Embrace truth; embrace love.

The doctrine of the eucharist is perhaps one of the most difficult things for both Christians and non-Christians alike to accept let alone understand. Jesus was emphatic about it, that if we do this we shall have eternal life; therefore we know that it is not simply a symbolic act. Jesus was never about show, why would he ask us to do something that is purely an outward show of faith? Exactly, because it isn’t. 

Without getting too in depth, I would like to explain. My pastor spoke about this last Sunday in church and ever since it has been reeling in my mind. I just now watched a video by Father Barron about the eucharist in support of the idea of Transubstantiation, that is, the physical transformation of the communion bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ during the Offertory because I wanted to understand the traditional Catholic point of view more fully. However, my pastor mentioned another idea called Consubstantiation which captures the meaningfulness of the Catholic sacrament without the literalness of the Transubstantiation. Consubstantiation holds that Christ is physically present alongside the Eucharist. That is to say that the bread and wine do not physically change, but there is an alignment of the spiritual reality of Christ’s presence and the physical reality of the bread and wine. It is both simultaneously.

And why shouldn’t it be? We see the same kind of dual reality in Christ who is God in the flesh (John 10:30, 38). We see it in our worship which is an action of both physical and spiritual affect (John 4:23-24). God likes for us to be a part of something bigger that we do not understand—His mystery—because it allows Him to move in a greater way than we can fathom, and that’s exactly what we see in the Eucharist. By partaking of communion, we are uniting ourselves with Christ (and also the church, which is the body of Christ), proclaiming his death until he returns (1 Cor. 11:23-34), and receiving the life-giving power of Christ to move in our life’s circumstances. Returning to the idea of dual reality, it is important for us to recognize that everything that we do, we do for Christ in spirit and in truth. Whether worship, miracles, sacraments, etc. we must do so with pure intention, purpose and passion to give glory to the Father. 

Further reference: John 6: 25-65