Orthodox and Roman Catholics believe that the bread and wine are actually transformed objectively (“really”) into the body and blood of Christ, and that, therefore, it is theologically incorrect to refer to them, after consecration, just as bread and wine or even just as holy bread and wine. The consecrated elements retain the forms of bread and wine, but are in reality the actual body and blood of Christ.
The words of the Ethiopic liturgy are representative of the faith of Oriental Orthodoxy: “I believe, I believe, I believe and profess to the last breath that this is the body and the blood of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, which he took from our Lady, the holy and immaculate Virgin Mary, the Mother of God.”
The Eastern Orthodox Church Synod of Jerusalem declared: “We believe the Lord Jesus Christ to be present, not typically, nor figuratively, nor by superabundant grace, as in the other Mysteries, … but truly and really, so that after the consecration of the bread and of the wine, the bread is transmuted, transubstantiated, converted and transformed into the true Body Itself of the Lord, Which was born in Bethlehem of the ever-Virgin Mary, was baptised in the Jordan, suffered, was buried, rose again, was received up, sitteth at the right hand of the God and Father, and is to come again in the clouds of Heaven; and the wine is converted and transubstantiated into the true Blood Itself of the Lord, Which as He hung upon the Cross, was poured out for the life of the world.”
Similarly the Western Roman Catholic Church greets what it sees as really in the Eucharist with the words of a Latin hymn of which a literal translation is: “Hail, true body, born of Mary Virgin, and which truly suffered and was immolated on the cross for mankind!”
None of these Churches see what is really in the Eucharist as a corpse and mere blood, but as the whole Christ, body and blood, soul and divinity; nor do they see the persisting outward appearances of bread and wine as a mere illusion. This actual transformation, change or conversion of the reality, while the appearances remain unaltered – not the process or manner by which the transformation comes about, since all agree that this occurs “in a way surpassing understanding” – has been called transubstantiation or, in Greek, μετουσίωσις (metousiosis).
In the view of these Churches, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is of an order different from the presence of Christ in the other sacraments: in the other sacraments he is present by his power rather than by the reality of his body and blood, the basis of the expression “Real Presence”. Accordingly, they consider that those who hold that, in objective reality, the elements of the Eucharist remain unchanged believe not in the Real Presence of Christ in this particular sacrament, but in a presence that is merely personal to the communicant, whatever name (pneumatic, anamnetical, etc.) is used to describe it.