The man who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the Father who has life sent me and I have life because of the Father, so the man who feeds on me will have life because of me" John 6: Note that none of this language is symbolic-- Jesus meant what He said.
Moreover, even when there was grumbling and objections, and even after some disciples abandoned our Lord because of this teaching, Jesus no where said, "Oh please, stop. I really meant this symbolically. There Jesus gathered His apostles to share what was literally His last supper. According to the Gospel of St. Matthew, Jesus took unleavened bread and wine two sources of basic nourishment. He took the bread, blessed it, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to the apostles, saying, "Take this and eat it; this is my body.
Think of those words! Jesus was not just giving to the apostles blessed bread and wine.
He was giving His very self. How true that was! The next day, Jesus' body hung upon the altar of the cross. His blood was spilled to wash away our sins. As priest, He offered the perfect sacrifice for the remission of sin. However, this sacrifice was not death rendering but life giving, for three days later our Lord rose from the dead conquering both sin and death.
Yes, the perfect, everlasting covenant of life and love with God was made by our Lord Jesus Christ. We too take unleavened bread and wine, two sources of nourishment. By the will of the Father, the work of the Holy Spirit, and priesthood of Jesus entrusted to His ordained priests, and through the words of consecration, that bread and wine is transformed into the Body and Blood of Jesus.
Yes, the bread and wine do not change in characteristics they still look the same, taste and smell the same, and hold the same shape.
However, the reality, "the what it is," the substance does change. We do not receive bread and wine; we receive the Body and Blood of Christ. We call this "change of substance" transubstantiation , a term used at the Fourth Lateran Council and asserted again by our Holy Father in Ecclesia de Eucharistia Therefore, each time we celebrate Mass, we are plunged into the whole everpresent, everlasting mystery of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter, and share intimately in life of our Lord through Holy Eucharist.
In Ecclesia de Eucharistia , John Paul highlighted these very points: The institution of the Eucharist sacramentally anticipated the events which were about to take place, beginning with the agony in Gethsemane" 3. Moreover, in and through the Holy Eucharist, our late Holy Father taught that we can contemplate the face of Christ because He is truly present: The Church draws her life from Christ in the Eucharist; by Him she is fed and by Him she is enlightened.
The term should be seen as affirming the fact of Christ's presence and of the mysterious and radical change which takes places. In Roman Catholic theology it is not understood as explaining how the change takes place'.
John Torquemada opposed the Orthodox position at the Council of Florence - despite this Orthodox position being a normative interpretation of the De sacramentis and De mysteriis of St. The end result was that, though Western theologians from Radbertus until St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio had held for the consecratory potential of the epiclesis , Torquemada represented the Dominican position as if it was universal and non-controversial among the Latins.
In these debates, Benedict had condemned an alleged Armenian theory never verified among any of the dozen or so Armenian commentaries from the period that denied all consecratory value to the words of institution and confined the consecration ONLY to the epiclesis which was not the Byzantine position.
Lastly, the Armenians were alleged to hold that the eucharistic change was not substantial and only imperfect and typological, and therefore not transubstantiation. The arguments, that Benedict XII's letter to the missionaries c. However, the position which he attributed to the Orthodox was confused for the actual Byzantine position expressed from Kabasilas to the Council of Florence. This has led to a gross misunderstanding, still evident also among modern and contemporary scholars when attempting to speak of Theological differences between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The debate on the nature of "transubstantiation" in Greek Orthodoxy begins in the 17th century, with Cyril Lucaris , whose The Eastern Confession of the Orthodox Faith was published in Latin in In Orthodox confessions, the change is said to start during the Liturgy of Preparation and be completed during the Epiklesis.
It should be noted, that the way in which the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ has never been dogmatically defined by the Eastern Orthodox Churches.
Thus, it can be argued that by being part of the dogmatic "horos" against the iconoclast heresy, the teaching on the "real presence" of Christ in the eucharist is indeed a dogma of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Official writings of the churches of the Anglican Communion have consistently affirmed Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, a term that includes a belief in the corporeal presence, the sacramental union , as well as several other eucharistic theologies. The Articles declared that "Transubstantiation or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.
Indeed, for many years it was illegal in Britain to hold public office whilst believing in transubstantiation, as under the Test Act of Archbishop John Tillotson decried the "real barbarousness of this Sacrament and Rite of our Religion", considering it a great impiety to believe that people who attend Holy Communion "verily eat and drink the natural flesh and blood of Christ. And what can any man do more unworthily towards a Friend? How can he possibly use him more barbarously, than to feast upon his living flesh and blood?
In the Church of England today, clergy are required to assent that the 39 Articles have borne witness to the Christian faith. Anglicans generally consider no teaching binding that, according to the Articles, "cannot be found in Holy Scripture or proved thereby", and are not unanimous in the interpretation of such passages as John, Chapter 6, and 1 Corinthians 11, although all Anglicans affirm a view of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist: As with all Anglicans, Anglo-Catholics and other High Church Anglicans historically held belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist but were "hostile to the doctrine of transubstantiation".
However, in the first half of the twentieth century, the Catholic Propaganda Society upheld both Article XXVIII and the doctrine of transubstantiation, stating that the 39 Articles specifically condemn a pre-Council of Trent "interpretation which was included by some under the term Transubstantiation" in which "the bread and wine were only left as a delusion of the senses after consecration"; [63] it stated that "this Council propounded its definition after the Articles were written, and so cannot be referred to by them".
Theological dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church has produced common documents that speak of "substantial agreement" about the doctrine of the Eucharist: Lutherans explicitly reject transubstantiation [67] believing that the bread and wine remain fully bread and fully wine while also being truly the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Transubstantiation is, according to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, the change of substance or essence by which the bread and wine offered in the. Transubstantiation, in Christianity, the change by which the substance (though not the appearance) of the bread and wine in the Eucharist becomes Christ’s Real Presence—that is, his body and blood. In the midth century some Roman Catholic theologians restated the doctrine.
Classical Presbyterianism held Calvin's view of "pneumatic presence" or "spiritual feeding", a real presence by the Spirit for those who have faith. John Calvin "can be regarded as occupying a position roughly midway between" the doctrines of Martin Luther on one hand and Huldrych Zwingli on the other. He taught that "the thing that is signified is effected by its sign", declaring: For why should the Lord put in your hand the symbol of his body, unless it was to assure you that you really participate in it? And if it is true that a visible sign is given to us to seal the gift of an invisible thing, when we have received the symbol of the body, let us rest assured that the body itself is also given to us.
The Lord's supper is a sacrament, wherein, by giving and receiving bread and wine according to Christ's appointment, his death is showed forth; and the worthy receivers are, not after a corporal and carnal manner, but by faith, made partakers of his body and blood, with all his benefits, to their spiritual nourishment and growth in grace. Methodists believe in the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine or grape juice while, like Anglicans and Lutherans, rejecting transubstantiation.
While upholding the view that scripture is the primary source of Church practice , Methodists also look to church tradition and base their beliefs on the early Church teachings on the Eucharist, that Christ has a real presence in the Lord's Supper. The Catechism for the use of the people called Methodists thus states that, "[in Holy Communion] Jesus Christ is present with his worshipping people and gives himself to them as their Lord and Saviour". From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Anglican Catholic Latter-day Saint Lutheran. Eucharistic theology and Real presence.
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Basic Questions and Answers". United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Retrieved 13 December The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation. Catechism of the Catholic Church. Johnson, The Eucharistic Liturgies: The Anglican prayers do not demand this objective change in the elements: In fact, the Anglican formulae will bear interpretation either way.
This is a deliberate policy, and part of the genius of Anglicanism, its ability to accommodate contradictory doctrines under the same outward form of words. Early Symbols of the Eucharist". Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans".
On the Mysteries St. First Apology Roberts-Donaldson ". Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries: Confession of Faith, retrieved The Babylonian Captivity of the Christian Church. Quoted in, McGrath, A. Archived from the original on Scanned by Hanover College students in ed. The Theology of Transubstantiation in Sophia , Vol. A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume 1: True, Real and Substantial". Glenn, "A Tour of the Summa: Dobbins if site says " Error: Augustine, receives Christ the Lord, and He is entire in each portion.
He is not diminished by being given to many, but gives Himself whole and entire to each. The History of Creeds. The Quest for the Grail: Arthurian Legend in British Art, By the late s Anglo-Catholic interest in the revival of ritual had given new life to doctrinal debate over the nature of the Eucharist. Initially, 'the Tractarians were concerned only to exalt the importance of the sacrament and did not engage in doctrinal speculation'.
Indeed they were generally hostile to the doctrine of transubstantiation. For an orthodox Anglo-Catholic such as Dyce the doctrine of the Real Presence was acceptable, but that of transubstantiation was not. The doctrine had been affirmed by Anglican theologians, through the ages, including Lancelot Andrewes, Jeremy Taylor who taught the doctrine of the Real Presence at the eucharist, but attacked Roman transubstantiation , William Laud and John Cosin - all in the seventeenth century - as well as in the nineteenth century Tractarians and their successors.
Of the Sacrament of the Altar, stating: For it is in perfect agreement with Holy Scriptures that there is, and remains, bread, as Paul himself calls it, 1 Cor. The bread which we break. Let him so eat of that bread. What is really the difference between "transubstantiation" and "consubstantiation"?