The Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist

As a Protestant Christian who believed that the Eucharist was merely a symbol, I was once faced with a quote from an early Church Father, written within 100 years of Christ, regarding the Eucharist: “They do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again” (St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6.2). I reasoned my way around it at the time, but I later came to believe, and it changed my life.

As The Mystery of the Eucharist proclaims, the Church has always taught that the Eucharist is the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ and is not a mere symbol. The Church holds to this teaching because it comes from Jesus Christ himself. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. … For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed” (Jn 6:53, 55).

This is truly a mystery! It is not a reality we can see with our eyes, but we are urged to look at the Sacrament with the eyes of faith. As the bishops wrote, “This faith is a doorway through which we, like the saints and mystics before us, may enter into a deeper perception of the mercy and love manifested in and through Christ’s sacramental presence in our midst. While one thing is seen with our bodily eyes, another reality is perceived through the eyes of faith” (paragraph 21).

How can such a thing be accomplished? How can bread and wine become Christ’s flesh and blood (wonder enough!) and still appear to the senses to be bread and wine? Only by divine intervention. The Holy Spirit’s power transforms the elements. This is not magic where humans control and change the world through incantations and spells. This is God’s action, God’s gift to us.

The technical term is transubstantiation because the substance (a philosophical term meaning the essence and the matter, the full being of the thing) is transformed into Christ himself. The terminology came later; what has been known from the beginning is that the Eucharist is a unique, miraculous encounter with Christ himself. It’s not a prize for the winners, it is Medicine for the sick. It’s not a mere symbol, but it is the true food and drink of Christ’s flesh and blood.

To this idea, all of my children have given the same response: “Ew!” At a childish level of understanding, that is not an inappropriate response because it is a natural reaction to the idea of eating flesh and drinking blood. Someone who expresses disgust is closer to understanding the reality than someone who doesn’t care.

In my effort to disprove Catholicism, I eventually reached a point of failure when I could no longer deny its truth. This presented me with two major problems. First, my wife was a Protestant, the child of a Protestant minister, and we were members of a Protestant church. Second, I was working as a teacher at a Protestant Christian school where I knew they did not hire Catholics. I remember distinctly sitting in church one Sunday thinking to myself, “Well, I can be Catholic in my theology but still go to church with my wife and keep my job.” But then I realized what I would be giving up by not going to Mass: Jesus Christ Himself, in the flesh. Nothing was worth that sacrifice. A childish response is disgust. A mature response is wonder, joy and gratitude. Any other response demonstrates ignorance.

As a result of my conversion, I lost my job. Thankfully, my wife has joined me in the Catholic Church. But the deepest impact has been the regular encounter with Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.