The Holy Eucharist is the
body and blood of Christ. Even if the appearances of bread and wine continue, we believe that the reality behind these appearances is Christ.
The poem creates a question from the challenge St Augustine gave his people when he preached on the sacrament of the Eucharist in the fourth century When Augustine spoke of the
body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, he said they "are called sacraments because in them one thing is seen, while another is grasped....
How come that some people receive the
Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion regularly and nothing happens?
One can read here at least the background of what later could be expressed more precisely as the conversion of the elements of bread and wine into the
Body and Blood of Christ. The polemical reference to the devils in the mysteries of Mithras indicates clearly that something very real is understood to be happening.
More than 500 people participated in each eucharist [at Joint Assembly], and I feel the
body and blood of Christ were treated with reverence and respect.
As my original paper was presented in dialogical format, much of what I highlighted in both the Anabaptist and Orthodox traditions to engage my fellow interlocutors has been retained; it is adjusted merely to introduce our examination of Marpeck's appeal to the Virgin Mary as the key to understanding the gravity of uniting oneself to the
body and blood of Christ and the requisite transfiguration and petition for divine mercy that allows their worthy ingestion.
Writing in the September Glad You Asked on the question "When does the bread and wine become the
Body and Blood of Christ?" Father James Field points out that: "There is a ...
(40) Furthermore, as it partakes of the everlasting food which is the
body and blood of Christ, the human body is also assured that it will live forever.
Secondly, the reception of the
Body and Blood of Christ is a foretaste of the transfiguration of our bodies by Christ.
832) asserted that the
body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist was identical with the historical crucified
body and blood of Christ.
Steiger shows it to be fundamental not just to Luther's Christology and eucharistic teaching (where it is especially important as guaranteeing the ubiquity of the eucharistic
body and blood of Christ) but to his anthropology, doctrine of justification, exegesis, pastoral theology, and theology of creation.
The mediation that he is called to exercise as a priest is of a completely different order: It is a "ministerial" or functional mediation which he exercises in the hierarchical structure of the Church, in which he is endowed with a canonically fixed authority to transmit to men the truths of faith, to celebrate in their midst the sacrifice of the altar, to give them the
Body and Blood of Christ, and to confer on them the graces of the other sacraments--without his having in any way to be a superchristian in order to acquit himself of these holy functions as such.