“E.g., if I told you to give your child a hug in remembrance of me, you wouldn’t think I meant a symbolic hug.”
No, I would not. But Jesus gave the reason WHY we partake: “IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME”.
NOT “in a perpetual ongoing sacrifice of me”, but to REMEMBER.
“The Roman Catholic Church and I think even the consubstantiation view of the Lutheran Church and so forth says, “This is My body,” verse 24 and verse 25, “This is the New Testament in My blood,” and because of a misunderstanding of the meaning of estin, the verb “to be” in the Greek, they have decided that that has to literally be the body and blood of Christ, either in a very physical sense or in a sort of a strange spiritual sense. That’s not what He’s saying. The verb to be, estin, or whatever form you want, singular or plural, is frequently used to mean represents. This bread is not His body, it represents His body. This cup is not His blood, it represents His blood. When Jesus said in John 10, “I am the door,” He meant I as a Savior and shepherd of the sheep represent a door into the sheepfold. He wasn’t literally a door. In Matthew 13 when He gave the parable of the wheat and the tares and He said, “The field is the world,” He didn’t really mean the field is the world. In the parable He meant the field represents the world. And He said the good seed are the children of God and the bad seed, the children of the wicked one. And, of course, the words is and are in those cases simply means represents. It’s used in a figurative, metaphorical sense.
So, here this represents My body, this bread He said. And this cup represents My blood. It was not His blood. His blood was still in His veins when He said that. It was not His body. His body was still sitting there when He said that. So, we’re not talking about literal things.”
http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/1847
Thanks for your reply. I’d post the Catholic apologetic response to the Holy Eucharist being only symbolic, but I am certain you are familiar with most if not all.
On the specific point you make:
>> NOT “in a perpetual ongoing sacrifice of me”, but to REMEMBER.
I don’t see a reason why this is a dichotomy. It can also be complementary.
The word "represents" is nowhere to be seen.
He said "THIS IS MY BODY and THIS IS MY BLOOD" and that's exactly what He meant.