Transcript

So, in this sixth episode, we'll look at transubstantiation and the real presence according to the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas.

This will be a continuation of what we looked at in the fifth episode, um, because Thomas Aquinas builds on his predecessors and brings it to a, um, synthesis.

So, we always have to remember that, um, the medieval scholastic theologians aren't trying to prove the real presence.

Well, they're presupposing it as a doctrine of faith, right?

It's the faith of the Church.

And what they're...

They're making use of philosophy not to demonstrate the, uh, the mystery, but so that we can speak reasonable...

Oh, I shouldn't even have said it.

So that we can speak about it, um, and show it not to be contradictory, um, so that we can speak rightly about it, um, and to shed some light on the mystery by way of analogy.

But again, we're always taking our point of departure from the revealed truth, and that revealed truth is from the words of Jesus at the Last Supper.

All right?

"Take, eat.

This is my body.

This is the blood of the covenant." Right?

So, the point of departure is simply the words of Christ.

And then, the faith of the Church, which we saw was defined against Berengarius in the, uh, formula that he had to, um, to recite, composed by Pope Gregory VII, and then, uh, four and a half centuries later, um, infallibly taught by the Council of Trent.

So, let's look at that.

The Council of Trent, um, teaches that in the august sacrament of the Holy Eucharist after the consecration of the bread and the wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is truly, really, and substantially contained under this species.

That means appearances of those sensible things.

So, uh, side, the word species, when we use it in Catholic theology, is simply, um, m- taking, um, the Latin word species, which means appearances.

And in negative form, the, um, Council of Trent says this.

"If anyone denies that the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore the whole Christ, is truly, really, and substantially contained in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, but says that Christ is present in this sacrament only as in a sign, or figure, or by His power, let him be anathema." All right.

So we can see that's an infallible teaching, right?

That can't be changed and requires our, um, firm belief.

Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.

And notice, it's not, um, it's not simply repetition to add substantially, because there can...

Christ is present in different ways in the world.

Um, Christ is present, um, in this room, because two or three are present here, um, in His name.

Um, Christ is present in the Word of God proclaimed, Christ is present, um, in, um, in many different ways, right?

In icons.

But He's present substantially only in the Eucharist.

That means only in the Eucharist is He present, outside of Heaven, that is, in the fullness of His personal reality, including His body, His blood, His soul, as well as His divinity.

Right?

So, substantially contained, meaning in the whole substance of His humanity and divinity.

And that's, um, also proclaimed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1374.

Right?

Simply repeats the definition of Trent.

But it goes on, in 1374, the Catechism, to say, to explain a little further, "This presence is called real, by which is not intended to exclude other kinds of presence, as if they could not be real too." Right?

As He's present, say, in the Word of God, or He's present, um, where we are gathered together.

Um, "but because it's present in the fullest sense, that is a substantial presence, by which Christ, God and man, makes Himself wholly and entirely present." All right?

That's the faith of the Church-

Mm-hmm.

...

in the real presence.

And theologians don't demonstrate that, but start from that.

All right?

So, that's St. Thomas' starting point.

Now, um, another thing that he uses in his explanation of transubstantiation is what we covered in the last talk, the distinction of accidents and substance.

All right?

So, again, the accidents are the changeable conditions and appearances which don't directly belong to the essence of a thing, but, um, answer the question how something is.

And we know something, first, precisely by its accidents, um, and from them, we infer the substance.

All right?

Whereas the substance is the abiding subject, um, that answers the question, what is it?

St. Thomas takes that, um, distinction from the, we could say, from Aristotle, but more importantly, from the philosophy of common sense.

It's not just Aristotle.

All of us experience this distinction between what something is and how it appears.

All right?

So, we could call it the patrimony of the philosophy of common sense.

And then, we s- see that in Jesus' words at the Last Supper.

Right?

And so, St. Thomas explains that the very language of Jesus' words at the Last Supper, the institution narrative......

requires us to, um, to believe that one substance is con- converted into another.

Right?

Because Jesus said, "This..." Which before the consecration, be- at the beginning of the sentence, the this was bread.

But he says, "This is my body." And thus, at the end of the sentence, it's no longer bread, but his body.

And that's because Jesus' words are omnipotent words, right?

Which do what they say.

So, one this into another this, one substance into another substance.

Right?

But the appearances of the first one remain.

All right.

Are there any other options?

So, Saint Thomas, in treating the real presence, he starts with the question, "Is Christ really present?" And he answers, "Yes," based on the authority of Christ and the faith of the church.

But then in his second article on the real presence, he addresses the conversion.

And he poses the question, um, "Could Christ's real presence come about in any other way than through transubstantiation?" That is, could Christ become present, um, by moving into the host, um, and this was the, um, later would become the position of Martin Luther and, um, the Luther- our Lutheran brothers and sisters, often called consubstantiation.

Right?

So, um, could Christ become present by moving into the bread and wine instead of through the conversion of the bread and wine into him?

Right?

So, that's the question he poses.

And he answers that consubstantiation, um, Christ coming into the bread and wine is incompatible with the faith of the church for two reasons.

First, he thinks it's incompatible with the very words used by Christ.

Right?

"This is my body." If the substance of bread remains and Christ simply comes into them, he should have said something different.

He should have said, "Here is my body." Or, "Here is also my body." Or, "My body is in the bread." Or something like that.

But he doesn't say that.

He says, "This is my body." And so the meaning has to be, this substance, which was bread, is now my body.

In other words, Christ's words imply a conversion of substance from one this into another this.

Uh, that's Saint Thomas' first argument.

And it had been- been made before his time by other theologians that we mentioned in the previous episode.

But Saint Thomas adds another argument then, and he explains, um, when we think about it, something can begin to be present in a new place in- in fundamentally two ways, and only two ways.

Um, let's take the example of a fire.

A fire can be- begin to be present here, maybe ...

God forbid, um, because something here is transformed into fire.

Let's say we get a spark and the wood of my podium becomes, um, on fire, and so the wood would be transformed into fire and ash.

Or it could come to be here by being brought here from another place.

Right?

Those are our two options.

Local movement or one thing converting into another.

Let's take another example.

The ordinary way in which a baby begins to be present in a mother's womb is by conversion of, um, in this case, the egg and the sperm, into, um, a new human being at the moment of conception.

So, that would be conversion, egg and sperm into new human being.

But, um, another possibility, um, contrary to, um, Catholic moral theology would be in vitro fertilization, in which, um, the union is taking place in a test tube.

It is then brought into the mother's womb, um, by local movement.

Right?

So, those are our two ways, local movement from one place into another, or conversion of one thing into another thing.

All right.

Which one is the case in- in the Eucharist?

Right?

Is it that Christ, um, who is in heaven, right, descended into heaven 2,000 years ago, he remains there in his, um, in his normal mode of bodily presence, parts outside of other parts taking up space in heaven.

Um, is it that he comes down onto the altar by local movement?

Or is it that something here on the altar, the bread and the wine, are converted into him, making him present under their appearances which God miraculously upholds?

All right.

The faith of- faith of the church is the second and not the first.

Right?

We may imagine it in the first way, right?

We sometimes use that language of Christ coming down onto the altar.

I speak that way too, but we have to understand that that's a metaphor.

What's really happening is in some way the opposite.

It's the bread and the wine on the altar that are converted into Christ's body and blood while the accidents or- or appearance of the bread and wine remain here, and Jesus becomes now present under those appearances with the whole of his body and blood, soul and divinity.

In other words, not local movement, but conversion.

Right?

And we saw that was defined...

Berengaris had to swear that, that Christ became present by substantial conversion of the bread and the wine into him.

And he had denied that, thinking that the bread and the wine simply remain unchanged....

after the consecration, right?

Then that's heretical.

Right?

We can't hold that the bread and the wine remain after the consecration because that's how Jesus becomes present, the bread and the wine becoming him.

All right.

Why couldn't it be local movement though?

And it's very simple, right?

If Jesus became present in the Eucharist through local movement, various impossible things or absurd things would have to occur.

He would have to travel from where he is in heaven.

In other words, local movement involves going through all the intermediate places.

Now, those intermediate places, uh, we don't know exactly where heaven is, um, but nevertheless, it's a place clearly not accessible to us in this, in our-

Yeah.

...

place on Earth.

Um, and he would have to travel through the intermediate places to get to our altar here in Steubenville.

Another problem is, he's through transubstan- through, in, in the Eucharist, he becomes present on many altars simultaneously, and a body, through local movement, um, has to leave the place where it is, end up in a new place, and he can't end up in multiple places.

Um, so there are various, um...

and it would take time as well, et cetera.

Um, and none of this clearly is, um, what we believe about the Eucharist.

Um, and what's happening is rather the reverse, the bread and the wine that's on many altars in many parts of the world, all of that is converted into the same one preexisting Christ who remains in heaven.

Christ doesn't leave heaven in, in the Eucharist.

It's that the bread and the wine are converted into him, but the appearances of the bread and wine remain here, and Christ now becomes mysteriously, sacramentally present under them.

Under them if we consider them as sacramental veils that veil his real presence here where those accidents of the bread and the wine remain, and in our very bodies, when we take those appearances of bread and wine into ourselves, we take Christ's whole person into ourselves.

So not by local movement, but rather by conversion of bread and wine into him.

He now becomes present, see, Thomas explains, in a way analogous to how the bread and the wine were present, um, before the transubstantiation.

Before the transubstantiation, um, the substance of bread and wine was present whole and entire under every part of the appearances of the bread and wine, right?

After the transubstantiation, instead of the bread and the wine being present as substances, Christ is now present in, in an analogous way, whole and entire under every part.

We'll come back to that in a minute.

Now, another very odd thing about this is it's different from other conversions we've said because in other conversions, let's say the wood into ash or the egg and the sperm into the, the new human being, um, a new thing is created.

But in the case of transubstantiation, Christ, um, is made present, and he existed before.

In other words, he's not...

nothing new is brought into existence, and he's unchanged by it.

But of course, it enables him to become present now here through the appearances of bread and wine which are here.

The conversion of the bread and the wine into Christ rather than the local movement is what enables Christ to be present on many, many altars all at the same time, and many tabernacles, right?

Because in each tabernacle, it's not a different Christ.

It's the same Christ who's present under the appearances of bread and wine which are locally here.

In other words, um, with their quantity taking up space in the tabernacle, making Christ present, whole and entire under them, and the same Christ in every place, because all of those...

transubstantiation converted all of those hosts into the one Christ.

And, and so this is what the church understands by the term transubstantiation.

So I'm gonna go back again to the Council of Trent, which defines it as, "A change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the body of Christ and a change of the whole substance of wine into the substance of his blood." This change, the Holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly named transubstantiation.

So Saint Thomas, in speaking about this, says that such a change cannot be made by a finite agent, but only by an infinite agent.

That is, by God's own omnipotence.

So it's not hard for God, but it's impossible for a creature.

A creature can bring about change by causing accidental change.

In other words, fire brings about, works on wood by causing accidental changes until the wood can no longer remain wood and becomes another thing, ash.

Um, but what we can't do is simply instantaneously take one substance and make it into another substance.

But the divine omnipotence can do this, and that's obvious because the divine omnipotence simply has to say the word and something comes to be.

So Saint Thomas explains, "Such a change can be made by the power of an infinite agent which has control over all being because the nature of being is common to both." Right?

The wine in Christ's body...

I'm sorry, the, the bread in Christ's body, the wine in Christ's blood....

and whatever there is of being in the one, the author of being can change into whatever, ever there is of being in the author, withdrawing all that whereby one was distinguished from the other.

In other words, God simply makes in Christ, right, in his divinity, which is working through his human words as instruments, simply takes the reality of the bread and, and makes it into the reality of his body.

And likewise with the wine, making it into the reality of his blood.

For God, this is not a difficulty, right?

It's rather a piece of cake.

Um, what's difficult though is precisely, um, what this makes present, his sacrifice, right?

In other words, his sacrifice which cost him all of his blood.

The real presence though is not difficult for God to bring about, understand.

So, why does God retain the appearances of the bread and the wine?

And, and I think we've already answered this, um, so that we can receive him in a fitting way under the appearance of what we normally eat and drink.

And then secondly, to give us the merit of faith, believing what we don't see, right?

What we doubly don't see in, um, in the incarnation, Christ, right, was seen in his humanity but not in his divinity.

In the Eucharist, he's seen in neither, and we have the merit of both.

And third, the bread and the wine remain the appear...

Sorry, not the bread and the wine.

The appearances of the bread and wine remain after the consecration, um, to make present Christ's body and blood under them, right?

As long as the appearances or accidents of the bread and wine remain, Christ's whole personal presence is under them, right?

When we receive communion, after about 10 minutes, our digestive powers break down those appearances, and it's at moment, um, when the appearances cease, um, Christ's real presence likewise ceases.

And so for about 10 minutes after receiving communion, each one of us is a tabernacle containing Christ's body, blood, soul, and divinity.

After the 10 minutes, that sureness of divinity continues to nourish us, but his humanity is no longer present.

And so the appearance of the bread and wine are very, are crucial to the...

that means by which Christ becomes present here in our space and time, um, wherever we happen to be.

Right?

And it's not contradictory that the appearances, the accidents of bread and wine remain, even though the substance of bread and wine has been, uh, converted into Christ.

And that's, again, simply the divine omnipotence.

This, the divine omnipotence, just as it can make one substance into another substance, so it can sustain the accidents without a proper substance.

So, before transubstantiation, when I, when the...

before the priest does the consecration, there are simply pieces of bread on the altar, right?

And under those pieces of bread, um, there was the substance, and the appearances or accidents of the bread adhered, had their being in the substance.

And the same for the wine, right?

As in every other thing.

And when that substance is, is converted, God sustains the accidents doing what previously the bread did.

In other words, um, they had their being in the bread previously.

Now, God simply upholds them in being without them enduring in the bread.

It, they're still accidents.

In other words, they still have the nature such that they would inhere in the substance of bread, but God is holding them in being without the aid of the bread and the wine, um, and he's powerful to do that because he's God.

And he sustains them precisely so that we can receive Christ under them.

As we said, the whole substance of Christ is present "under" us, right?

These quotes, right?

So we're using it analogously under any part of the appearance of bread and wine.

And if we break it in half, Christ remains whole and entire in each half, right?

As we explained, Christ, um, in the Eucharist is present in the same manner analogously as the substance of the bread and wine was present, um, prior to the consecration.

And that is whole and entire under every part.

And so he's, Christ becomes present in the Eucharist, not in the mode of quantity with parts outside of other parts, measured that we could take a ruler to, but he's present whole and entire under every part.

And that's why Christ who's, let's assume six feet tall, right?

In heaven, um, fits under any size Eucharist because he's present whole and entire.

He's not present in the mode of quantity that we could measure with a ruler, but he's present in the mode of substance, and that means whole and entire under every part.

The best analogy, it falls short, is our soul, right?

Because we're whole and entire in our animating our whole body.

But let's not be confused here.

It's not just Jesus' soul that's present in the Eucharist, it's the whole of him, right?

We say body, blood, soul, and divinity.

He's wholly present under every part of the quantity of the bread and the wine.

Now, this is not i- in, in speaking about......

substance and quantity, Saint Thomas, he isn't trying to, again, demonstrate anything.

It's just simply how should we think about Christ's presence on the basis of Jesus' words and the church's universal liturgical, um, practice and faith.

And so, Christ is present in the mode of substance, not in the mode of quantity.

And that's simply explaining, or maybe not explaining, it's speaking rightly about what we all know when receiving the Eucharist, that it doesn't matter what size host we receive, we receive the whole Jesus Christ.

And it doesn't matter if we receive under both species or just one, we receive the whole Jesus Christ.

Right?

And that's what we call concomitance, that the whole of him, um, comes along, right?

Even though, so Saint Thomas says, "The words of institution directly have one effect, right?

'This is my body,' makes his body present." But when one thing becomes present, everything else that's really joined to it also becomes present, right?

And so, the whole of Christ becomes present, um, through concomitance.

And here, Saint Thomas does a thought experiment, which is interesting.

Let's imagine for a second that Holy Mass had been celebrated by, let's say, Saint Peter on Holy Saturday.

All right.

Well, nobody celebrated Mass on Holy Saturday, but let's just suppose that Mass had, had been celebrated then, um, the words of, of institution, of the institution narrative, "This is my body," would've made his body present as it then was.

And at that moment, it was dead in the tomb.

He was still united to his divinity, um, but his blood was not united to his body, but was separated from it.

And so, the words over the chalice would've made his blood present, his blood present, um, united to his divinity, but not united either to his body or to his soul.

But on Easter Sunday, Jesus rose from the dead.

And so, from that point on, it's impossible to make his body present without his blood, his soul, and his divinity coming along for the ride, as it were.

And likewise, impossible to make his blood present without his body, soul, and divinity coming present likewise.

But still, we need to celebrate Eucharist under both species always to make his sacrifice present.

And so, this too was defined in the Council of Trent, "If anyone denies that in the venerable sacrament of the Eucharist the whole Christ is contained under each species and under each and every portion of either species when divided up, let him be anathema." Right?

So Christ, in summary, Christ, um, becomes present in this unique way, the conversion of substance of bread and wine into him, and he remains present under those appearances as long as they retain their own being.

That is, until we digest them, um, and he remains present in the mode of substance, that is, whole and entire under every part.

And that means that the whole of him is received by us in holy communion and nothing is left out.

And in all of this, we haven't demonstrated anything, but we're simply, um, seeking to, uh, express what it is that we believe in the mystery of the Eucharist.

And the reason we believe it is because of Christ's words, right, which say this, and we know he has the power to make those words true.

"This is my body.

This is my blood." Saint Thomas has a marvelous hymn, um, Adoro Te Devote, in which, um, he speaks about how our senses are deceived, our senses of seeing, touching, and tasting, but hearing is not deceived, right?

Because we hear Christ's own word, "This is my body." I will leave it there, and in the next episode, we'll take up, um, the sacrifice of the Mass.

We give you thanks, almighty God, for the gift of the Eucharist and the real presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, um, in the Eucharist in every tabernacle of the world.

Amen.

In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.