[smvoice]

This is the point I was working toward. When a belief such as the Eucharist is peeled back, layer by layer to the core, it cannot be sustained without changing the original meaning or intent. If the bread and wine become the real body and blood of Christ, the intent of the Eucharist, then He is not the only person present in the bread and wine, the result of human conception. Which automatically changes the original meaning and intent.

It can't be both ways without twisting inside out words and meanings. ANd changing those meanings in order to sustain a belief. It is impossible to connect these two points. The only meaning that would make sense and could be sustained without argument or changing definitions and words would be that the bread and wine are symbols of the body and blood of Christ.

[count-your-change]

Exactly so! In one simple understanding of the Scriptures, consistent with all the Scriptures, the whole mystical, magical wafer is flesh/wine is blood but not really but becomes flesh/blood but no one can tell it business is washed away by the fresh water of truth.

“The only meaning that would make sense and could be sustained without argument or changing definitions and words would be that the bread and wine are symbols of the body and blood of Christ.”

But then no mystery to be administered only by a priest.

[MHGinTN]

Because Jesus started this new covenant ritual BEFORE the Cross (’do this in remembrance of me’ Luke 22:19), it may be understood as the ritual directed at reminding US of the covenant He made and sealed WITH the Cross. IMHO, that precludes the bread and wine being transmogrified into actual body and blood, but as by faith the ritual does the work of reminding US why the promise of our Salvation is absolutely secure ... because He sealed His promises with His own Body and Blood.

[Claud]

Well, no I wouldn’t say that at all.

Look, take your same argument against transubstantiation and transfer it from the Host to the cross. That was Christ’s body on the cross, right? So was it Mary’s body as well? Was it St. Anne’s and Joachim’s bodies? Could someone destroy the whole idea of atonement because it was not only Christ who suffered but Mary and everyone in her lineage as well?

No of course not. Christ suffered on the cross. His body performed the atonement. But it would be insane to say that His mother did not, somehow, mystically, suffer along with Him.

That’s the point I’m making. We are dealing with two separate individuals with two separate souls—and the added distinction that one is divine and one is not. BUT because His body was literally pieced together in her womb, there is an intimate closeness there that is shared by no other creature.