The Bible says: This is my body…this is my blood and to eat and drink.
Why is it just the body that is acceptable and not having to drink the wine as well? I’ve been told that just the host is complete.
I’m very confused over this and can’t seem to get an answer that I can understand.
I will be joining the Church on Easter Vigil, yay, and would really appreciate a finer understanding of the Eucharist.
It’s because Jesus has already died, and now has a glorified body.
When it comes to folks like us, you can seperate us into different parts. For example, if you wanted to, you could rip off my arm. Or, you could chop off my feet, or drill a hole in me and let all the blood drain out.
That’s part of what is called having a corruptible body. Such a body is subject to things like physical violence and death. This comes to full effect when we die and our souls are separated from our bodies and then our bodies fall apart into dust. That’s what death is: the seperation of the soul from the body.
However, Jesus has already died. He already suffered His blood pouring out through His wounds and soul separating His body at the moment of death. He is not subject to that anymore, and He has been given a glorified, incorruptible body. His body is no longer subject to physical violence and things like that.
What that means is that anywhere His body is, His blood, soul, and His Divinity are there as well. You can’t separate parts of Him from Him anymore, because He’s been lifted above being subject to that - to corruptibility, as it is called. Anywhere there is even a part of Him, all of Him is there. So, when a host is broken in half, both halves contain the fullness of His body. This has been exhibited in miracles like the
one at Lanciano, where a host turned into heart muscle. When scientists cut some pieces of it off to weigh them, they found that piece A weighed the same as piece B, and piece B the same as piece C, even though they were different sizes. In fact, piece A and C together weighed the same as piece B, and piece A, B, and C together weighed the same as piece A alone, and all sorts of cool things like that!
How this works, we can’t really wrap our minds around entirely. How can a physical thing not be subject to having part broken off of it? How can breaking off piece make the person be in two paces at once? A glorified body belongs to the realm of Heaven, not the realm of the created earth, and so how this works is beyond our three dimensional understanding.
What we
do know is that Christ’s body is no longer corruptible, so to receive a piece of His body is to receive all of His body, blood, soul, and Divinity.
Peace and God bles s
