On the Real Presence in the Eucharistic Celebration

I write this as an excerpt from a larger document I have worked on to answer Protestant Christian objections to Catholic positions. This is one portion of responses I've written, and is part of a series I will continue to write to share my thoughts on how to have an educated discussion with those who are opposed to the Catholic positions of faith. Likely I will look back on this years later and wish I had done things differently, but rather than allowing this to forever remain in the drafts I will share it and allow myself the chance to learn from mistakes, rather than hid myself from making any mistakes at all, which in itself is a mistake.

To note this one more time and be more explicit about it, this is a document to help generally in response to Protestant arguments against the Eucharist. This is not for debating on how the Eucharist should be presented as you'll find in discussions with Eastern Orthodox, this is not for proving the Real Presence to non-Christians. This is a blanket document for responding to the common Protestant arguments using Scripture and the first Christians as evidence for the Catholic position.

Introduction

Protestants will often vary on their approach or belief on communion, something which Catholics call the Eucharist. Some Protestant groups have regular Communion services like the Lutherans and the Anglicans, some have monthly communion in the church, most have communion just once a year before Easter to commemorate when Christ celebrated the Last Supper. The Protestant belief on what the communion varies, where some believe in Transubstantiation, others in Consubstantiation, others that it is merely a symbol and has no significance beyond that. We will in some way address each of these in this document.

Before going into the Scripture and the quotations from the early Church I think it prudent that each of these perspectives on communion are explained, so that there is no confusion when explaining the Catholic perspective. Following is a brief summary of each view of how we view the food and drink in the Lord's Supper.

Firstly is the “it’s a symbol” perspective. In Scripture at the Last Supper Christ tells His disciples to “do this in remembrance of me” when He is breaking the bread and giving them the wine. The view here is that when Christ said the word “remembrance” He meant that we were supposed to imitate what He was doing that evening. This perspective believes that the other views on the Last Supper are taking things too far, and that others are reading too much into what Christ meant that night or are implying something that simply isn’t there.

The next perspective is Consubstantiation. This belief can be viewed in a spectrum, where the exact meaning of the Eucharist may differ from one denomination of Protestantism to the next. But, generally the understanding is that Christ’s presence enters and fills the bread and wine, meaning that the communion (now sometimes known to them as the Eucharist) is Christ himself. This belief is that when one eats the bread and drinks the wine that they are consuming Christ and really participating in the Last Supper. This belief usually, but not always, is followed with the idea that once the service ends that the presence of Christ in the bread and wine is withdrawn/removed/reverted to its original state and that the items are once again bread and wine, no longer the Eucharist with Christ’s presence in it. I say usually, but some believe the presence of Christ will remain in the communion, but rarely if ever do they say that the presence of God in the items of communion is so fully there that it warrants Adoration as the Roman Catholics practice it.

Finally, the Transubstantiation view. This belief is pretty uniform for those who adhere to it, one which is held by some Anglicans, the Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, the Copts, and the other ancient Apostolic Churches. The belief held by these Christians is that when Christ said “this is my body” that He really meant that this is His body, they take Him literally in that passage. Their belief is that although the bread and wine remain looking like it is the bread and wine, the substance of it is now transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ. This belief says that once the bread and wine transforms into His body and blood that these items remain changed after the service concludes, unlike some of those who believe in Consubstantiation.

Another thing before going on, there are many nuanced views that some Protestants will have regarding communion, so I do not think I will address each and every one of them here of course. Some may believe in a proto-Transubstantiation where the bread and wine does become the body and blood of Christ, but similar to Consubstantiation it un-becomes Christ once the service is finished. Or, some believe that at the Last Supper either Transubstantiation or Consubstantiation did occur, but that is the only time it occurred and so we symbolically carry on the practice going forward. And then there are other nuanced views of communion, but we haven’t the time to address them all here, we can only briefly summarize some.

Now, to expound more on the Catholic view. We Catholics get our beliefs from Scripture, and have had these beliefs handed down from the Apostles to their successors. There is of course evidence of the Catholic view of the Eucharist in Scripture which we will go into in a moment, but we are Catholic and we do not need to solely rely on the writings of the Apostles, we can lean on the things which they taught and were not written down but handed onto their disciples, and the disciples of those disciples. We Catholics maintain the same beliefs of the first Christians, as you'll see in a moment, and we take pride in that. We are unchanging in our beliefs, though exactly how things are practiced may shift. And so the way we reverence the Eucharist is different from how it was at the beginning, but we still maintain the same beliefs as the Fathers. I’ve summarized the general ideas of the different views held regarding communion, but now to show where Catholics get their concept of Transubstantiation from.

Scripture

John 6, "my flesh is true food":

50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’ 52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ 53 So Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.’

Following this passage in Scripture you see that Christ lost many of His followers because they could not handle His teaching that “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood” will enter Heaven, and those who do not eat of it will not have a place in the Kingdom. In the passage it is often assumed that because He turned to the Twelve that they were all that was left, so His teaching drove away all His followers except for His students - perhaps it was only the twelve, perhaps there were still a few that more that remained, but it is clear that Christ lost most of His followers from this teaching. If this were simply a metaphor, that when Christ says “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life” and “for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” and “so whoever eats me will live because of me” He would have added clarity in order to not scare away all those listening to Him.

Something that many modern readers miss is how scandalous it was for Jesus to tell those presence to not only eat of His flesh - cannibalism being a bad thing - but to drink of His blood. Drinking of the blood is explicitly forbidden in Jewish law - why? Because "the life of the flesh is in the blood" (Leviticus 7:11). You were not allowed to consume of the blood of anything because you would be robbing the life of that thing, and you would become like that thing by drinking in its life essence. Perhaps you see where I am going here. In Catholic theology our goal is sanctification or theosis, to become like God - not to be as God is, but to become holy and pure.

To return to the passage at hand, Christ says that He is the bread that comes down from Heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. HE is the bread. He isn't present in it, He IS it, or rather it NOW IS Him. His presence is not entering into the pieces of communion, the communion is now transformed into the body and blood of Christ. In verse 50 Christ says “This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die” then immediately follows the statement with verse 51 saying “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

To break it down further - Christ first says if you eat of the bread that comes down from Heaven you will not die. Then He says that He is the bread come down from Heaven. Then He says that if you don’t eat of His flesh that you have no life in you, and states that His flesh is true food and His blood is true drink. Finally, after saying once again that they should eat His flesh and drink His blood, He then restates once more that He is the bread come down from Heaven. Christ is hammering home this point, trying to make it clear to those come to listen to Him. He is the bread, His flesh is the bread, you must consume this bread or else you have no life in you - meaning you have no place in the Kingdom.

One last point I wish to highlight in regards to this portion of Scripture is in regards to the Greek. In this passage Christ uses two different forms of the word “eat”. The first word He uses is phago, which is used in verse 50 of John 6. Phago means to eat or consume, and is a word which can be used to represent symbolic consumption in the way that Protestants take John 6 to mean. Once the Jews challenged Jesus, however, you see Him intensifies His language and become more enthusiastic in “eat my flesh and drink my blood”. At the same time as His language intensifies, so does the word for “eat” change from phago to trogo which means to literally gnaw or chew. When you contrast the change in words you see what Christ was trying to get through to them - the first word could be understood symbolically, but in Greek trogo is a literal word and is only used literally, so Christ was removing any room for confusion in what He was saying. The crowd, His followers, were finding it difficult to accept that Christ was telling them to eat His body and drink His blood, and instead of saying “you’re not getting this” He clarifies by intensifying His language to say “you are getting what I'm saying, but you’re not accepting it”.

Mark 14:22-24, "this IS my body":

22 While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, ‘Take; this is my body.’ 23 Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. 24 He said to them, ‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.

Christ starts things off saying that the bread is His body, then He says the wine is “my blood” of the covenant. He never said it represents His body, He said it is His body. That is the belief of the first Christians, and we maintain that.

Luke 22:19-20, "do this in remembrance of me":

19 Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ 20 And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

To do this "in remembrance" of Him does not disprove the transfiguration of bread and wine into His body and blood, you can't read that into the passage. To do something in remembrance of someone means to continue to do something in honor of a person, whether you are continuing on the act or replicating it. Most Christians would posit that we are continuing the act, participating in the original act by Christ, but I will not belabor this point more because that is not my intention with this paragraph. Rather, I wish to point out that "do this in remembrance of me" in no way whatsoever implies that the Eucharist is symbolic, that is a recent invention.

I had thought of making this into its own section, but I will instead address this here. Just like how the Jews observed Passover at the time of Christ, and how they continue to observe it today, they were not "remembering" it the way we remember Independence Day. They observe the day as if they are participating in it the moment it takes place. They eat the meal, they wear the clothing, and they are ready to exit Egypt along with the other Hebrews. This isn't a throwback, it's a reunion and participation in the event. And so, we participate in Christ's sacrifice in our Eucharistic liturgies. All Jews who faithfully continue to practice their faith today will say that they are not redoing the Passover, nor is it some remembrance of the historical event, it is a participation in the original event. And so, when Christ said “do this in remembrance” the Apostles, being Jews, and currently participating with Him in the Passover meal, knew that this was not something Christ was telling them to occasionally recreate; these men knew Christ meant they were to do what He was doing right then, and that as Christ commanded “eat my flesh and drink my blood” they should participate in this and continue to perform this sacrifice.

Another note, for the Passover sacrifice and other sacrifices it was required that families/individuals participating in it eat of the lamb that was being offered (Exodus 12:8). If they did not eat of the sacrifice, they did not participate. To "do this in remembrance of me" we would have to do what Christ is doing, which is offering Himself up as a sacrifice, and that means we must consume the meat of the sacrifice, which is the bread transfigured into His body. If we do not participate in the sacrifice by consuming it then we are not covered by the sacrifice, and Christ says that the bread He offers is His body and the wine is His blood, therefore we must consume the transfigured offerings to participate in Christ’s sacrifice for us.

This passage ties nicely back to John 6 where we see Christ teaching everyone about the Eucharist. When His followers abandoned Him was it because the consumption of any blood was forbidden in the Old Covenant? Perhaps. Or it could be that, just like the Apostles, they knew that to consume Christ to forgive them of their sins He would have to be sacrificed, just as the Passover lamb is sacrificed. John the Baptist declared Christ to be the lamb to be sacrificed for us in John 1:29, the same as the lamb sacrificed for the sins of the Hebrew people on the altar of the Temple. This would be a difficult thing for any one of them to comprehend, since Christ is supposed to be the Messiah and death is pretty final - or so they thought. As it turns out, as we all know, God rules over death, and so with His resurrection the teachings of the Eucharist and His sacrifice has become more understandable for us all.

1 Corinthians 10:16-18, "partaking in the bread we share":

16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. 18 Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar?

The first two verses can be taken by a Protestant to mean another thing, but adding in verse 18 it revisits the Jews eating of the sacrifice on the altar. In the Gospels Christ says "this is my flesh" and "this is my blood" then He gives it to the Apostles to eat. Then He becomes the actual sacrifice (as like a lamb on the Jewish altar) for the forgiveness of sins. We eat of this sacrifice in order to participate in it. If we do not eat, we do not participate. And we do not eat of another lamb, or of a cow, or of a chicken, we cannot substitute it for another thing. We eat of the sacrifice that wipes away our sins, we consume Christ's flesh, or we are not a participant in the sacrifice at all. “Are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar?”

1 Corinthians 11:27-29, "receiving unworthily"

27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.

This verse is important in addressing the questions that many Protestants bring up as an issue with the Eucharist - “If we are supposed to participate in the sacrifice as Christ says, why won’t you Catholics let non-Catholics receive communion?” If you do not believe the Eucharist to be what it is, then you are receiving it unworthily, and so it is right to refuse you it.

Verse 27 says that if you partake in communion unworthily you will be “answerable for the body and blood of the Lord”. That begs the question, what does that mean? It is language used in Numbers 35:27, Deuteronomy 21:8, 22:8, Ezekiel 35:6, which explains that to be “guilty of blood” means that you are guilty of murdering an innocent. Paul is a passionate man, and he does not use words lightly - he has a purpose with all he says. And, Paul was a well-studied and knowledgeable man with regard to the faith of the Hebrew people, so he very well knew what the Jews would understand him to mean when they read this letter. If you partake of the Eucharist unworthily then you are considered among those who killed Christ, and you are crucifying Him each time you receive the Eucharist unworthily.

How could one be “unworthy” to receive the Eucharist? There are a number of ways to speak to this, but this is made for an audience of Protestants so I will address in a few paragraphs specifically why they would not be allowed to receive communion in a Catholic Church (or Orthodox, or Coptic, or of another of the Apostolic Churches). If you do not believe the Eucharist is what Scripture teaches it is (the real body and blood of Christ) then you should not be allowed to receive it. When you see it as nothing more than a wafer and wine, you do not have the proper reverence for it. If you choose not to give it the reverence it deserves by acknowledging what our Lord says about His sacrifice, then you are unworthy of it.

Now, let’s say you do believe it is truly Him in the Eucharist - do you believe that only one ordained to the priesthood can consecrate the Eucharist? Afterall, it was only the Apostles that Christ said “do this in remembrance of me” and so they are the only ones who could perform it, until they laid hands on other men to pass on the ability and we see them “participating in the breaking of the bread” throughout the New Testament. If you believe that you don’t have to be a priest to consecrate the Eucharist, then you do not believe the same thing about the Eucharist and so are then “unworthy” to receive it.

If you do believe in the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and you agree that only a priest can consecrate the bread and wine through the power of Christ, then do you believe in a succession and lineage of priesthood traced back to Christ? In other words, do you believe in Apostolic Succession? If no, then you do not believe that it is a power from Christ that is passed down from Him to the Apostles to the priests of today. If yes, you do believe in Apastolic Succession, then you must also believe that you should marry yourself to a Church that has an unbroken line of Apostolic Succession since they can trace their beliefs and practices back to the disciples of Christ.

In brief, if you are not in communion with the Church, you cannot receive Communion. To partake of the Communion you must be in communion. If you are not in communion, if you do not profess and agree with the teachings of the Church, then you are out of communion with Her, and you may not receive the communion from Her churches. You must professes the beliefs in the creed that is recited and believe in what the Church says about itself, otherwise you are not with us, you are not a member of our family, and therefore you may not partake in this intimate meal with us.

The worthiness isn’t something you earn, it is something gained by acknowledgement of Christ’s words and assenting to His Church. If you refuse one or both of those things, then it would be wrong for Catholics, or any of the Apastolic Churches, to let you “be answerable for the body and blood” of Christ by receiving the Eucharist. This is not a refusal out of exclusivity because we are some soft of an exclusive club, it is a mercy to protect others from doing what according to Scripture would be a terrible act.

The First Christians

In this portion I will mostly just display quotes from the early Christians with occasional commentary written after the quotations. I will let the quotations speak for themselves, rather than have this section be a majority of myself speaking, I will have those students of the Apostles, and the students of those students speak to you.

Ignatius (disciple of St. John, friend of St. Polycarp), writing at AD 110:

They [the Docetists, early Christological heretics] abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6:2–7:1 [A.D. 110]).

I have no taste for corruptible food nor for the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, who was of the seed of David; and for drink I desire his blood, which is love incorruptible (Letter to the Romans 7:3 [A.D. 110]).

"Consider how contrary to the mind of God are the heterodox in regard to the grace of God which has come to us. They have no regard for charity, none for the widow, the orphan, the oppressed, none for the man in prison, the hungry or the thirsty. They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead." (Letter to the Smyrnaeans, paragraph 6. circa 80-110 A.D.).

"Take care, then who belong to God and to Jesus Christ - they are with the bishop. And those who repent and come to the unity of the Church - they too shall be of God, and will be living according to Jesus Christ. Do not err, my brethren: if anyone follow a schismatic, he will not inherit the Kingdom of God. If any man walk about with strange doctrine, he cannot lie down with the passion. Take care, then, to use one Eucharist, so that whatever you do, you do according to God: for there is one Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup in the union of His Blood; one altar, as there is one bishop with the presbytery and my fellow servants, the deacons." (Epistle to the Philadelphians, 3:2-4:1, 110 A.D.).

In each of Ignatius' writings he never says the Eucharist represents Christ, he always asserts that it IS the flesh and blood of Christ and that Christians should partake in it.

St. Justin Martyr (2nd century), "not common bread or common drink":

And this food is called among us Εὐχαριστία [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, This do in remembrance of Me, (Luke 22:19) this is My body; and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, This is My blood; and gave it to them alone. Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn. (First Apology chapter 66, A.D. 155–157).

Something to note in here addressing two objections commonly said by a Protestant: "no one is allowed to partake except one who believes that the things we teach are true" and "we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Savior". The bread and wine is not for anyone, only for those that believe that which is taught by the Church, which at this time meant you must be Christian and now means that you must be in communion with Christ's established Church. Secondly, these are not "common bread or common drink" any longer, they ARE the flesh and blood of Christ in the service. Again, Christ's presence does not enter it, it does not "represent" Him, it IS him.

The Didache written in the 1st century, chapter 9, "Eucharist is for the baptized":

Don't ever let anyone eat or drink of your Eucharist who has not been baptized into the name of the Lord because the Lord has also spoken about this: "Do not give holy things to dogs."

Eucharist is only for those baptized into the faith. This was during the Great Church period, or The Way, when there was no division or split in Christianity. As splits occurred then it was decided that only those Christians of the same theology should be partakers of the Eucharistic celebration performed by certain groups.

St. Irenaeus of Lyons, "it becomes His flesh and blood":

"So then, if the mixed cup and the manufactured bread receive the Word of God and become the Eucharist, that is to say, the Blood and Body of Christ, which fortify and build up the substance of our flesh, how can these people claim that the flesh is incapable of receiving God's gift of eternal life, when it is nourished by Christ's Blood and Body and is His member? As the blessed apostle says in his letter to the Ephesians, 'For we are members of His Body, of His flesh and of His bones' (Eph. 5:30). He is not talking about some kind of 'spiritual' and 'invisible' man, 'for a spirit does not have flesh and bones' (Lk. 24:39). No, he is talking of the organism possessed by a real human being, composed of flesh and nerves and bones. It is this which is nourished by the cup which is His Blood, and is fortified by the bread which is His Body. The stem of the vine takes root in the earth and eventually bears fruit, and 'the grain of wheat falls into the earth' (Jn. 12:24), dissolves, rises again, multiplied by the all-containing Spirit of God, and finally after skilled processing, is put to human use. These two then receive the Word of God and become the Eucharist, which is the Body and Blood of Christ." ("Five Books on the Unmasking and Refutation of the Falsely)

In Closing

As is often said and so I will repeat it here, just possessing data will not be a convincing enough argument against the opposing view of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, so do not think you can remain here where you've absorbed information. In writing this my intention is not to give ammunition to use against a non-Apostolic Christian. You should never view a fellow Christian as an adversary, at most you should see them as being in the wrong and in need of correction, and you shall only do so in love.

If I had the interest or time I could write much more about the early Christians and their beliefs in the Real Presence, but I chose to keep the examples to people before the time of Emperor Constantine because of the claims some Protestants make that many Catholic beliefs originate from him. Also, the closer we can get to the time of Christ, the stronger the argument is for the claims we Catholics have. As well, I did not want too much of this document to be of quotes, I chose just my favorite ones for the discussion and wished to expound upon them to help out those curious to the Catholic history with the Eucharist.

To confess, I did write this as a strong defense against those that advocate against the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, it is meant as a resolute example of the traditional understanding found both in Scripture and the Church Fathers. This is meant to provide for yourself, for myself, the strongest base from which to argue, but it is far from all of what is needed to convince most people. This is intended to be useful, but not a complete resolution to the questions held by those opposing our beliefs as Catholics. I share what I have and what I know with you with the hope of preparing you in your discussions with others, and to strengthen your belief in the Eucharist. May this knowledge lead you into greater relationship with God, and draw others nearer alongside you.

Written for VME Catholic, by Ethan Hall