The Eucharist: What Do Catholics Believe?

Many Christians are unfamiliar with the term "Eucharist," yet as the quote from St. Augustine below demonstrates that the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ was of greatest importance to the earliest Christians. Essentially what many Christians now call "communion," the early Church called "Eucharist," which in Greek means thanksgiving. The Eucharist is the partaking of Jesus' body and blood with other believers. The Eucharist worship service consists of many parts that emulate parts of an actual meal, such as taking the bread, breaking the bread, distributing the bread, and eating the bread, although the Eucharistic meal is not an ordinary meal, but a heavenly banquet.

It is an excellent thing that the Punic Christians call baptism itself nothing else but "salvation" and the sacrament of Christ's Body nothing else but "life." Whence does this derive, except from an ancient, and I suppose, Apostolic Tradition, by which the Churches of Christ hold inherently that without Baptism and participation in the Table of the Lord it is impossible for any man to attain either to the kingdom of God or to salvation and life eternal. This is the witness of Scripture too. St. Augustine, De Peccatorum Remissione et de Baptismo Parvulorum, AD 412

The Eucharist is also called the Lord's Supper, Divine Liturgy, or the Mass. The word "Mass" is derived from the Latin word meaning "to dismiss" or "send forth," which appears at the conclusion of the Western Eucharistic service. Jesus instituted the Eucharist in the New Testament when he blessed bread and wine, assuring his disciples that the elements are his body and blood (see Matthew 26:26-29, Mark 14:22-25, Luke 22:19-20, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). Jesus even said that the teaching that his followers must eat his flesh and drink his blood caused many to stop following Him (John 6:52-66). Since the beginning of the Church, Christians have been meeting regularly to celebrate the same Eucharistic meal. St. Justin Martyr (AD 150) speaks of weekly Sunday Eucharist, when Christians, by "transformation," consumed Christ's body and blood. The Eucharist has been the "main event" at Christian worship services since the earliest times, which surprises many people whose churches have relegated communion to a once-a-quarter activity, if that often. The basic themes of the Eucharist are:

Trinitarian context- In the Eucharist we pray to the Father in Thanksgiving. We call upon the Holy Spirit to sanctify the bread and wine, and sanctify us (called the epiclesis). We also experience the real objective presence of Christ through the Eucharist, asking that the elements become his body and blood (through The Words of Institution).

Christ's Presence / Transubstantiation- When Jesus said, "This is my body..." and "this is my blood," the early followers of Christ believed that Jesus was truly present with them when they took Eucharist, that they were consuming Christ himself in some way. Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons, Ambrose of Milan, and many others speak of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. When we receive communion, we truly encounter Christ, partaking of his body and blood. The Catholic Catechism states it like this:

By the consecration the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is brought about. Under the consecrated species of bread and wine Christ himself, living and glorious, is present in a true, real, and substantial manner: his Body and his Blood, with his soul and his divinity (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1413)

This may sound a little confusing to modern ears because the official Catholic definition has been shaped by a medieval understanding of Aristotelianism. Essentially, the Church teaches that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ in substance, while the incidentals (or accidents), the physical characteristics of bread and wine, remain. This means that what you see, feel, and touch will seem to be bread and wine, while in reality, they are actually the body and blood of Christ. St. Cyril of Jerusalem (AD 350) describes this mystery similarly:

Do not, therefore, regard the bread and wine as simply that, for they are, according to the Master's declaration, the Body and Blood of Christ. Even though the senses suggest to you the other, let faith make you firm (Catechetical Lectures 22:6, 9)

Once the bread and wine are properly consecrated, by a validly ordained priest, we receive the certainty of Christ's presence. In other words, the presence of Christ is not dependent on subjective belief on our part, or the moral worthiness of the priest (God does the action, not a man). While Catholics use the term transubstantiation to describe the conversion of the elements into the body and blood, Eastern Orthodox Christians use other terms, including transformation, although they too affirm nothing less than a conversion of the elements into the body and blood of Christ. How this happens is ultimately a mystery, but a mystery based on the promises of Christ, to be experienced by faith. While the terms describing the change are technical, recently some Catholic leaders have asserted that transubstantiation is the Catholic way of describing the mystical and Real change using limited human language, as opposed to being a term narrowly scientifically and philosophically describing the change. So while transubstantiation still correctly describes the change, the term does not exclude the Eastern definitions (1).

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The Eucharist: What Do Catholics Believe?