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First of all, you need to know that this doctrine is one of the hardest things in the Catholic faith for anyone to understand. Heck, some of Jesus' own followers didn't believe him when he said for them to eat his body. "At this point, many of his disciples turned away and deserted him" (John 6:66). What did the 12 Apostles (the Catholic Church's first Bishops) think about the disciples' actions? Well, when Jesus asked them if they were going to leave, Simon, our first Pope, said "Lord, to whom would we go? You alone have the words that give eternal life" (John 6:68). So, obviously the Bishops of the early Church believed a doctrine that turned many of Jesus' disciples away.
Personally, I had the hardest time understanding the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. It took me almost 9 months after I decided to get serious about church to accept this doctrine as truth. I'm going to recommend that you get a book called Beginning Apologetics Volume 1. I read the section on the Eucharist and it turned my whole way of thinking around. That's where I got a lot of this stuff I'm writing about. The book is awesome with other stuff too. It should only cost about 5 bucks. Okay. On to the good stuff.......
Let's look at the Bible first. It seems to be a good place to start.
The first thing we will look at is John 6:33- "The true bread of God is the one that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world" (John 6:33). Correct me if I'm wrong but did Jesus not come down from heaven? Didn't he die on the cross so we could have life? So he fits the criteria for this verse. If you replace "Jesus" with "the true bread of God," you get "Jesus is the one that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." My conclusion from this is that "Jesus" is interchangeable with "true bread of God" (or something to that effect). In John 6:35, Jesus says "I am the bread of life." So obviously, Jesus is the bread talked about in the earlier verse.
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What about John 6:48-51? It reads, "Yes, I am the bread of life...However, the bread from heaven gives eternal life to everyone who eats it. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; this bread is my flesh, offered so the world may live." In this reading from the Gospel of John, Jesus tells us that he is the bread of life. But more importantly, he tells us, "this bread is my flesh." Note how Jesus does not say, "this bread symbolizes my flesh," or "this bread represents my flesh."
"I assure you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you cannot have eternal life within you. But those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. All who eat my flesh and drink my blood remain in me, and I in them" (John 6:53-56). Jesus says that if you don't eat the body of Christ, then you can't have eternal life. What if you eat something that represents the body of Christ? Jesus says no, because his body is true food.
Have you ever thought of the possibility that the meaning was lost in the translation? Well, did you know that the phrase "eat my body, and drink my blood" has two meanings in Greek (in which the New Testament was written)? The first is to literally eat the flesh of a human and drink his blood. The second is to persecute someone. So obviously, Jesus doesn't mean eternal life will be given to those who persecute him.
In all of John 6, Jesus tells us to eat the bread of life and then says that he is the bread of life, he tells us to eat his flesh, which is true food, and drink his blood, which is true drink.
Jesus fulfilled every prophesy in the Old Testament, but he also amended several things the Old Testament. On such thing can be found in Deuteronomy 8:3. "[P]eople need more than bread for their life; real life comes from feeding on every word of the Lord." To understand this verse, we need to look at another verse from John's Gospel. "So the Word became human and lived here on earth among us" (John 1:14). Since we can see that the Word of God was Jesus Christ, we can use this to understand the Old Testament verse. Since Jesus is the Word of God, let's substitute the name "Jesus" for "Word of the Lord." We now have, "[P]eople need more than bread for their life; real life comes from feeding on Jesus." We know that this is not the exact wording in Scripture, but we now understand what God is telling us by using the New Testament to explain the Old Testament.
It is obvious to anyone who studies the Last Supper that Jesus said four different times, while holding bread, "this is my body." Matthew 26:26, "Take this and eat it, for this is my body." Mark 14:22, "Take it, for this is my body." Luke 22:19, "This is my body, given for you." 1 Corinthians 11:24, "This is my body, which is broken for you." When looking at the Gospels, you can see that Jesus meant that the bread became his body.
There have also been several miracles regarding the true flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. There are over 30 different miracles in the book Eucharistic Miracles by Joan Carroll Cruz. One miracle told in this book took place in Lanciano, Italy, in the 8th century. At the elevation of the host, it became a circle of flesh, and the wine became visible blood. While the flesh remained intact, the blood split into five separate pellets. The monks of the area had the pellets weighed. One nugget weighed as much as all five, any two weighed as much as the other three, and the largest weighed as much as the smallest. In 1971, a scientist studied the flesh and blood of this miracle that took place over 1200 years ago. He concluded that the flesh was from the wall of the heart, which would have been impossible to obtain in the 8th century and even more impossible to make such a clean cut. The flesh had no trace of any type of preservative in it. The flesh and blood were of human origin and they both had the same blood type (AB). The scientist also said that the chemical compound is the same as fresh blood. If it would have come from a cadaver, the compound of the blood would have rapidly altered through decay, so there is no chance of a fraud. The flesh and blood was returned to the Church of St. Francis in Lanciano, Italy, and can still be seen there today.
The actual host itself is just unleavened bread. But this brings up an interesting point. If unleavened just means not risen, and Jesus is the bread of life, then unleavened bread that has been consecrated is "not risen Jesus." The only time Jesus was not risen was when he was here on earth with us. So, he comes back to earth in every mass, so we can eat his flesh and have eternal life.
Martin Luther, one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation wrote, "Who, but the devil, hath granted such a license of wrestling with words of Holy Scripture? Who ever read in the Scriptures, that my body is the same as the sign of my body? Or, that is is the same as it signifies? What language in the world ever spoke so? It is only than the devil, that imposeth upon us by these fanatical men. . . Not one of the Fathers, though so numerous, ever spoke as the Sacramentarians: not one of them ever said, It is only bread and wine; or, the body and blood of Christ is not there present. Surely it is not credible, nor possible, since they often speak, and repeat their sentiments, that they should never (if they thought so) not so much as once say or let slip these words: It is bread. . . or the body of Christ is not there, especially it being of great importance, that men should not be deceived. Certainly in so many fathers, and in so many writings, the negative might be found in at least one of them, had they thought that the body and blood of Christ were not really present: but they are all of them unanimous" (Luther's Collected Works, Wittenburg Edition, no. 7, p.391).
My conclusions are this: Jesus Christ is truly present in the bread and wine. I have found this through much study of the Sacred Scriptures, the miracles that have happened regarding the body and blood of our Lord, and through writing of the Church fathers, including Martin Luther, a man who split from the Catholic Church. Just remember: our God is a truly awesome God. Only he could do something of this magnitude. Trust God and put your faith in him.
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