How can the blood be within the bread? I don’t understand. Christ says, “And drink his blood.”
This does not make sense to me in the slightest. The “and” makes all the difference in these things. How can you drink the body? Or eat of the blood?
Jesus presented these elements as different things.
EDIT: I went to the uscatholics page on it, and it makes a little bit more sense; however Jesus was very clear that you should take both.
I don’t understand this only taking one business.
The bread and wine are accidents. The essence of bread is bread and the essence of wine is wine. After the consecration, the essence has changed but not the accident.
CONCOMITANCE. The doctrine that explains why the whole Christ is present under each Eucharistic species. Christ is indivisible, so that his body cannot be separated from his blood, his human soul, his divine nature, and his divine personality. Consequently he is wholly present in the Eucharist. But only the substance of his body is the specific effect of the first consecration at Mass; his blood, soul, divinity, and personality become present by concomitance, i.e., by the inseparable connection that they have with his body. The Church also says the “substance” of Christ’s body because its accidents, though imperceptible, are also present by the same concomitance, not precisely because of the words of consecration.
In the second consecration, the conversion terminates specifically in the presence of the substance of Christ’s blood. But again by concomitance his body and entire self become present as well. (Etym. Latin
concomitantia, accompaniment.)
ESSENCE. What a thing is. The internal principle whereby a thing is what it is and not something else. Sometimes essence is said to be the same thing as being, but being merely, affirming that a thing is, without specifying its perfections. Essence is not quite the same as nature, which adds to essence the notion of activity, i.e., nature is the essence in action. Or again essence is substance, but not all essences are substantial because accidents also have an essence. (Etym. Latin
essentia, essence, being.)
SUBSTANCE. A being whose essence requires that it exist in itself. It is an ens per se (a being by itself) or
ens in se (a being in itself). It is commonly distinguished from an accident, whose essence is to exist in another, that is, in a substance. (Etym. Latin
substantia, that which stands under, principle, foundation.)
**ACCIDENTS. **Things whose essence naturally requires that they exist in another being. Accidents are also called the appearances, species, or properties of a thing. These may be either physical, such as quantity, or modal, such as size or shape. Supernaturally, accidents can exist, in the absence of their natural substance, as happens with the physical properties of bread and wine after Eucharistic consecration.
therealpresence.org/cgi-bin/getdefinition.pl
