What IS a human body?
The human body conceals and reveals the mystery of the self. It is not the self but the “locus” of the self, so that when I see your body, I say, “There you are!”
When I kiss you, my lips touch your cheek. We are, perhaps, aware of the contact, the physicality. But yet YOU allow ME, so I kiss you.
We do not eat what the body is made of.
And, to work “by the numbers,” so to speak, it is the risen body of which we partake, a “spiritual body,” says St. Paul. I don't know how to think of this, but I'm pretty sure it's not cannibalism.
When I kiss you on a summer day, I may momentarily be aware of your perspiration, of the salt on your cheek. But we don't say, “He went to taste her salt, “ but “HE kissed HER.” The touch is the vehicle, the incident, of what was in fact a contact of selves, of persons.
The eating of the Sacramental Body is physical, but it is not confined to physicality. As love makes the kiss far more IN ESSENCE than tasting salt, so Grace makes receiving the Body far more than eating.
That's the best I can do.
I'll pass.
And, to work “by the numbers,” so to speak, it is the risen body of which we partake, a “spiritual body,” says St. Paul. I don't know how to think of this, but I'm pretty sure it's not cannibalism.
No, unlike your metaphysical christ the spiritual body of Christ was manifestly physical, and stands in contrast to a body whose appearance did not conform to what he materially was, thus,
Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. (Luke 24:39)
Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. (John 20:27)
Nowhere was Christ present as an inanimate object or like a phantom.