In this article I have been spending some time on the concept of the Real Presence of Christ in Holy Communion/Eucharist. I believe that it is critical that we come to a true understanding of this idea. It seems that a good portion of Christianity, other than Catholic and Orthodox people, have reduced Holy Communion to some sort of symbolic presence. It is interesting to note that early Christians actually took the Real Presence for granted. When we read the writings of the Fathers the question is never really raised and they give the impression that there is no real reason to debate this issue. Justin Martyr wrote: This food we call the Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake except one who believes that the things we teach are true and …who lives as Christ handed down to us. For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate by God’s Word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the Word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus.”

Irenaeus wrote: Christ has declared the cup, a part of creation, to be his own Blood, from which he causes our blood to flow; and the bread, a part of creation, he has established as his own Body, from which he gives increase to our bodies.”

It was not truly until the Protestant Reformation in the West that the Catholic Church, and later the Orthodox Churches, put together statements about the Real Presence. These statements     declare that through a spiritual process that is referred to as transubstantiation in the West and in the East as (μετουσίωσις) metousiosis, that the bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ Himself. The 1672 Synod held in Jerusalem states: We believe the Lord Jesus Christ to be present, not typically, nor figuratively, nor by superabundant grace … but truly and really, so that after the consecration of the bread and of the wine, the bread is transmuted, transubstantiated, converted and transformed into the true Body Itself of the Lord … and the wine is converted and transubstantiated into the true Blood Itself of the Lord, Which, as He hung upon the Cross, was poured out for the life of the world.

In the history of Christian thought, various ways were developed to try to explain how the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ in the eucharistic liturgy. Quite unfortunately, these explanations have become too rationalistic and closely connected with certain human philosophies.

Ask: What do I believe about the Eucharist?