The Eucharistic Presence

Our Lord's proclamation of the truth of the Real Objective Presence in Saint John chapter 6 is certainly not symbolical or metaphorical, and He is not speaking in figurative terms, as the context of the Scripture makes clear. In our day, when a significant percentage of American Roman Catholics do not believe in the Real Objective Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and probably an even greater percentage of Anglicans (at least of the evangelical variety) doubt and struggle with this divine truth, I think it is better to emphasise the corporeal and incarnational dimension of the Eucharistic Presence rather than place emphasis on the more symbolic or representative aspects of the Eucharistic Mystery: one can never affirm or assert too strongly the fact that the Blessed Sacrament is Jesus Christ, a Divine Thing, the glorified Body and Blood of Christ under the consecrated elements of bread and wine, so that the fullness of Our Lord's human nature, as well as His Divinity, is present in the form of the sacred species, in an abiding and permanent way after Consecration. We should reject as contrary to Holy Tradition the doctrine of memorialism, which makes the Eucharist a mere mental psychological act of remembrance devoid of presence and grace, and the doctrine of virtualism, which holds that only the believing faithful receive the subjective grace or power of the Body and Blood through the elements, but not the Thing Itself objectively present in the elements. Historically, Anglicanism has, at sundry times, been confused by these two insufficient doctrines on the Eucharistic Presence, and it is up to us to clarify the biblical and patristic truth for our own tradition.

Since the Reformation, Anglicans have insisted, with the consensus of the early Fathers, Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, Saint Theodore of Mopsuestia and Saint Theophylact especially amongst them, that the materiality of the Bread and Wine remains in its original physical state after Eucharistic Consecration, but that to it is joined by Consecration the supernatural totality of the Incarnate God-Man, by a 'hypostatic union,' a Personal Union extending the Incarnation, a sacramental unity of the outward and visible sign with the Divine Thing, Our Lord, Who is signified and contained in the sign. The Holy Ghost, through the Consecration of the Mass, effects a sacramental change, an ontological change, in the forms of bread and wine on a supernatural metaphysical level, so that the outward forms become the Spirit-filled Body and Blood of Christ in an 'immaterial' but essential manner. The Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist are the Body and Blood of His mighty Resurrection and glorious Ascension, a spiritual Body vivified by the Holy Spirit (I Corinthians 15.44). The afore-described doctrine is plainly laid out in the Prayer Book Catechism, the Prayer Book Offices of Instruction and in the Prayer Book Eucharistic Liturgy, as well as Articles of Religion XXVIII and XXIX. All communicants receive the outward and visible Sign and the Thing Signified; only the faithful receive the Benefit or virtue of the Sacrament, as the wicked receive not benefit but condemnation (I Corinthians 11.27-29). We do indeed need to be careful about Eucharistic language, so as to avoid on one hand a monophysiticism wherein the elements are believed to be destroyed and absorbed into Christ, and a Nestorianism often found in Calvinism and 'reformed' protestantism on the other, wherein the sign is divorced and entirely separated from the Divine Reality.

Saint Irenaeus says, 'in the Eucharist there is an earthly thing and an heavenly thing,' hence, the outward signs of Bread and Wine and the Thing Signified, the Body and Blood of Our Lord. Other Fathers describe the Eucharist as the prolongation of the Incarnation, a Mystery like an iron thrust into the fire - the iron does not lose its own properties or reality, but it takes on the reality and properties of the fire. Both remain complete in themselves and yet are perfectly united, and each takes on the property of the other: True God and True Man in the Incarnation, earthly elements and the Person of Christ in the Eucharist. The consecrated Elements are not destroyed, but elevated, not replaced, but perfected into a new Thing. Grace builds upon nature, and does not destroy, but perfects, nature. Our Lord is incarnated in the sacramental species, mystically present. I say all of this to concur with what many authors basically teach about the Real Presence, while carefully governing how we would assert that same truth in language consistent with the Scriptures and Fathers. Eucharistic miracles are just that, miracles, like the Real Presence itself, beyond our intellectual explanation and understanding.

That there is 1. a supernatural, glorified, metaphysical yet corporeal (of a Body) Presence of Our Lord's Incarnate Person in the Eucharist, the Risen and Exalted Lord, and 2. a Change in the Eucharistic Elements upon Consecration, is beyond doubt for all Catholic Christians; but as Anglicans we believe we cannot attempt dogmatically to define the exact manner of the Presence or the process of how the Presence comes about at Mass without adding to the Catholic Faith. We cannot rationally explain the inexplicable or define the indefinable. The Real Presence is Mystical - the ultimate Holy Mystery. The Presence is more real than that found in our own material physical plane, but it is not material and physical as understood in the limited field of our empirical experience.