—> Transubstantiation:
We Are the Body Broken
Roman Catholic Tradition
City of Perpetual Lights receives many visitors from the Roman Catholic tradition — especially investigating the friendly St. Thomas More parish in Henderson, NV. It is my joy to share with them and all my readership an ekklesial perspective on the miracle of transubstantiation. I believe that by interpreting the mass through a lens of how God sees the church, instead of how he sees materiality, the traditional mass actually becomes more understandable to those trained in a modern scientific worldview. Plus, I believe this perspective reminds the Church of its relational obligation to perpetually seek out obedient transformation.
The theology of transubstantiation espouses that the bread and the wine of the Lord’s Supper (referred to more frequently in the Roman Catholic church as the Eucharist) become the actual Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. By faith, the priest prays for the transformation of these simple elements into the actual body and blood of Jesus himself, and by faith the congregation respects the pieces of bread (the host) and the cup of wine as a physical manifestation of Christ’s physical presence. Once they have been blessed in this way, these elements never cease to be His Body and His blood. This belief provides the essential validation for the practice of Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration.
In a Roman Catholic mass, when the Bread is broken and the Wine is poured, Christ’s sacrifice is perpetuated. Because the bread is His Body and the Wine is His Blood, breaking that bread and pouring that wine is like killing Him all over again. In the mass, our responsibility for Christ’s death is powerfully exemplified day after day, week after week, and year after year. It’s no coincidence that confession, the prayer for intercession, and the passing of the peace are an integral part of the service. Each practice helps the parishioner wrestle through and assuage the guilt of our sin — sin that from the Roman Catholic mindset is responsible time and time again for the death of our Savior.
History of Disbelief
Transubstantiation was an almost universally accepted understanding of the Lord’s Supper until the trinitarian advent of the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, and Scientific Revolution. At this time, leaders of the Reformation began to question the validity of certain traditional teachings, and they used scriptural hermeneutics and scientific discovery to support their disagreement. Church officials countered this movement with a Counter-Reformation that insisted on adherence to tradition regardless of the material evidence.
The Eucharist became a primary point of contention between the Reformation and Counter-Reformation camps. Reformers would say that Christ’s assertion “This is my Body… This is my Blood” was a symbolic metaphor, and the bread never actually became the Body and the Blood of Christ. Eventually science was used to show that the miraculous bread to wine alchemy never occurred (I’m not sure how many people had to regurgitate the Lord’s Supper to prove this point, but it saddens me that this distraction probably left them more spiritually hungry and angry than filled with Christ’s peace). In response Roman Catholic church officials insisted that the elements become the Body and Blood of Christ from the moment of their priestly blessing. I fear that this has misled people to believe the priest has a special benediction of power instead of a special impartation of responsibility — a distraction from the Truth regarding the priesthood of all believers. Perhaps, reconciliation between Reformer and Counter-Reformer would have been found by focusing on the personal and relational transformation of the Eucharist instead of the physical, material one.
Ambiguity of Timeless
Roman Catholic doctrine says that Christ is sacrificed in the Mass for the forgiveness of sin, but scripture says that the Christ died once and for all for the forgiveness of sin. I believe these two are not so contradictory once we begin to understand history from both a linear and cyclical perspective. From a perspective of a linear space-time, Christ’s entrance into the world is a one time occurance similar to flipping a light-switch. One second their was darkness, the next there was light. This particular nature of Christ’s sacrifice is evident to anyone who reads John 1 in the context of the Synoptic Gospels: the light has come to the darkness but the darkness has not understood it.
The cyclical model of history lends itself more to string theory than light switches. This understanding sees Christ’s work as being an anticipated (and therein substantiated) reality long before the first Christmas or the first Easter. Like the sound waves that emanate from the plucking of a guitar string, the light of Christ reverberates throughout the cosmos bouncing off everything with a soul and reflecting back on itself in ways that both amplify and diminish our ability to see His light. After a while of intensely studying the light, we begin to understand that even if we cannot predict its next precise move, the patterns it establishes still make sense, so we live our lives within the basic patterns of frequency — understanding that our feeble conception of what Light is does not prohibit us from gratefully living in the fullness of its benefits.
From the cyclical perspective, the sacrifice of Christ was not in His death but in the total giving up of Himself to the Father and to His Bride. The evidence of this sacrifice was demonstrated most clearly on the cross, so that no man is without excuse. Still, the total, sacrificial offering of Christ to us persists today, and just as it began before the creation so also will it last beyond the end of time. A reading of John 1 in the context of Genesis and Revelation (both written with cyclical narrative elements) looks something like: the light has come into the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it. Still, the comes into the darkness, but the darkness does not understand it. Even still, the light will come into the darkness, and the darkness will understand it.
Asserted in a simple thesis: Reformed theological assertions rest in a linear logic of cause and effect, while Catholic theology has developed non-linear theological assertions based on the cyclical manifestations of perpetuated action. Like the dual particle and wave nature of light, God’s work throughout time shows both particularity and continuity. Christ’s sacrifice was epitomized within his death and each manifestation of Christian sacrifice bears testimony to that event, but we are still called to join Christ’s sacrifice today — a call that hints that the loving sacrifice manifest in the cross is still present in this world, especially when we live as One in Spirit, as a people of One Body.
We Are the Body
I recently had a conversation with my friend Michael about the Eucharist and transubstantiation. He comes from an Evangelical background and has traditionally held only a memorialist view. He and I attend the same church, but have slightly different understandings regarding the Eucharist. I would like to explain transubstantiation here much like I did when I spoke with Michael.
The miracle of the Eucharist occurs first in the people, and then in the elements. Simultaneous with the invitation for us to eat His bread and drink of His cup is an invitation to die to self as both individuals and a congregation. The enacted faith of Communion is not that we believe He will transform the food into Christ, it is that we come together hoping that He will transform us into the Body and Blood of Christ. When God miraculously transforms us into His Body, then the transubstantiation of the bread and the wine is natural — we just have to consume it.
For my fellow crazy philosophers, consider this… We are not what we eat, but what we eat becomes part of who we are. Thus, the food that we (as subject) choose to ingest is actually us (as object) in a pre-incarnate form. When we actually take in the food, it moves from being objective us and it transforms into who we are. We must first receive the miracle before it will transform us. When this miracle occurs and we have come together as not as Christians but instead as the Body of Christ, then whatever food they eat, drink they swallow, or tool they use is set apart as a holy extension of the Body of Christ.
The Tragedy
If the miracle of transubstantiation is the ekklesial transfiguration into the Bride of Christ, then the historical debate over the material transubstantiation may be an ironic tragedy. The divided nature of the institutional church is in direct opposition to the work God desires to do within us through Eucharistic Communion.
Yet, in a majestic irony, I believe the divisions between denominations, particularly divisions regarding the Eucharist, begin to be mended not within academic discourse, but around the Communion Table. The Lord’s Table of Eucharistic Communion is a sphere where each in active faith come together and eat as One Body crying out to the Father “MAKE US WHOLE!”
Hospitality without love is empty, and love without the faith-filled hope of unity in His Spirit is not love. We must humbly invite each other to the Table in hopeful longing that one day soon we might share at the same Table. We must offer ourselves to God and to others to be broken and poured out for their sake. Then, we will see fewer and fewer Christians suffer from the need-less pain of church divisions.
In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not! For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.
So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for each other. If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you meet together it may not result in judgment.
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