When a Catholic priest consecrates the bread and wine at Mass, they are no longer bread and wine but become the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. This occurs by a sacramental process called transubstantiation.
Unlike a transformation which changes the appearance of something, transubstantiation actually changes what that thing is without changing its appearance.
By transubstantiation, the bread and wine are gone and the actual substance or essence of what is now present under the appearance of bread and wine is Jesus Christ entirely.
The tangible characteristics or accidents of the unleavened wheat bread and grape wine remain. They still look, feel, taste, and smell the same, even under scientific examination.
By making Himself truly present in the Eucharist in this way, Jesus allows Catholics to experience Him today and makes it possible for us to eat his Body and drink his Blood as He said to.
No longer bread and wine:
A reason to disbelieve our senses:
Becoming entirely Jesus:
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and giving it to his disciples said, “Take and eat; this is my Body.” Then He took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you, for this is my Blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins.”
Matthew 26: 26-28
A change of substance:
A unique change:
The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: “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.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1376
Not merely a symbol:
Jesus held his own Body in his hands:
As a result of transubstantiation, the species of bread and wine undoubtedly take on a new signification and a new finality, for they are no longer ordinary bread and wine but instead a sign of something sacred and a sign of spiritual food; but they take on this new signification, this new finality, precisely because they contain a new “reality” which we can rightly call ontological. For what now lies beneath the aforementioned species is not what was there before, but something completely different; and not just in the estimation of Church belief but in reality, since once the substance or nature of the bread and wine has been changed into the Body and Blood of Christ, nothing remains of the bread and the wine except for the species—beneath which Christ is present whole and entire in His physical “reality,” corporeally present, although not in the manner in which bodies are in a place.
Pope Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei, 3 September 1965
Jesus made present where He previously was not:
Here is what Jesus intended:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
Embrace the truth:
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