QUEEN OF PEACE CATHOLIC COMMUNITY
GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA
The Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist we receive:
John Henry Newman:
I come then to this conclusion – if I must submit my reason to mysteries, it is not much matter whether it is a mystery more, or a mystery less, when faith, anyhow, is the essence of all religion, when the main difficulty to an inquirer is to hold firmly that there is a living God, in spite of the darkness that surrounds him, the Creator, Witness, and Judge on men. ...I do not say it will, or can, go on to other truths without conviction; I do not say it ought to believe the Catholic faith without grounds or motives; but I say that, when once it believes in God, the great obstacle to faith has been taken away, – a proud, self-sufficient spirit. ...If he believes that God has no beginning, why not believe that He is Three yet One? If he owns that God created space, why not own also that he can cause a body to subsist without dependence on place? If he is obliged to grant that God created all things out of nothing, why doubt His power to change the substance of bread into the Body of His Son?
The "Last Supper"
Luke 22:7-20
Matthew 26:17-29
Mark 14:12-25
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Jesus speaks in the synagogue of Capernaum (John 6:51-58):
The disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:30-32)
St. Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386)
The bread and wine of the Eucharist were simple bread and wine before the invocation of the holy and adorable Trinity, but when the invocation has taken place the bread becomes the body of Christ and the wine the blood of Christ...
St. Augustine (354-430)
No Church means no Eucharist. And no Eucharist means no Church.
Substance and Accident: Color is accidental; substance is essential
St. Thomas of Aquinas (1225-1274) "Precisely by virtue of being created, the world, composed as it is by substances with their accidents, is a world which only endures because it constantly receives being. God whi is infinite actuality... communicates being, the act of being, to creatures as the deepest foundation of their existence. So as to draw attention to the fact that substances with their accidents are dependent for their own ground on God.
It is required for Catholics to believe as an article of faith that the species of the Blessed Sacrament, after the consecration, is really the Body and Blood of Christ under the appearances of bread and wine. The whole substance of the bread and the whole substance of the wine cease to be bread and wine and become the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ while they maintain the accident of the appearance of bread and wine. This change is called "TRANSUBSTANTIATION."
If all the energy found in a little pile of uranium can make a hydrogen explosion, and if the code of a whole life the DNA module, we should not be completely surprised that the Eternal Son of God, a pure spirit, could leave us with so powerful and real a memorial of His time spent on earth as Son of man, a being of flesh and blood.