What about the Eucharist, once consumed?

[ChrisB176]

I was asked this most disturbing question by a rabidly anti Catholic Evangelical: “Why would Jesus have given us His precious body to consume if it would just be expelled from the body a little while later as ‘waste’?” Does the Church have any official teaching in reference to what happens to the Eucharist once consumed? Thanks and God bless!

 

[Fr.Vincent_Serpa]

Hi,

When the species of bread and wine lose their distinctive appearances, they no longer are the Eucharist. So after the appearances of bread and wine are changed by the stomach fluids, the body no longer houses the Eucharist. But for the time that the body does house the real Presence of Christ within us, we are in the holiest of communion with Him. This, by the way, was His idea. He desires such union with us—despite the naysayers of the time, as well as those of today.

Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.