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.
Now think about it; Most people get married in their life, and understand that their husband giving them his “substance”, or she giving him her “substance”, but this does not mean that they each try to force their ENTIRE body into the other person’s body complete and whole; but they DO give their entire self to the other; and we like to say that.
I don’t get hung up over whether or not the “stuff” which goes between husband and wife “looks” like either of them. They KNOW it is, they each know where it came from. etc. and just accept that.
I really think the same attitude of common sense should apply to the Eucharist.
Trying to “see” Jesus in the Eucharist, is a bit like trying to see the reflection of one’s husband or wife in their sticky substance. Why do it? Are we not supposed to concentrate on the person we love, rather than their body parts?
There is a saying,“You can’t see the forest for the trees;” or conversely, “You can’t see the trees for the forest.”
I think trying to define what “form” Jesus is in, is kind of missing the point of the Eucharist. But yes, what we see is in the form (shape) of bread. However, it’s not bread like we get at a store, but rather It is the substance of Jesus.
A wife’s substance looks like ice-cream carageenan, sometimes. (hopefully not too often, or perhaps they need to see a doctor.)
But it not what it looks like… it’s her substance. Even if she ate ice-cream and that somehow got into her mucous … that’s not the point. It’s not the source of the atoms that makes a thing part of a person’s body, or their substance. Their body, and soul, transformed what they ate into their body, and then shared it with their spouse.
Jesus takes bread, turns it into his body, and then shares it with his bride; the Church.
THAT’S the point.
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