The presence of Christ

The Church teaches that it’s by the conversion of bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood that Christ becomes present in the Eucharist, writes Cathal Barry

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that Christ is present in many ways to his Church: in his word, in his Church’s prayer, in the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, in the sacraments of which he is the author, in the sacrifice of the Mass and in the person of the minister. The key teaching document of the Church notes, however, that he is present “most especially in the Eucharistic species”. 

The Church teaches that “the mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique”. 

It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as “the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend”.

The Council of Trent declared that in the Sacrament of the Eucharist “the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained”.

Fullest sense

“This presence is called ‘real’ – by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be ‘real’ too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present” (Paul VI).

The Church teaches that it is by “the conversion of the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood that Christ becomes present in this sacrament”. 

“The Church Fathers strongly affirmed the faith of the Church in the efficacy of the Word of Christ and of the action of the Holy Spirit to bring about this conversion,” the Catechism states.

St John Chrysostom declares: “It is not man that causes the things offered to become the Body and Blood of Christ, but he who was crucified for us, Christ himself. The priest, in the role of Christ, pronounces these words, but their power and grace are God’s. This is my body, he says. This word transforms the things offered.” 

And St Ambrose says about this conversion: “Be convinced that this is not what nature has formed, but what the blessing has consecrated. The power of the blessing prevails over that of nature, because by the blessing nature itself is changed… Could not Christ’s word, which can make from nothing what did not exist, change existing things into what they were not before? It is no less a feat to give things their original nature than to change their nature.”

The Council of Trent summarises the Catholic faith by stating: “Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation.”