tuopaolo:
The term “physical reality” has been used by the magisterium so I think it is right to say that Christ is physically present.
THE REAL PRESENCE IS A *PHYSICAL *PRESENCE by Fr Regis Scanlon, OFM Cap, spiritual director for the Missionaries of Charity founded by Blessed Teresa of Calcutta
newoxfordreview.org/2002/feb02/regisscanlon.html
In answer to the original post, I don’t know but I don’t think Jesus physically healed every person who came to him.
When we receive Jesus Christ in Holy Communion we actually receive the whole Christ, humanity and divinity. The substance of the bread and wine change. What was bread and what was wine no longer exist. However the appearances remain. Remember, we are not cannibals. We don’t metabolize the flesh of Christ. * Sacramental presence* is more accurate than
physical presence.
From Envoy July/August 2000:
(
www.envoymagazine.com/backissues/4.4/letters.htm)
In her letter “Form over Substance?”, Mrs. Deborah Cochran expresses understandable concern and confusion over Fr. Brian Wilson’s statement that the bread and wine really and sacramentally “but not physically” become the Body and Blood of Christ. At first, it may sound like a denial of the Real Presence. However, Fr. Wilson is technically correct.
This traditional formulation of doctrine goes back at least to St. Thomas Aquinas. The term “physically” (Gk. phusike) is used here in its strict philosophical sense to mean “in a natural way or manner.” Neither the Body nor the Blood of Christ come to be at the consecration in the way in which flesh and blood ordinarily come to be by any natural cause or process. They come to be by the spoken words of the priest, that is, sacramentally, not physically. Even at the Last Supper, Our Lord’s Body and Blood were physically present in Him, but not physically present in the bread and wine He consecrated, at least not in the same sense.
Once the Body and Blood come to be in this sacramental, non-physical way, they are present under the accidents of bread and wine in a real, true and substantial way.
Kevin G. Long, Director
Leonine Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies
Arlington, VA
Mysterium Fidei No 46:
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.
Paul VI points to a physical “reality” (his quotes), not a physical presence. The Magisterial quote was
physical “reality” * not physical reality. Completing the quote from the Fr. Regis link that you referenced makes this clear. * Physical presence conveys the notion that something is there present in space and time.
