This is the third and final segment in our series about the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, the belief that the bread and wine at Communion truly become the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. Not coincidentally, a large Eucharistic Congress is taking place in Indianapolis this week. So, please pray for those people.
So far, we’ve discussed the fact that some groups accuse the Catholic Church of inventing the doctrine of the Eucharist during the Middle Ages, many centuries after the time Jesus walked the earth. These folks insist that everyone during the early years of Christianity knew that all the talk about Jesus’ “body and blood” was just symbolic. No one, it is claimed, believed that bread and wine somehow miraculously changed into the real body and blood of Christ.
Last week we examined some passages from the Bible, specifically Jesus’ words in John, chapter 6, and St. Paul’s writings in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11. When you read these verses from Scripture, there is no hint of any figurative or symbolic meaning; the words about eating flesh, drinking blood, and recognizing the body of the Lord come across as quite literal.
This week, let’s take a look at the teachings from some early Church fathers. These words all come from the first few centuries of Christianity; that is, way before the Middle Ages, when the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist was allegedly invented.
Last week we examined some passages from the Bible, specifically Jesus’ words in John, chapter 6, and St. Paul’s writings in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11. When you read these verses from Scripture, there is no hint of any figurative or symbolic meaning; the words about eating flesh, drinking blood, and recognizing the body of the Lord come across as quite literal.
This week, let’s take a look at the teachings from some early Church fathers. These words all come from the first few centuries of Christianity; that is, way before the Middle Ages, when the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist was allegedly invented.
- St. Ignatius of Antioch (c. 110 AD): “[Heretics] abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our savior Jesus Christ” (Letter to Smyrnians 7:1).
- St. Justin Martyr (c. 100 – 165 AD): “For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by Him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nourished, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus” (First Apology, 66).
- St. Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 140 – 202 AD): “[Jesus] has declared the cup, a part of creation, to be His own blood...and the bread, a part of creation, He has established as His own body” (Against Heresies 5:2:2).
These quotations, and many similar ones, clearly spell out what the early Church believed and practiced regarding the Eucharist. (See my book “The Gospel According to Morty,” specifically the section titled, “Is the Real Presence Really Real?” Available on Amazon Kindle.) It is simply impossible for an honest seeker to claim the Catholic Church “invented” the idea of the Real Presence sometime during the Middle Ages.
Renowned historian J.N.D. Kelly was a professor at Oxford and an expert on the early Christian church. Although Kelly, who died in 1997 at age 88, was a life-long member of the Anglican Church (a Protestant denomination), he had the honesty to write: “Eucharistic teaching, it should be understood at the outset, was in general unquestioningly realist, i.e., the consecrated bread and wine were taken to be, and were treated and designated as, the Savior’s body and blood” (Early Christian Doctrines, page 440).
A significant percentage of practicing Catholics do not accept the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist. They think it’s just a symbolic ritual. I suppose that’s understandable. It is hard to wrap your brain around the claim that mere bread and wine are transformed into the actual body and blood of Jesus, just because a priest said some words.
Renowned historian J.N.D. Kelly was a professor at Oxford and an expert on the early Christian church. Although Kelly, who died in 1997 at age 88, was a life-long member of the Anglican Church (a Protestant denomination), he had the honesty to write: “Eucharistic teaching, it should be understood at the outset, was in general unquestioningly realist, i.e., the consecrated bread and wine were taken to be, and were treated and designated as, the Savior’s body and blood” (Early Christian Doctrines, page 440).
A significant percentage of practicing Catholics do not accept the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist. They think it’s just a symbolic ritual. I suppose that’s understandable. It is hard to wrap your brain around the claim that mere bread and wine are transformed into the actual body and blood of Jesus, just because a priest said some words.
Here is one last quotation, from St. Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 350 AD): “Do not, therefore, regard the Bread and Wine as simply that; for they are, according to the Master’s declaration, the Body and Blood of Christ. Even though the senses suggest to you the other, let faith make you firm. Do not judge in this matter by taste, but be fully assured by the faith, not doubting that you have been deemed worthy of the Body and Blood of Christ” (22 [Mystagogic 4], 6) (Emphasis added.)
Please take the time to investigate the doctrine of the Eucharist, which the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the “source and summit of the faith.” Christ is truly present. The Eucharist is the closest we can get to Our Lord on this side of Heaven.
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