I take it then one can't give one's self bread and wine in remembrance of Christ, personally, because it would be meaningless?
I take it then one can't give one's self bread and wine in remembrance of Christ, personally, because it would be meaningless?
1. Catholics don't believe that it is merely "this symbolic ritual." The Eucharist is the eternal Sacrifice offered on Calvary, and the bread and wine are miraculously changed into the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of Christ.
2. If one doesn't believe this, he should not participate in a Catholic Eucharist, because he is acting a lie.
3. Receiving is also a statement of solidarity and conformance to all the beliefs of the Church. If one doesn't believe this, he is not only acting a lie but causing a public scandal.
4. Christ indeed gave this power - as well as, even more explicitly, the power to forgive or retain sins - to His disciples. That power is transmitted by the laying on of hands and receiving of the Holy Spirit in the process of ordination. So you are correct on that point, it is a royal priesthood, after the order of Melchisedek.
5. Of course one can give himself communion . . . if one is a priest!
Receiving Communion from onself (autocommunion) is contrary to the Catholic faith.
One way to look at the Eucharist is to imagine that a sort of "wormhole" in space and time opens up when the priest says "This is my Body" and "This is my Blood". Instantly, we are present at Golgotha in AD 33, witnesses (via the imaginary time warp) at the one and only Crucifixion of Christ, receiving (via the imaginary time warp) the one and only Body and Blood of the Lord. As we receive the Eucharist, we see, feel, and taste the physical and chemical accidents of "bread" and "wine" -- wheat, water, alcohol, etc. -- just as the Apostles did at the Last Supper, but what we are really and truly consuming is nothing else but the actual Flesh and Blood of Our Lord.