Is the Host the body and blood of Christ even at the atomic level?

[Wannano]

"Remember: if you can’t distinguish it as ‘bread’ or ‘wine’ with your naked eye, it isn’t the Real Presence."

Are you saying blind people with poor taste buds can not partake of the Real Presence?

In my church we always use actual bread not a manufactured host. I well remember the first time I saw a host and was confused for I certainly could not distinguish it as bread. Of course I had to taste it too and did not recognize the familiar taste of bread either. Just to clarify…I am not suggesting it is wrong to use a factory made host although I do wonder why bread is not used since the host seems almost “symbolic of bread.”

 

[AlbertDerGrosse]

A communion wafer is “actual bread”. Its only ingredients are wheat flour and water. If anything it’s closer to “actual bread” than the Wonder Bread like, vitamin added, GMO laden “manufactured” stuff most Evangelical churches use, unless they actually have people bringing in home baked bread. Also, most communion wafers are made in convents and monasteries not factories.

 

[Wannano]

A communion wafer is “actual bread”. Its only ingredients are wheat flour and water. If anything it’s closer to “actual bread” than the Wonder Bread like, vitamin added, GMO laden “manufactured” stuff most Evangelical churches use, unless they actually have people bringing in home baked bread. Also, most communion wafers are made in convents and monasteries not factories.

Thank you for your reply. I just assumed they were made in factories. I agree some of today’s bread in the store makes one wonder if it is really bread or not.

Please do not assume that I am trying to be controversial but I have a question. How and why do we know when to take Christ’s words literal or symbolically from the Bible? At the Last Supper He took bread and then said “take eat.” Why does anyone substitute literal bread for a wafer even if the wafer contains only wheat flour and water? I know that most Evangelicals substitute wine with grape juice but I have seen several posters here castigate them for not using actual wine when their own church does not use actual bread from a loaf?

 

[Shakuhachi]

Transubstantiation is used because it is a paradox.

Now we’re talkin’. I can accept paradox. It is like a doorway to the infinite.
And it transcends rational explanation. So why do we pretend we have it figured out with “transubstantiation”?

 

[Muzhik]

Please do not assume that I am trying to be controversial but I have a question. How and why do we know when to take Christ’s words literal or symbolically from the Bible? At the Last Supper He took bread and then said “take eat.” Why does anyone substitute literal bread for a wafer even if the wafer contains only wheat flour and water? I know that most Evangelicals substitute wine with grape juice but I have seen several posters here castigate them for not using actual wine when their own church does not use actual bread from a loaf?

Just to (hopefully) clear things up: What Jesus offered at the Last Supper was not what most Americans (can’t speak for any other part of the world) call “bread.” It was (and is) matzo. It is the same stuff that you would buy from the store that is labeled “Kosher for Pesach” (Passover). This matzo has been made from ONLY wheat flour and water. It can’t have ANY leavening in it, like soda, and must be made from pure WHEAT flour, not corn flour or wheat mixed with barley flour or spelt flour.

When the Israelites were fleeing from Egypt they were commanded to make and eat this type of bread, because it doesn’t require time for the yeast for ferment, causing the bread to rise. In fact, in the commercial matzo bakeries, there will be religious officials walking around with stopwatches to make sure that no more than 18 minutes pass from the time the water hits the flour until the dough is cut and placed in the oven to bake. If it is 18 minutes and one second, the dough is thrown out because there’s too much chance that by then, a stray bit of wild yeast may have landed in the dough and started leavening the dough.

Those groups that use store-bought bread or even crackers are actually practicing a form of corruption, because in biblical terms leaven is used to describe corruption: something that comes from outside the body to change its “substance”.

To answer the question I put in bold type, we know because in the Aramaic that comes down to us, Jesus will use a form of speech that shows it is to be taken literally. In John 6, the Aramaic versions use a word that means not just to eat or consume, but to gnaw at his Flesh because it is real food. Nor did Jesus chase after the disciples who left telling them that he meant it symbolically, nor did He make any such “symbolism” claim later to the disciples who remained to explain it as a parable.

 

[Muzhik]

Next, as a side observation, I recall a question/answer article I read decades ago about diluting holy water. The writer had some reason to wonder about diluting the holy water he/she had brought back from Church; at what point does it stop being “Holy Water”, i.e., when does it lose its sacred nature? The answer was 50%. If you have a cup of Holy Water you can add up to a cup of tap water to it and it still retains its sacred nature; any more than that and the sacred nature is too diluted to allow it to be considered “holy water”.

 

[Wannano]

Wannano:

Please do not assume that I am trying to be controversial but I have a question. How and why do we know when to take Christ’s words literal or symbolically from the Bible? At the Last Supper He took bread and then said “take eat.” Why does anyone substitute literal bread for a wafer even if the wafer contains only wheat flour and water? I know that most Evangelicals substitute wine with grape juice but I have seen several posters here castigate them for not using actual wine when their own church does not use actual bread from a loaf?

Just to (hopefully) clear things up: What Jesus offered at the Last Supper was not what most Americans (can’t speak for any other part of the world) call “bread.” It was (and is) matzo. It is the same stuff that you would buy from the store that is labeled “Kosher for Pesach” (Passover). This matzo has been made from ONLY wheat flour and water. It can’t have ANY leavening in it, like soda, and must be made from pure WHEAT flour, not corn flour or wheat mixed with barley flour or spelt flour.

When the Israelites were fleeing from Egypt they were commanded to make and eat this type of bread, because it doesn’t require time for the yeast for ferment, causing the bread to rise. In fact, in the commercial matzo bakeries, there will be religious officials walking around with stopwatches to make sure that no more than 18 minutes pass from the time the water hits the flour until the dough is cut and placed in the oven to bake. If it is 18 minutes and one second, the dough is thrown out because there’s too much chance that by then, a stray bit of wild yeast may have landed in the dough and started leavening the dough.

Those groups that use store-bought bread or even crackers are actually practicing a form of corruption, because in biblical terms leaven is used to describe corruption: something that comes from outside the body to change its “substance”.

To answer the question I put in bold type, we know because in the Aramaic that comes down to us, Jesus will use a form of speech that shows it is to be taken literally. In John 6, the Aramaic versions use a word that means not just to eat or consume, but to gnaw at his Flesh because it is real food. Nor did Jesus chase after the disciples who left telling them that he meant it symbolically, nor did He make any such “symbolism” claim later to the disciples who remained to explain it as a parable.

That puts it in perspective, thank you.

 

[Muzhik]

In regards to the arguments over “substance”, to my Protestant friends I use the game of placing something in their hands and they have to tell me what it is with their eyes closed. I’ll put in a pen and when they say, “It’s a pen”, I ask the following questions:
The pen has blue ink. If it had black in would it still be a pen?
What if the pen casing was metal, not plastic?
What if it had a fuzzy green coating?
What if it was one of those “flexy pens” that you can bend, is that still a pen?

The answer is that yes, these are all pens. Despite the differences, they all contain a “pen-ness” that we recognize. That “pen-ness” is the pen’s substance. In Transubstantiation, the “bread-ness” gets replaced with the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity – the substance – of Jesus.

 

[Muzhik]

Fascinating question! So, I’m thinking that if each wafer has 100% of the essence of body, soul and divinity of Christ; then each crumb would have 100% of the essence of the body, soul and divinity of Christ. The inference, then seems to be that each election, neutron and proton would also have 100% of the essence of the body, soul and divinity of Christ. That is, yes, even at the atomic level.

I’m quoting this reply from the beginning of the discussion to mention something that rarely gets discussed. I ran across it in an article from our local Perpetual Adoration chapel. It’s the fact that in pregnancy, the mother’s blood and (to a smaller amount) the baby’s blood intermix. This is necessary so that the mother can provide antibodies to protect the child from illnesses for the first few months after birth. The thing is, the mother’s blood stays with and becomes part of the child’s blood throughout that child’s life. This means that when we drink the Blood of Christ, we also, in some very small way, are drinking the blood of Mary. (This is not to say that Mary’s blood was shed for our salvation as Jesus’s blood was, only that as the Mother of Jesus she had a closer connection to His suffering than many consider.)

Considering that the child is created from the body and blood of the mother, does this not argue for the Immaculate Conception? For your or me, our bodies were built from our mother’s corrupted flesh. If Jesus was so conceived and grown as any human child, and if He was sinless (i.e., without corruption), doesn’t that mean that the materials used to grow His Body would likewise have to be sinless, without corruption?

 

[Roguish]

Clark, the RCC teaching is one of Real Presence, not physical presence. Read my post here.

 

[Gorgias]

I do wonder why bread is not used since the host seems almost “symbolic of bread.”

One word: crumbs.