> Perhaps one more learned than I can patiently explain the Biblical basis for the Holy Eucharist?
Funny you should mention that — I was wondering about that, myself. I hope this isn’t a stupid question: it isn’t meant to be...
Is it so, that the Host turns into the actual flesh (ie raw meat) of Jesus when it is consumed at Mass? And the wine turns into actual blood? That’s what my Protestant friends say that Catholics teach. Except they’re a bit more rude, calling it “cannibalism”.
If true, I must confess it takes some getting used to that idea. How does that work? Why is it so?
Can someone please set me right on this?
Anyone can see that the "cannibalism" charge is false, just by looking at what cannibalism is: the eating of body parts of a dead human body. This is not what Communion is about at all: what we receive is, not "parts," but the whole Christ and all that He is: living, entire, Body, Blood, Spirit and Divinity. It is union with the Living Christ.
This is not susceptible to what the Scriptures call "fleshly" or "carnal" verification: which means, that the methods of natural investigation, testable hypothesis, scientific observation and so forth, would find in the consecrated Host only the properties of bread; and in the consecrated contents of the chalice only the properties of wine.
Recall for a moment when Jesus asked His disciples "Who do men say that I am?" and Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." Jesus commended him: "Flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but My Father in Heaven." This means that our "fleshly" thinking, natural reason, does not avail to tell us who, what, where, or how Christ really is.
In the same way, Christ said that our "flesh" (our eyesight, our senses, or any scientific instrument) does not tell us of His Real Presence in the Eucharist: that can be known only by believing Him and grasping it by the power of the Spirit. Thomas Aquinas, one of the most powerful minds and one of the most stalwartly reasonable men who ever lived, put it beautifully in a hymn:
Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore,
Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more,
See, Lord, at Thy service low lies here a heart
Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.
Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived:
How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed;
What God's Son has told me, take for truth I do;
Truth Himself speaks truly or there's nothing true.
(That's worth clicking on to get the whole thing: I could sing it for you if I could figure out how to transmit my voice through a computer!)
So here's the important thing: in Communion you will not be smelling the scent of blood or tasting ragged muscle tissue; but you will nevertheless be eating His flesh and drinking His blood because He said so.
Really, the best thing to do is to go to a good library and plan to spend a few hours and get the librarian to find you the part of Aquinas's Summa Theologiae which deals with the Eucharist. It's encyclopedic!
The first thing that one has to work is the effect of the "Enlightenment" on our use of the word "substance". It very different from the use by the theologians who talk about a change of substance in the "elements".
These days if we were to talk about the substance of water, we'd talk about boiling and freezing and phase changes and ionic bonds and all like that.
I'm not sure that Aquinas would have said that water is a "substance" at all!
YOU though, you're a substance. There is only one of you, you are personal, identifiable, (if only to God, but actually to many others) and you change. What you are made of changes. The individual atoms are part of complex molecules which decay and break up and are replaced and expelled. But we think of Diehard, as a baby, a child, an adolescent, an adult, an old person, and dead and, well, somewhere anyway — but all of those instances still Diehard.
To get at the question (I'm not even close to the answer) what's the difference between a little ring of gold and the little ring of gold my wife gave me on our wedding day? What changed in that little ring of gold? It was pretty much the same before the wedding as after. But it was a new thing after the exchange of vows and of rings.
What changed was something kind of like what they USED to mean by "substance", whereas in modern usage, the substance didn't change at all - before the service, an annulus of gold weighing so much with such and such a percentage of impurities. After the service, pretty much the same.
It is a big question, the question of what a thing IS. It's different, sometimes, even usually, from what a thing is MADE OF. Somebody carves a beautiful sculpture of ice. Someone seeing it says, "What's THAT?" Is the correct answer, "H Two O in the frozen state." And someone else says, "No, you dope! It's a Swan!" Who's right? Is either right? Is either wrong?(I'm not asking that as though I know. I'm just asking you to savor the question.)
And then we get to ask, what NOW is the "body of Christ" the "Blood of Christ"? What kind of body and blood does a resurrected person have? Yet wouldn't we say that my body is how you know I'm here? If you don't see or bump into me or hear my big feet on the floor, there is no sign of my presence. And don't we know from the Scriptures and from our intuition that blood is about vitality, about life? "For the blood is the life." (Deut. 12:23) A red-faced man may explode, we fear. A blushing man is embarrassed with his undeniable "thereness" in a situation he'd rather be far from. A sign of shockiness and imminent crisis is pallor. The dead are pale, becuase the blood sinks to the lowest part of the body and what we see is bloodless, and so we know it is dead.
And whatever else we may want to say about a change in substance, our Lord says, my flesh αληθης (or some texts have αληθως) true (or truly) food, my blood is true (or truly) drink.
So metaphor or symbol seem to be denied to us. Jesus was perfectly capable of saying, and frequently DID say, "This is LIKE that." Here John seems to take pains to make sure we hear Him saying "is true" or "truly is".
All this is not the beginning of an answer. It is the beginning of the question.