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Now that Jesus is in heaven in His resurrected body sitting on the throne on the right side of His Father, just exactly which body do you claim to be receiving in that wafer at Mass: the new glorious body that His Father gave Him at His Resurrection that is sitting next to His Father, or the old one that He had at the Last Supper, that was sacrificed on the cross, laid in the grave, and that He doesn't have anymore?? Can you answer that one for us all out here in the real world ???

The difficult leap of our logic as humans is found in our being restricted by Time (not the magazine). If Jesus' resurrected body is sitting on the throne at the right side of His Father (which we agree is true), then who is the Lamb standing slain in Revelation? If Jesus is the Lamb of God (which we both agree), then how can He at once be seated next to God, and presented to God as the Paschal sacrifice? Because all things are present to God in eternity. Thus, in lieu of the animal sacrifice of the Temple, Christ gave Himself as the lamb. Since Christ explicitly did not abolish, but fulfilled the Law, we are still required to present to God the sacrifice as atonement for our sins - in this case, it is the Son Himself.

Now, since one cannot re-crucify the flesh and blood of Christ over and over again, since He is now glorified and ascended to the Father, Christ left for us at the Last Supper the sacrament and gift of the Holy Eucharist. As we present to God the consecrated bread and wine, God sees not the bread and wine, but His Son raised on the Cross. It is thus not a symbolic translation - God cannot be tricked into believing that it's the true body and blood of Christ if it weren't so.

Thus there is no re-crucifying of Christ, but the re-presentation of the sacrifice to the Father. Does the Father need to see this sacrifice again and again from our hands? No. God needs nothing. He sees all things present, past, and future in a single instant. But He does demand it ("Do this in memory of Me") as He demanded the sacrifice of a lamb He didn't "need" under the Old Law.

That brings us to the problem with viewing things in a simply linear chronological fashion. What takes place on the altar is indeed supernatural. It goes beyond our own perception of time and place. It goes beyond our perception of a piece of bread as just a piece of bread. We believe it to be the body and blood of Christ because Christ commanded us to. We are indeed present with the angels, presenting to God and worshiping the Lamb which stands slain in Revelation. And yet, there is Christ, seated in all His glory at one and the same moment.

There are certain things that we will never humanly grasp. First and foremost is that God took on the flesh and became man. If one can believe that, then it seems to me much less problematic to believe that by repeating the words of Christ as taught in the upper room, the bread and wine both become the body and blood of our Lord. This is what He told us to do. We trust and believe His words.