S1E10: The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist (Catholic or Protestant: What's the Difference?)

For Episodes 2-10 we'll be diving into the 9 key differences between Catholicism and Protestantism in a series called Catholic or Protestant: What's the Difference?

In today's episode we'll be talking about how Jesus Christ is really present - body, blood, soul, and divinity - in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. I'll explain the term 'transubstantiation,' as well as the principles of accident vs. substance. We'll explore what we really mean when we say "you are what you eat," as well as what Eucharistic Adoration actually is. Lastly, we'll talk a bit about why there is a one hour fast before communion, and what we're really asking God for in one part of The Lord's Prayer.

Bible Passages Quoted:
-John 6:29-69
-Galatians 2:20

Resources:
Substance and Accidents (Aquinas 101) | The Thomistic Institute
Transubstantiation (Aquinas 101) | The Thomistic Institute
Real Presence | Catholic Central
Eucharist 101 | Catholic Central
What Really Happens in Eucharistic Adoration | Fr. Mike Schmitz
What the Early Church Believed: The Real Presence | Catholic Answers
Is the Eucharist a Symbol, or Is It Real? | Catholic Answers
Who Can Receive Holy Communion? | Catholic Answers

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Transcript

Hi, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Catholicism 101, Forever Learning and Living the Faith.  Today, we are concluding our July series, Catholic or Protestant, What's the Difference? with the source and summit of our Catholic faith, which is The Eucharist the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist now to get us started I am going to read the core of the church's teaching on the Eucharist in Scripture, and that's John chapter 6  And I'm just gonna read I'm gonna read verses 29 to 69  

Jesus answered and said to them. 

This is the work of God that you believe in the one he sent  So they said to him what sign can you do? That we may see and believe in you.  What can you do?  Our ancestors ate manna in the desert. As it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.  So Jesus said to them,  Amen, amen, I say to you. It was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven.

My Father gives you the true bread from heaven.  For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.  So they said to him, Sir, give us this bread always.  Jesus said to them,  I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst. 

But I told you that although you have seen me. You do not believe  everything that the father gives me will come to me and I will not reject anyone who comes to me  Because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me and this is the will Of the one who sent me that I should not lose anything of what he gave me But that I should raise it out in the last day  for this is the will of my father That everyone who sees a son and believes in him may have eternal life and I shall raise him on the last day  The Jews murmured about him, because he said, I am the bread that came down from heaven. 

And they said, Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? Then how can he say, I have come down from heaven?  Jesus answered and said to them, Stop murmuring among yourselves.  No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day. 

It is written in the Prophets, They shall all be taught by God.  Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from Him comes to me.  Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God. He has seen the Father.  Amen, amen, I say to you. Whoever believes has eternal life.  I am the bread of life. 

Your ancestors ate manna in the desert, but they died.  This is the bread that comes down from Heaven, so that one may eat it and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. And the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.  The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? 

Jesus said to them,  Amen, Amen, I say to you, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you You do not have life within you.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.  For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 

Just as the living Father sent me, and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.  This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.  These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. 

Then many of his disciples who were listening said, this saying is hard, who can accept it?  Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, does this shock you?  What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?  It is the Spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail.

The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life,  but there are some of you who do not believe.  Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray Him.  And He said, For this reason I have told you that no one can come to Me unless it is granted him by My Father. 

As a result of this, many of His disciples returned to their former way of life. 

Jesus then said to the twelve,  Do you also want to leave?  Simon Peter answered him,  Master, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.  We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.  So as we read and listen to what's known as the Bread of Life Discourse in John chapter 6 we see, especially towards the end and even in the beginning people are scandalized.

And because they're so scandalized, they leave him.  And he lets them. Jesus doesn't say or he doesn't try to correct some misunderstanding because there's not a misunderstanding to correct. He meant what he said  and we know he means what he says because he is so willing and accepting of the fact that he's going to lose followers over this.

As it says in verse 66, as a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.  And Jesus lets it happen and he turns to the 12 apostles and he's like, do you also want to leave? But he means what he says. He lets them leave.  He lets them leave. He wouldn't let them leave, again, if it was a misunderstanding.

He would only let them leave if they could not accept the truth. And that's exactly what we have here.  And then, the other part of this is Peter's trust there at the end. He has faith and he doesn't quite understand what he believes. He wants to but he, he, he has faith.  He doesn't say, like, I have to understand so that I can have faith.

But I have faith and I will trust that you will lead me to understanding.  That, my friends,  is our core belief of the Eucharist.  So we believe and we know that Jesus Christ is fully present, body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist, in the bread and wine. And we're going to get into a little bit about like how we understand this as far as we can get and understanding it. 

And so just a heads up, it's going to involve a little bit of philosophy. Okay. We're going to, going to use some fancy words here, like transubstantiation. And that is.  Understanding transubstantiation means we have to look at some philosophical terms like substance and accident. So if you don't understand right away what I'm about to say, That's okay.

It's, it's, it's dense stuff. And I'm going to explain it as best and as simply as I can. But  I encourage you not to get frustrated right away, especially if you don't understand it, that's okay. But I really encourage you to put your feet in Peter's shoes, who also didn't understand, he did not have the words transubstantiation,  substance, or accident but he trusted the Lord and took him at his word.

So I would encourage you to try and stay in that posture, especially If this seems a little overwhelming, but I do want to encourage you to give it a shot and try to understand it. And I'm going to have a couple extra resources to help you understand it beyond my own explanation.  So  in philosophy, there is substance and there is accident.

Okay. And these are different than what we would typically think. So I'm going to define these terms for you in, in, in a very easy way. So substance is the essence of the thing itself. 

I said that was going to be simple and easy and it is simple.  Just stick with me. I swear. Okay. Okay. Okay, an example might help. So in the, the substance, the essence of the thing itself a chair.  A chair. A chair is made of wood. It may be brown. It may be black. It may be white. It may be actually made of metal.

It may, it could be made of all these different things. It could have all these qualities about it, but what it is in itself is a chair. Okay,  now accident. An accident is a property or quality of that thing. It's not something that happens by mistake like we would typically understand an accident to be.

This is an accident in philosophical terms. So it is the property or quality of the thing. So that we have a chair  and an accident of a chair might be that it is made of wood or that it's made of metal. That it's brown, black, white, whatever it may be.  Maybe that it's a light chair. Maybe it's a heavy chair.

All of these things are properties or qualities of the chair, which would make them an accident. Not that they're a mistake, but just a property or quality, okay?  In every instance except for the Eucharist, the accidents of something clearly reflect the substance of what that thing is. So for example, an apple pie. 

Apple pie looks like apple pie. It smells like apple pie. It feels like apple pie. And thank the Lord it tastes like apple pie. So therefore, that leads us to logically conclude that because all of these accidents line up and tell us that it's apple pie, that it is actually apple pie. The accidents align with the substance. 

Now,  hold on to your horses friends, because in the Eucharist,  a process called transubstantiation  It occurs where the accidents of the bread and wine remain the same,  but the substance, the essence of what it is, changes into Jesus Christ.  Now, I'm going to break down the words transubstantiation  for you.

So, tran is change, substant is substance, and iation is process. So, when we break down the word, it is literally the process by which the substance changes.  So remember, apple pie looks like, smells like, feels like, tastes like apple pie, therefore it is apple pie.  In the Eucharist, it looks like, smells like, tastes like, feels like bread and wine. 

But,  after the priest has said the words of institution and the words of consecration,  it actually is the true presence of Jesus Christ.  This, my friends is absolutely mind boggling.  But again,  we see that Jesus is willing  to put everything on the line for this. He's willing to lose everyone  because this is true. 

He doesn't back down. He doesn't try to correct any misunderstanding. No, he knows that we've heard what he said and we're like, what?  But again, I encourage us to all take that posture of Peter and be like, Lord, I don't get it.  But you are the Holy One. You have the words of eternal life.  what you say is true, even if I don't understand it or understand how. 

So don't stress if all this talk about substance and accident doesn't really make sense to you right now. Like I said, I actually have a couple videos in the resources from the Thomistic Institute's basic introduction of this concept of substance and accident and especially in reference to transubstantiation.

So I, I really hope you'll check those out because they should help a bit more, especially if you're more of a visual learner. And then there's also another video from Catholic Central  that includes a simple explanation of substance and accident. And they give a couple they give a couple examples.

So it's really the first three videos I have listed in the resources. The first two from the Thomistic Institute, and then that third one from Catholic Central. Those should be very helpful.  But remember, as you're trying to grasp an understanding of this It is a great mystery. There is supposed to be an element of it that is mysterious that we don't get to understand in this life.

And that's okay. We don't have to understand how it all works. But like I said, again, we're called to follow Peter's example and allow faith to come first and believe the words of Christ because he is trustworthy. Now I'm going to touch real quick on  That we do believe that we have the real presence and it's four parts.

The body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. So we, when we receive the Eucharist, we receive Jesus Christ in his full humanity and his full divinity.  Now that Catholic central video, those actually the two Catholic central videos I have, there's a fourth one listed. That are really helpful with this.

And as I said, they go into that simple explanation with examples of substance and accident. And then that fourth video I have listed, which is the second one from Catholic Central. It goes into these intentional parallels between the Passover meal and the Eucharist. So the Exodus and the Eucharist.

And it's, it's really cool. I really would encourage you all to check those out because I'm not going to go over the parallels between the Passover and the Eucharist in this episode. I did not denote time to that, but they are important. So I would really encourage you to check out that fourth video listed in the resources and the description it's called Eucharist 101. 

Believing in the real presence of Jesus Christ. Fully present, full humanity. Full divinity. In the Eucharist, we are asked to show reverence because  the Lord is truly present right in front of us and he is coming into us and he wants us to receive him as he receives us. So we are asked to show reverence and one way the bishops ask us to do this is to make a profound bow.

before we receive Jesus in communion. And then another way to cultivate and show the Lord a deep reverence and belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is most of us will receive communion on the hand. So something that I really suggest and ask you to consider is to maybe check your hand after you receive the Eucharist before you, you know, fold your hands or put your hands at your side or whatever, look at your hand before you move it down.

For any visible fragments of the Eucharist left after you've consumed the host because sometimes you'll find that there is a visible fragment. And if we believe that Jesus Christ is truly present in the Eucharist we don't want any part of him to fall to the floor.  So if there is anything visible consume it in order to keep the Lord from falling to the floor.

So a lot of people, you'll sometimes see people lick their hand. Sometimes you'll see people, people lick their finger and then like touch their hand and then lick their finger again. So whatever, whatever you need to do. But I would encourage you to just check your hand  and see if the Lord is present. 

And if he is,  consume him.  Now, I want to get into something really, really cool. Okay? That I have been able to learn during my graduate studies online through Franciscan. And that is this whole process, this whole concept this whole truth and reality of divinization by digestion. And it was St.

Justin Martyr who brought this up, really.  And St. Justin Martyr, may I remind you he's one of our earliest, earliest church fathers, and he lived in the year 100, 100 to 165 AD. So he was taught by the disciples of the apostles. I think he has like a direct link to John the evangelist, which is really cool.

But I actually wrote a paper on this.  So this is, this is something that's really cool to me and I love to share it. But when we eat. The food that we eat goes through a process of digestion and metabolism.  It's a process that involves a total change in the elements undergoing the process as they become part of the person who consumed them. 

So in speaking in our consumption of the Eucharist, St. Justin Martyr flips this whole concept and reality of metabolism on its head.  So when we consume the Eucharist, rather than Jesus Christ becoming part of who we are, it is actually us who are becoming part of Him. This is divinization by digestion.

Again, rather than, you know, Jesus breaking down within us though there is that reality that happens with the accidents, but rather than like the substance, rather than Jesus himself breaking down and becoming part of us, it is actually us. who becomes part of him by our consumption of him. And we see this in Galatians chapter 2 verse 20.

It's a good support of it. St. Paul says, yet I live no longer I, but Christ who lives in me.  So it really gives a deeper concrete meaning to the phrase, you are what you eat.  So quite literally, we become what we eat. We become dividend, dividend, divididized. Hello, we become divididized.  So the last thing I'm going to talk about is Eucharistic Adoration.

But before I get into that, I want to give you two fun facts. Okay. So the first one is that as Catholics, we practice the one hour fast before communion where we don't eat or drink anything including chewing gum  and except for water, we do, we can have water  or take medicine or whatever it may be, but We don't eat or drink anything for an hour before receiving communion because that hunger it is supposed to be a sacramental reminder that our actual experience of hunger is built in us to be a reminder that what we truly long for and what we truly are hungry for is Christ himself.

So that one hour fast is very important and it reminds us  That we're actually like, we're not hungry for Cracker Barrel, though. Like our, our bodies really do probably are hungry. But what that's meant to be is a reminder that we are truly hungry for Christ himself.  And then the second fun fact I have for you is we all know the, our father,  there's a petition and the, our father that says, give us this day, our daily bread  and give us this day, our daily bread, that's actually a petition. 

That the Lord continues to provide himself to us in the Eucharist. Yes. It also includes like Lord, give us what we need each and every day, but at the root core of that, like at the, at the at the core of that is a petition that the Lord will continue to provide himself, body, blood, soul, and divinity and the living bread that came down from heaven, give us this day, our daily bread.

So those are a couple of really beautiful, fun facts that I wanted to share. But now let's get into Eucharistic adoration. So what we typically see when we go to adoration is this like sunbeam looking thing,  and that is called a monstrance  and what is inside the monstrance is the host and the host.

The, the Eucharist is exposed and placed inside a Luna, which is this little glass compartment that keeps the Eucharist inside the monstrance. And again, the monstrance is that vessel that looks like a sunbeam. And what all of this is for is to draw attention to the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. 

Now, being in Eucharistic adoration is literally being with the Lord face to face.  Mother Teresa is known for saying, whenever they asked her, like, What do you do in adoration? Because she was in there for at least an hour a day. Like, what do you do? And she was like, I look at him and he looks at me. And we can think back to Moses being in the tent with the Lord.

And they were like, they spoke face to face. And he would come out glowing. And they would, like, have to veil his face because he was glowing. So I call that sunbathing, not S U N bathing, but S O N bathing. And so, because as we spend time with the Lord face to face he conforms us to be more and more like him.

And while we may not always like physically  radiate light from the pores of our face we will without a doubt become more peaceful, more joyful people.  Eucharistic adoration.  really brings rest and peace to your spirit. And though it may not be restful and peaceful every single time, you know, you may be having some like spiritual battle but know that time in the presence of Christ is never wasted. 

Time in the presence of Christ is never wasted.  It only conforms us to him whether or not we realize it at the time.  And I have a friend who is now a nun in Spain. Oh, I miss her. We used to work at camp, at a camp together. And she was like, she would ponder, she reminds me of Mary. She would ponder things for so long.

And then she would just kind of say them one day and they'd be so profound. And I just kind of looked at her and I was like, what the heck, Robin? But so she once said to me that the God of the universe so desires to become a small, fragile little piece of bread. And sit in a tabernacle all day because there's a chance that you just might come and see him, even if it's just for a little bit. 

And just a reminder that the tabernacle the word tabernacle actually means dwelling place. So it's this safe furnishing that stays locked for the Eucharist to remain in as the heart of the church. And when the priest needs to give communion to the home bound or to the sick or take it to the hospital or whatever it may be, that is a place for it to be stored safe and secure. 

All that to say he does all of this. He sits in a tabernacle all day. He becomes a fragile piece of bread. He becomes wine. He  becomes humble  and not only became human, but he can't becomes bread and wine  and submits himself  to fragile humanity and to the hands of humans  all because he wants to be close to us  and he wants us to be part of him and he wants us to receive him. 

So draw near to him.  Draw near to him because he is always chasing you.  And I want to end with this beautiful quote from Teresa of Avila that really just encapsulates  what it means  to go forth because the mass has ended or to go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your lives at the end of mass, because we've all just received communion.

We're all walking tabernacles.  Quite honestly, we're all walking Tabernacles leaving that church,  and this is what Teresa of Avila has to say to us.  Christ has no body now, but yours.  No hands, no feet on earth but yours.  Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world.  Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. 

Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.  Yours are the hands, yours are the feet.  Yours are the eyes.  You are his body.  Christ has no body now on earth, but yours.