As I bet you expected, I balked at “physical” in the first line you quoted. Substantial, even “real”, do not mean “physical.” A proponent of Catholic Eucharistic doctrine who doesn't get that probably is unclear about the doctrine and certainly is not careful in his language.
I don't think the neo-Platonists are all that bad. I think Plotinus (He's the only one I've read), though wrong ultimately, is very helpful as a kind of preliminary to thinking about the Trinity.
But with Aquinas, I think the paradigm shifts to Aristotle. And while the relationship of faith and reason//theology and philosophy is fluid in unexpected ways, Aquinas, and therefore Aristotle, have such authority that when a Catholic deviates (and if I were good enough to merit classification, I would be a phenomenologist/personalist — so I DO deviate) he still sort of “touches back,” like a base runner when a fly-ball is hit, to Aquinas before he runs.
Maybe it might not be amiss for me to give an example of what I “phenomenologist/personalist” means to me: Looking to Heidegger, I like to think about words. So, for example, it's very important to me that the Hebrew word for truth is an etymological sibling to the word for faith. And the English word, kin to troth, also has to do with fidelity, loyalty, commitment, reliability.
SO, in my alleged thought, perception or apprehension or knowledge of the Truth simply cannot occur without personal commitment. (This is why, by the time I was 10, I had pretty much given up on science, much as I loved it and continue to love it.) The Truth that answers my need for truth cannot be about moving bodies and the like. I called those truths “boring” only because they do not even approach the longing of the human heart.
Which longing is precisely to be “plighted” — to be put at hazard — to something worth the plighting of my self and all that matters to me. In the old wedding services the couple each said, “And thereto I PLIGHT thee my TROTH.”
So, if this is coherent at all, then it ripples through epistemology, and all the important areas of thought — or so I think.
It's a long way from that to the Eucharist. Maybe, as a prolegomenon, I could say this: My present custom is that as I approach the reception of the Sacrament, I plead thus, “For the sake of your sorrowful passion, have mercy on me and on the whole world.” (Some will recognize this as part of the “Divine Mercy”devotion.)
And, with the “Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity” (as we believe) in my mouth, as I return to my place, I plead for those who have asked for my prayers. [My flippant —ONLY flippant — thought is, “Now that I have your attention, Lord....”]
And I suppose one way to look at this is that there, at that moment, there is an inexplicable, mysterious, but authentic encounter with Jesus the Lord, the second Person of the Most Holy Trinity. He commits to me what is on His heart; I commit to Him what is on mine. In something similar to matrimony, there is a REAL, TRUE, ACTUAL, mutual “plighting of troths.”
So, I am looking over my shoulder at the objective presence of the Lord in the Sacrament. AND I am engaged in what I take to be an exchange of commitments in which the paltry truth of me encounters the transcendent Truth of God, in which — like a very small moon — I reflect a tiny bit of the sunlight of his covenantal love.
At my degree of senility, I no longer feel obliged to present strictly rigorous accounts of anything! I find refuge in thinking that Truth and Love are meaningful names, but merely names nonetheless, for the One God. And I am confident that he offers to AND requires from me more than merely intellectual assent. He teaches me, empowers me to meet him in the exchange of hearts.
And I go to stick my tongue out at the priest and to look ridiculous, confident that that exchange is furthered and ... embodied, in that act.
Perhaps another time we can talk about the place of ritual and ceremonial in human affairs. Here let it suffice to say that Catholics hold that SOME rites and ceremonies are efficacious because God graciously pledges that they will be so. We come to him not a magicians or conjurers, but as beggars confident that their pleas will be granted.
Some?
Which ones?
Where does GOD say that?