From Bread and Wine to Flesh and Blood
In an article in the October 2000 issue of Homiletic and Pastoral Review titled "Toward a New Paradigm of the Real Presence," I observed that what takes place at consecration is the transformation of lifeless matter into a vehicle of the divine Life. The drama of the manifestation of progressively higher forms of life in the world, which began with the creation of matter out of nothing and continued with the elevation of matter into various forms of life, reaches its climax with a transformation as dramatic as the initial creation out of nothing: namely, the elevation of matter into a vehicle for the highest form of life, the divine Life that underlies all of creation. Consequently, every instance of the genesis of life — from the cellular level to the creation of the conscious self — is a precursor of this utterly and unfathomably mysterious transmutation.
In the present article, I want to consider a related and equally important theme, the claim that, after consecration, bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. What sense does it make to say that what was once bread and wine is now the Body and Blood of Jesus? In particular, how can we say that this is the case given that what we perceive after consecration very noticeably has the properties of bread and wine?
Many of the modern attempts to deal with this question are disappointing if only because they shy away from the drastic nature of the claim by beating a linguistic retreat. Some thinkers claim that the way we "treat" something is how we determine its identity. The bread and the wine "function" as Christ's Body and Blood for us just as our use of a dish as an ashtray makes it an ashtray. There is no actual change in the Eucharistic elements, physical or otherwise, beyond our thoughts, words and attitudes. Still less is there any reason to appeal to the miraculous or the supernatural.
But this is a strategy of making our beliefs respectable by making them meaningless. No one will be offended by a cloud of fuzzy concepts and yet no one will be edified either. The real problem is, of course, more fundamental. Christianity is all about flesh and blood realities but the perennial temptation is to reduce it to mere abstractions. Quite simply, Christians say God is interacting with the physical world, a claim that is too troubling for theologians who cannot countenance any intrusion of the Other. But the disclosure of the divine is too serious a matter to leave to the doctors of divinity. If we turn to the biblical texts and the witness of the early Christians, we encounter supernatural healings, miracles of bread being multiplied and water turning into wine, corpses rising from the dead, God becoming man. It is in this context that we consider the transformation of bread and wine into a living and holy sacrifice.
Paradoxically, modern science, with its notions of quantum fields and subatomic particles, gives us ample resources in exploring this question. And it is perfectly appropriate to apply analogies and illustrations drawn from science. St. Thomas Aquinas himself used examples and concepts from the physical world in explaining the doctrine of transubstantiation: fire, air, water, transparent bodies, the baking of bread from dough, snow and whiteness, matter and its attributes of rarity and density.
Matter and life
To begin with, we should look at the physical facts of the matter. How do bread and wine physically differ from "Body" and "Blood"? Obviously they have different observable properties — "appearances" or empirical "signs" if you will — such as color, taste and the like. Remarkably, however, at the subatomic, quantum level there is no physical difference between any one of these realities. The Israeli scientist Gerald Schroeder explains the essential sameness of all that is physical: "In one mix of protons, neutrons and electrons I get a grain of sand. I take the same protons, neutrons and electrons, put them together in a different mix and get a brain that can record facts, produce emotions, and from which emerges a mind that integrates those facts and emotions and experiences that integration. It's the same protons, neutrons and electrons. They had no face lift yet one seems passive while the other is dynamically alive."1 In brief, all physical objects — be they bread, wine, body or blood — are made up of the same essential constituents at the most basic level, at the fundamental level of "appearances."
Nevertheless there is one instance in which a given set of protons, neutrons and electrons is "transformed" into something entirely and qualitatively different while still remaining physically the same. We are so familiar with this instance that we rarely realize its miraculous nature: this is the instance in which a certain body of matter becomes part of a living being.
Let's take a humble bacterium. Its physical constituents before and after it comes into being remain the same. But while the bacterium is in being ("alive") these constituents receive a new identity and unity that they did not have before it was "born" and will not have once it dies. In the brief interval of its life, the bacterium's "body parts" are (how else can we put it?) "body parts" — unified, individuated and energized by one center of action. Very few of the scientists who investigate the question of life's origin seem to have considered the more fundamental question of what it means to say that something is alive. There is, after all, no abstraction called "life" which has an "origin" — just living beings. And to say that something is alive is to implicitly say it is an autonomous agent, a being that acts or is capable of action and is the source and center of all its actions. It is also to say in the case of physical beings (as opposed to purely spiritual beings) that its physics, chemistry and biology have a "center," a moving force, a seat of power. The question of the origin of life is really a question of how autonomous agency came into being in a universe of undifferentiated matter.
Leaving aside the origin question, here we see that in the case of living beings their "matter" becomes the matter "of" a being — whether it be bacterium, plant, animal or human. The "of" part is what gives any living being's matter an identity and unity that the matter of Pluto and Mount Everest can never have. Although the matter in all these instances — that of Pluto, Mount Everest, a living being — is essentially the same from a physical standpoint, the "living matter" has a transphysical identity, unity and reality that makes it ontologically different from non-living matter. ("Ontology" concerns the fundamental structure of reality.) It is "life" that creates and constitutes this difference.
But, to repeat, by "life" we do not refer to an abstraction. We're talking about the life "of" a specific bacterium, plant, animal or human. Your body and blood, your flesh and blood have a distinct identity in being yours. And although, at a physical level, they are not essentially different from grains of sand, frozen icecaps or molten lava, they yet become a new and different reality simply by being part and parcel of your physical embodiment. Moreover, and this is important, you are present wherever your body and blood are present. When you talk of them as being your body and blood, you assume that they cannot exist separate or away from you. To give an unpleasant example, your finger ceases to be both "yours" and a finger if it is detached and crushed. It is no longer energized by your life and is therefore no longer yours.
By now it should be clear where I am heading with this train of thought. In my previous essay I noted that lifeless matter becomes a vehicle of divine Life during consecration. If we take Christ seriously, we affirm that the divine life becomes present in the bread and wine. Now we are ready to examine what follows from the affirmation that the Eucharist is a vehicle of the divine life. In brief, the introduction of the divine Life changes the Eucharistic elements into the physical embodiment of the divine Life. And while at the fundamental physical level we are still dealing with the same protons, neutrons and electrons, they are now unified, individuated and energized by a new reality, the divine Life.
But we have seen that there is no abstraction called "life." All "life" is the life of one specific agent or other. So "whose" life are we talking about when we talk about the divine Life being present in the Eucharist? As Christians who affirm the Incarnation of God in Christ, we know that historically the divine Life incarnated itself in matter in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Any subsequent instance of matter energized by the divine Life would be one in which it is the Life of Christ (God incarnate) that becomes present. And since the Eucharist is matter that has the divine Life, the Life present in it is the Life of the incarnate Risen Lord.
If the Life of Christ thus becomes present in the Eucharist then three things follow. First, since the life of a human being in this world is embodied in flesh and blood and since the Risen Jesus is a human being, any material embodiment of his Life would be through his Body and Blood. Any matter in which his Life becomes present becomes his Body and Blood, his Flesh.
Secondly, wherever his Body and Blood are present, he is present. He is present physically and spiritually, body, soul and divinity.
Thirdly, while the protons, neutrons and electrons remain the same, they are now protons, neutrons and electrons "of' a living Being and therefore ontologically different in terms of identity, unity and efficacy.
Animals are beings whose matter is governed and energized by animal life. Humans are beings whose matter is governed and energized by human life. The Eucharist is a new reality whose matter is governed and energized by the divine Life of the incarnate Son of God. Animals and humans are different from each other (humans are rational animals because they have spiritual souls that are self-conscious and capable of conceptual thought). Likewise they are different from matter that is not energized by any kind of life. There is a difference, after all, between a human and a rock. But these differences pale before the distinction between the vehicles of created life and the Eucharist, the vehicle of the uncreated Life that brought all things (living and non-living) into being.
To recap, when the bread and the wine are consecrated, the subatomic particles that constitute it become the vehicles of the life of the divine Person who became man, died for our sins and rose again. The question "How can bread and wine be the body and blood of Jesus?" rests on a misconception. At bottom, bread, wine, flesh, blood are all made up of the same sub-atomic particles, the same quantum fields. There is no unique set of protons, neutrons and electrons that make up bread or wine that is different from the set that makes up flesh and blood. The difference, if there is any, is at the ontological level, at the level of life and non-life. The ontological difference between bread and wine, on the one hand, and body and blood, on the other, is the difference between matter and living matter. There is no fundamental physical difference between the subatomic constituents of bread and wine and those of your flesh and blood. The difference lies in the fact that the constituents in the latter instance are vehicles of your life. After the invocation of the Holy Spirit and the rite of consecration, the subatomic particles of the matter offered up to the Father now "embody" the Life of the incarnate Son of God.
To be sure, this "embodiment" does not involve a corresponding change in the observable physical properties of the Eucharistic elements. But, as modern science has shown us, "observable" should not be equated with "fundamental" or "essential." At the most fundamental level, there is no physical distinction between different aggregates of matter. The only kinds of fundamental distinctions are ontological in nature: between living and non-living beings and between different kinds of living beings. And this is precisely what we are talking about when we talk of the consecration of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of the living Christ.
Certainly, "observable" macro-level differences between various structures of matter become very important when matter serves as a vehicle of life. Let us call these different structures of matter "physical platforms." The physical "platforms" of microbes, plants, animals and humans had to be structured so as to be viable vehicles for their particular forms of life. Take, for instance, the intricate infrastructure of DNA and protein folding essential for all forms of biological life and the marvelously complex structure of the brain that is crucial for all human life. How this structuring of sub-atomic matter into various macroformations was done, how the match was made between platform and life-form is a fascinating question — as fascinating as the question of the origin of autonomous agency. But we are not concerned with this question here. Rather, we draw attention to this phenomenon of the structuring of physical platforms to see what light it throws on the external attributes of the Eucharist.
While bread and wine are not different from body and blood at the subatomic level, they are obviously different in terms of observable attributes at the macro-level. But, as we have seen, even these differences do not rule out the possibility of certain kinds of change taking place. Just as a blob of matter changes into your body and blood when it becomes a vehicle of your life at conception, bread and wine can change into Body and Blood when they become platforms of the divine Life. What is important here is that the specific platform chosen for the divine Life in Eucharistic consecration — bread and wine — is precisely the platform that is suitable for our ingestion as food and drink. Because the platform does not change its external properties after consecration, it can be consumed by its intended recipients, namely human subjects. Just as all the other physical platforms of life were precisely structured for the appearance of the specific life-forms they support, so too was the platform of the Eucharist structured so as to support its end-objective, namely its consumption by humans. St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out that the sacrament of the Eucharist has the appearance of food and drink because it does for the soul what bread and wine do for the body: it sustains, builds up, restores.
Now while there is no change in their external properties, the Eucharistic elements do undergo an ontological change of being after consecration, a change driven by the coming of the divine Life. This change has traditionally been called transubstantiation, a transformation of the underlying substance, and it is to this we shall now turn.
Transubstantiation
The Second Council of Nicaea (787), one of the Seven Ecumenical Councils accepted by all Christians, taught that the transformation of bread and wine into body and blood was literal not symbolic: "Never did the Lord or the apostles or the Fathers call the bloodless sacrifice which is offered by the priest an image but the body itself and the blood itself." (Here Nicaea echoes the earlier Council of Ephesus held in 431.) The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) refined this teaching further, "In this Church Jesus Christ is both priest and sacrifice. In the Sacrament of the Altar, under the species of bread and wine, his Body and Blood are truly contained, the bread having been transubstantiated into his Body and wine into his Blood by divine power." The Orthodox Confession, approved by the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem (in 1643), affirmed the same teaching: "He is present in the Holy Eucharist, the same Son of God, God and Man, is also on earth by way of TRANSUBSTANTIATION [kata metousiosis]. For the SUBSTANCE of the bread is changed into the SUBSTANCE of His holy body, and the SUBSTANCE of the wine into the SUBSTANCE of His precious blood."
This traditional understanding of "transubstantiation" is entirely consistent with the paradigm that is being presented here. In fact, transubstantiation is the most accurate and coherent description of this account of the supreme elevation of matter. This is because life as such can be thought of as a "substance" and the coming of life to what is previously lifeless is therefore a change of substance.
"Substance" has taken a lot of criticism in modern times (substance abuse of a different kind!). It is alleged that substance is an obsolete, Hellenistic idea. William Alston, a leading contemporary philosopher of language, has shown that most of these charges are simply false and that "substance" in the sense of ultimate substratum is a coherent and potent term.2
How does "substance" apply to "life"? In one of the only major modern studies of the ontological nature of life, Josef Seifert subjects this question to careful analysis.
Life is surely not accidental in this sense [Aristotle's sense of accident]. It characterizes the most elementary what and how something is, its substantial being and essence, and the activity and operation of an organism. Turning into a dead corpse, the organism changes its essence and loses its substantial identity. The corpse is no longer this animal or this human being: these no longer exist. Mere parts and external elements of the organism continue to exist after death that are not identical with the living whole that we call organism . . . "The radical newness of life, of the psyche, the recognition of which we found to be the most important philosophical step in the discovery of the essence of life, shows that in addition to the living organism, life itself is a real entity. The principle of life, which in a sense is life or merges with it, is, at least in human persons, a substantial entity, a soul . . . The human soul is a simple substance that stands in itself in being, and is not just a principle or actuality of something else or of the human 'organism.'"3
The application of these insightful passages to the present discussion is all but obvious. Recall the traditional affirmation of the Real Presence. "The whole Christ is truly present, body, blood, soul, and divinity, under the appearances of bread and wine — the glorified Christ who rose from the dead after dying for our sins."4 Now consider a point made earlier: at consecration, lifeless matter becomes the vehicle of the Life of the Risen Lord thereby becoming his Body and Blood. We have seen that in humans "the principle of life is a substantial entity, a soul" and "soul" is "a simple substance that stands in itself in being." Since the "soul" of Christ becomes present at consecration ("And therefore in this sacrament the body indeed of Christ is present by the power of the sacrament, but His soul from real concomitance," wrote St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, 3-76-1), we see therefore that there is a change of substance. As to the matter that is the vehicle, there can be no change of "appearances" at the fundamental physical level, the sub-atomic realm, since all matter is made up of the same kinds of protons, neutrons and electrons. The only change that can and does take place is the introduction of the new Life-giving Substance that gives the previously existing protons, neutrons and electrons a new unity, identity and efficacy. What takes place, then, is a truly a change of substance, a transubstantiation.
All of the above ties into St. Thomas Aquinas's explanation that transubstantiation is not an annihilation of the substance of bread and wine but its transformation. "The substance of the bread or wine, after the consecration, remains neither under the sacramental species, nor elsewhere; yet it does not follow that it is annihilated; for it is changed into the body of Christ; just as if the air, from which fire is generated, be not there or elsewhere, it does not follow that it is annihilated" (Summa, 3-75-3-Reply to Objection 1.).
Now what happens when you consume the Body and Blood of our Lord or when the Eucharistic elements decay or are destroyed by natural means of some kind? Since matter continues to be the same at the sub-atomic level, couldn't it be said that the Body and Blood will persist through all the changes undergone by their macro-level structures? Here the answer is as follows: what is transubstantiated is bread and wine, an aggregate that, in its external properties, can serve as food and drink. Christ after all did not bestow the power to consecrate rocks and logs into his Body and Blood. Consequently, once the Eucharistic elements lose the properties of bread and wine, they are no longer carriers of the divine Life. This, after all, is the case in other instances of the cessation of bodily functions. Once your heart stops beating and your kidneys and brain stop working, your life leaves what was previously your body. This is because your "physical platform" has to serve as a viable "platform" in order to sustain your life. The same applies to the Eucharist, the physical platform for the divine Life. Said St. Thomas, "Since it does not seem reasonable to say that anything takes place miraculously in this sacrament, except in virtue of the consecration itself, which does not imply either creation or return of matter, it seems better to say that in the actual consecration it is miraculously bestowed on the dimensive quantity of the bread and wine to be the subject of subsequent forms" (3-77-5).
In saying that the divine Life, the Soul and Divinity of Christ, become present in the Eucharistic elements so that they become the Body and Blood of Christ at consecration, we do not suggest that they are "living" in any sense of physical animation. St. Thomas points out, "The soul is the form of the body, giving it the whole order of perfect being, i.e., being, corporeal being, and animated being, and so on. Therefore the form of the bread is changed into the form of Christ's body, according as the latter gives corporeal being, but not according as it bestows animated being" (3-75-6- Reply to Objection 2). The life that is present is spiritual and not biological. It is personal, divine, eternal life.
Presence
Another series of questions arises at this point. When the Eucharistic Host is moved from place to place, is Christ being moved as well since it is his Body? If two Hosts are present before us, are two Jesus' present as well? Does not consumption of the Host cause actual physical injury to Christ if it is indeed his Body?
In response, some have said that the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is "sacramental" and therefore such questions are meaningless. But what does it mean to say the presence is sacramental and how does it address the questions without diminishing the reality of the divine presence?
The short answer is that Jesus is not present dimensionally in the Eucharist. "The dimensions of the bread or wine are not changed into the dimensions of the body of Christ," wrote St. Thomas Aquinas, "but substance into substance. And so the substance of Christ's body or blood is under this sacrament by the power of the sacrament, but not the dimensions of Christ's body or blood" (3-76-3-3). "Christ's body is not in this sacrament in the same way as a body is in a place, which by its dimensions is commensurate with the place; but in a special manner which is proper to this sacrament. Hence we say that Christ's body is upon many altars, not as in different places, but "sacramentally": and thereby we do not understand that Christ is there only as in a sign, although a sacrament is a kind of sign; but that Christ's body is here after a fashion proper to this sacrament, as stated above" (3-75-1-3).
The manner of Christ's presence in his Eucharistic Body, then, is unique. It is true that God — and this means the Trinity — is present everywhere. But God Incarnate, Christ in his human nature, is today present only in Heaven and in the Eucharist. At consecration, Christ does not come down from Heaven to the Host but the Host rises to him. The earthly rises to the heavenly. To participate in the Mass is to participate in the heavenly intercession of Christ before the Father ("he lives forever to make intercession for them." Hebrews 7:25) and to receive the Bread from Heaven.
An analogy from science may be helpful here (although it is strictly an analogy). Modern physics has shown that all physical things are basically energy fields. A field is something that has energy and occupies space. All the matter and the forces in the world are ultimately fields and so they are not different in kind. A matter field simply has a higher concentration of energy than a "matter-less" field. Particles like electrons and photons are produced by ripples of energy in a field. They are forms of concentrated energy.
Now let us apply the analogy. The Body of the Risen Christ may be thought of as analogous to a force-field that "materializes" in the Eucharist whenever the divine Energy is "concentrated" as happens at consecration. The analogy is, of course, limited because this "field" is personal in nature: the Soul of Jesus is present with his Body. And as a divine Person, Jesus, of course, can be present anywhere and everywhere — his Presence being known by where he acts.
Thus Christ's Body is not "locally" present. St. Thomas again, "Christ is not moved locally of Himself, but only accidentally, because Christ is not in this sacrament as in a place, as stated above. But what is not in a place, is not moved of itself locally, but only according to the motion of the subject in which it is." (3-76-6)
Efficacy
We have said that the presence of the divine Life in the Eucharistic elements not simply individuates and unifies them but also gives them a new efficacy. But what concretely does this mean? If the Eucharist is a carrier of the divine Life, how does this help its recipients?
Consider food in general. Food is the source of our energy. We receive energy from the carbohydrates and proteins contained in our foods. These foods are, in general, derived from other living beings be they plant or animal. We receive our physical energy from them. Their "flesh and blood" become part of our body and blood.
Consider now the Food from Heaven, the Body and Blood of God incarnate. As a carrier of the divine Life, it imparts its Life and associated spiritual Energy to its recipients. As the Fathers of the Church recognized, it divinizes the soul of the recipient who is rightly inclined. "He gives a sharing in the divine life by making himself food for those whom he knows and who have received from him the same sensibility and intelligence," writes St. Maximus the Confessor. "Thus in tasting the food they know with a true knowledge the Lord is good, he who mixes in a divine quality to deify those who eat, since he is and is clearly called bread of life and of strength."5 "The Bread of Heaven, i.e. Christ," notes St. Cyril of Alexandria, "feeds us for eternal life, both through the supply of the Holy Spirit, and the participation of his own flesh, which infuses into us the participation of God and wipes out the deadness that comes from the ancient curse."6 Just as Jesus' Body and Blood pass into our body and blood, his Soul and Divinity enter our souls and natures transforming them. "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf" (1 Cor. 10:16-17).
What precisely, then, are the characteristics or properties of the divine Life that are transmitted in and through the Eucharist? Clearly, as we have seen, we are not dealing with the attributes of animation (motion, for instance) that we normally associate with biological life. Then again, higher forms of life are characterized by higher-level activities that are hidden and yet immeasurably more profound: conceptual thought, unconditional love and the like. And this indeed applies to the divine Life. It is an Energy that acts at the level of intellect and will elevating the two powers of our souls, knowing and loving. "Christ's body is not changed into man's body, but nourishes his soul," wrote St. Thomas (3-77-6).
The Eucharist divinizes us. To be divinized is to live with the Life of God and to know and love with the Power of God. We "share in the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4) because "whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him" (1 Cor. 6:17). To be divinized is to undergo a radical and total transformation in and through God by being filled with the Holy Spirit. Among the "properties" associated with the divinized life are the supernatural virtues and the seven Gifts of the Spirit.
Invocation
What is the mechanism that brings about the transformation we call transubstantiation? Some may find it hard to believe that a few words and associated physical actions from a man can result in such a miraculous event.
But here again there is continuity with past experience. How do any of the humanly caused events in this world take place? There has to be an intention that is followed up with an action. The intention is a purely non-physical event that is transmitted to the brain and then converted into some physical action. My intention to take a book from its shelf precedes the brain-event required to make it happen. Of course there are actions taken without articulated intentions but even these require a command from the mind to the brain; sometimes the intention and action are all but simultaneous but even here we know what comes first.
In principle, then, there is no reason why a non-physical intention articulated in words cannot bring about changes in the physical world. This happens all the time resulting sometimes in the most magnificent creations from Einstein's postulation of his Theory of Relativity and the accompanying applications to Mozart's compositions and their performance. On another plane, we should remember that the creation of the physical world is the result of a divine Intention. "By the Lord's word the heavens were made" (Psalm 33:6).
We notice also that all production of life in this world comes about from specific actions. Instinct and desire drive these actions in the animal world; intention (sometimes disordered) is the starting point in human beings. But how life itself started and how it is possible to "reproduce" it remains as much a mystery as it always was (we know the physical mechanisms that are the instruments but none of these have any bearing on the ontological nature of life and replication). Yes, a man and a woman can intend to have a child but how their physical union can result in a new person — well, that's an entirely different question. The Nobel Laureate brain scientist Sir John Eccles said, every human person is a direct divine creation, "a loving creation."5
Returning now to the Eucharistic transformation what we find is that there is an intention that is the starting point. It is actually a human intention invoking a divine action to bring about the presence of the divine Life in the Eucharistic elements. The transformation itself is a purely divine action but it is an action that can only take place if the human representative invokes it. The possibility of such an invocation and its preconditions were given to us as promise and command by our divine Lord. The invocation of the Holy Spirit and the recitation of the words of institution ("The is my body . . . This is my blood") culminate in a divine response.
Biblical texts in both the Old and the New Testaments show us that human invocations can bring about divine actions. Three instances should suffice.
"Lord God, reject not the plea of your anointed, remember the devotion of David, your servant." When Solomon had ended his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the holocaust and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the house (2 Chron. 6:42, 7:1).And the angel said to her in reply, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God . . ." . . . Mary said, "Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word" (Luke 1:35, 38).
All these devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, together with some women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers . . . When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were . . . And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14; Acts 2:1,2,4).
Like the Word that brought all things into being (John 1:3), the Words of invocation and institution are words of creation and transformation that actually result in what they pronounce. Said St. Irenaeus, "Bread from the earth, receiving the invocation of God, is no longer common bread but a Eucharist consisting of two elements, an earthly and a heavenly."8
To conclude, we have said that the consecration of bread and wine should be understood as the transformation of matter into a vehicle of the divine Life, the Life of the incarnate Son of God. As a direct and inescapable consequence of this change, the Eucharistic elements become the Body and Blood of the Person whose Life is now present. We have pointed out too that this "picture" is entirely consistent with the modern understanding of matter and the traditional doctrine of transubstantiation.
End notes
- Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God (New York: The Free Press, 2001).
- William P. Alston, "Substance and the Trinity," in The Trinity edited by Stephen T. Davis and Gerald O'Collins, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
- Josef Seifert, What is Life? (Amsterdam-Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1997), 59, 60.
- http://www.usccb.org/dpp/realpresence.htm.
- Maximus the Confessor, Selected Writings, tr. George Berthold (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1985), 83-4.
- Commentary on the Gospel According to John.
- Sir John Eccles, "A Divine Design: Some Questions on Origins," in Henry Margenau and Roy Abraham Varghese ed. Cosmos, Bios, Theos (La Salle: Open Court, 1992), 164.
- Adversus Haereses, IV, 18.
Roy Abraham Varghese is the editor of various books on the interface of science, philosophy and religion, including Cosmos, Bios, Theos (Open Court, Chicago), described in Time as "the year's most intriguing book about God" and widely reviewed in technical and popular publications, with contributions from 24 Nobel Prize-winning scientists; Cosmic Beginnings and Human Ends (Open Court, Chicago), winner of a Templeton Book Prize in 1995; Great Thinkers on Great Questions (One World, Oxford and distributed by Penguin); and Theos, Anthropos, Christos (Peter Lang, New York). His most recent book is Wonder of the World. His most recent article for HPR appeared in November 2005.
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