How is the Eucharist possible?

[ajac]

How is the Eucharist possible? How can the entire God be contained in a piece of bread? In what sense is God the bread? I know that there is the distinction between substance and accident, but how can something be something that every indication says it isn’t? The only thing that makes the Eucharist the Eucharist is that Jesus says it is, and for this I believe it. But why is this not logically impossible? Also, I know that God is omnipresent. So what makes him more present in the Eucharist than just when he is with us everywhere else? How is God any closer to us in adoration than He is when we’re not in adoration?

 

[Bon_Croix]

The same way that God came to exist in the womb of Mary? If God could do it in the womb, why can’t he do it in a piece of bread?

 

[pianistclare]

He’s God. HE can do anything. It doesn’t have to be fully comprehensible to our our puny human minds to BE.
God IS. He chose to be within us. Fully a part of our lives. He’s not peering at us from a distance. He wants us to be literally FED with His love.
I recommend the book “the Lamb’s Supper” by Dr Scott Hahn.
People have been saying since the time of Christ “These sayings are hard”. Logic fails. God does not. He is also not a liar. Which is why belief in the Real Presence is so crucial. We cannot take any of the words of Christ and say “nah…I’m sure He didn’t mean it THAT way.”
He did. Emphatically. He reminded us that He would be physically with us always. Take a look at the passages about the people on the road to Emmaus.
He was present with them, fully, physically They didn’t realize it was Christ. But as they became aware, and broke bread with Him, He vanished.
Best evidence for the Real Presence that I know.
God bless you, Good question, and I hope you investigate and study it more. It’s the most beautiful act of love.

 

[AugustTherese]

It’s a sacred mystery that we participate in through faith, hope, and love.

 

[Vico]

How is the Eucharist possible? How can the entire God be contained in a piece of bread? In what sense is God the bread? I know that there is the distinction between substance and accident, but how can something be something that every indication says it isn’t? The only thing that makes the Eucharist the Eucharist is that Jesus says it is, and for this I believe it. But why is this not logically impossible? Also, I know that God is omnipresent. So what makes him more present in the Eucharist than just when he is with us everywhere else? How is God any closer to us in adoration than He is when we’re not in adoration?

It is called multi-location not containment.

CHRIST PRESENT IN THE EUCHARIST THROUGH TRANSUBSTANTIATION

1. To avoid any misunderstanding of this type of presence, which goes beyond the laws of nature and constitutes the greatest miracle of its kind, (50) we have to listen with docility to the voice of the teaching and praying Church. Her voice, which constantly echoes the voice of Christ, assures us that the way in which Christ becomes present in this Sacrament is through the conversion of the whole substance of the bread into His body and of the whole substance of the wine into His blood, a unique and truly wonderful conversion that the Catholic Church fittingly and properly calls transubstantiation. (51) As a result of transubstantiation, the species of bread and wine undoubtedly take on a new signification and a new finality, for they are no longer ordinary bread and wine but instead a sign of something sacred and a sign of spiritual food; but they take on this new signification, this new finality, precisely because they contain a new “reality” which we can rightly call ontological. For what now lies beneath the aforementioned species is not what was there before, but something completely different; and not just in the estimation of Church belief but in reality, since once the substance or nature of the bread and wine has been changed into the body and blood of Christ, nothing remains of the bread and the wine except for the species—beneath which Christ is present whole and entire in His physical “reality,” corporeally present, although not in the manner in which bodies are in a place.

http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_03091965_mysterium.html

 

[Wesrock]

How is the Eucharist possible? How can the entire God be contained in a piece of bread? In what sense is God the bread? I know that there is the distinction between substance and accident, but how can something be something that every indication says it isn’t? The only thing that makes the Eucharist the Eucharist is that Jesus says it is, and for this I believe it. But why is this not logically impossible?

The Church has only dogmatically defined that it is so. The how is rather a mystery, other than that God is not bound by the natural laws reality operates on, even if He cannot violate the princiole of non-contradiction (as many theologians hold; ex: square circle or a rock so heavy He couldn’t lift it). Also, I would not say that the Eucharist contains God, only that it is God, but not a part of God, nor is God divided, nor is He confined or constrained or bound or multiplied.

Also, I know that God is omnipresent. So what makes him more present in the Eucharist than just when he is with us everywhere else? How is God any closer to us in adoration than He is when we’re not in adoration?

My understanding on this is that His omnipresence is related to His action touching all things the way a cause is present to its effect. We are not in God’s substance, but in His action it is present to us, the way someone who touches a hand to your shoulder is in contact with you and is therefore present in that sense, though that presence doesn’t mean you exist in His substance or that it surrounds you. The Eucharist is more than just caused by God the way other things are, though. It is the person of Jesus Christ in his totality. In a way, your question is like walking beside Jesus on his journey through Galilee and asking how God was any more present or differently present in Jesus at that moment and space than anywhere else.