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Transubstantiation

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Panel of an altarpiece from Ascoli Piceno, Italy, by Carlo Crivelli (15th century)
Eucharistic celebration at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima
Eastern Orthodox Divine Liturgy
A Scottish Sacrament, by Henry John Dobson
Eucharist in an Episcopal church
A United Methodist minister consecrates the elements.

In the thought of saint Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church, transubstantiation is "the change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the Body of Christ and of the whole substance of wine into the substance of the Blood of Christ". This dogmatic doctrine is shared by the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Lutheranism, and Anglicanism. The same religions believe in the Real presence of Christ in the Eucharist who is the sacrament related to transubstantiation.

Quotes

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  • Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine; the bread being changed (transsubstantiatio) by divine power into the body, and the wine into the blood, so that to realize the mystery of unity we may receive of Him what He has received of us. And this sacrament no one can effect except the priest who has been duly ordained in accordance with the keys of the Church, which Jesus Christ Himself gave to the Apostles and their successors.
  • And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.

C

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  • To understand transubstantiation, let's turn to a related word that is more familiar to us: transformation. Transformation means changing from one form to another, while transubstantiation means changing from one substance to another. Let's take an example. When we see a woman leaving the hairdresser's with a whole new hairstyle, we sometimes spontaneously exclaim: ‘What a transformation!’. No one would dream of exclaiming, ‘What a transubstantiation!’. And rightly so. Her form and external appearance have changed, but not her inner being and personality. If she was intelligent before, she is intelligent now; if she was not intelligent before, I am sorry to say that she is not intelligent now either. Appearances have changed, but not substance. In the Eucharist, exactly the opposite happens: substance changes, but appearances do not. The bread is transubstantiated, but not transformed; in fact, its appearance (form, taste, colour, weight) remains the same, while its profound reality has changed, it has become the body of Christ. The promise of Jesus heard at the beginning [of the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time] has been fulfilled: "The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world."
    • Per capire la transustanziazione, chiediamo aiuto a una parola ad essa imparentata e che ci è più famigliare, la parola trasformazione. Trasformazione significa passare da una forma a un'altra, transustanziazione passare da una sostanza a un'altra. Facciamo un esempio. Vedendo una signora uscire dal parrucchiere con una acconciatura tutta nuova, viene spontaneo a volte esclamare: "Che trasformazione!". Nessuno si sogna di esclamare: "Che transustanziazione!". Giustamente. Sono cambiati infatti la sua forma e l'aspetto esterno, ma non il suo essere profondo e la sua personalità. Se era intelligente prima, lo è ora; se non lo era prima, mi dispiace ma non lo è neppure ora. Sono cambiate le apparenze, non la sostanza. Nell'Eucaristia avviene esattamente il contrario: cambia la sostanza, ma non le apparenze. Il pane viene transustanziato, ma non trasformato; le apparenze infatti (forma, sapore, colore, peso) restano quelle di prima, mentre è cambiata la realtà profonda, è diventato corpo di Cristo. Si è realizzata la promessa di Gesù ascoltata all'inizio [della XIX domenica del tempo ordinario]: "Il pane che io darò è la mia carne per la vita del mondo".

D

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  • The Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation...claims...the "Whole substance" of the wine is converted into the blood of Christ,; the appearance of wine that remains is "merely accidental", "inhering in no substance". Transubstantiation is colloquially taught as meaning that the wine "literally" turns into the blood of Christ. Whether in its obfuscatory Aristotelian or its franker colloquial form, the claim of transubstantiation can be made only if we do serious violence to the normal meanings of words like 'substance' and 'literally'.
  • The spectator experiences the phenomenon of transmutation; through the change from inert matter into a work of art, an actual transubstantiation has taken place.. .All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work into contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.
    • Marcel Duchamp. Quote from The Writings of Marcel Duchamp (Marchand du Sel) e.d. Michel Sanouille and Elmer Peterson, New York 1973, pp. 139-140

E

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  • It seems to me that art is a great miracle-it is the showing forth of the Holy Spirit transubstantiation. It is to find and proclaim the poetry of life, without which there is no life.
    • Jim Ede, Introduction, in Engrave Glass: David Peace, Cambridge 1973.

F

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  • The Lord ... said: Unless a man shall eat my flesh, he shall not have in himself eternal life. Certain of his disciples, the seventy to wit, were scandalised, and said: This is a hard saying; who can understand it? And they departed from him, and walked with him no more. His saying ... seemed to them a hard one. They received it foolishly: they thought of it carnally. For they fancied, that the Lord was going to cut from his own body certain morsels and to give those morsels to them. Hence they said: This is a hard saying. But they themselves were hard: not the saying. For, if, instead of being hard, they had been mild, they would have ... learned from him what those learned, who remained while they departed. For, when the twelve disciples had remained with him after the others had departed, ... he instructed them, and said unto them: It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words, which I speak unto you, are spirit and life. As if he had said: Understand spiritually what I have spoken. You are Not about to eat this identical body, which you see; and you are Not about to drink this identical blood, which they who crucify me will pour out. I have commended unto you a certain sacrament. This, if spiritually understood, will quicken you. Though it must be celebrated visibly, it must be understood invisibly.
    • George Stanley Faber, Christ's Discourse at Capernaum: Fatal to the Doctrine of Transubstantiation (1840), pp. 144-147.
  • In the interpretation of figurative passages, let the following canon be observed. If the passage be preceptive, either forbidding some flagitious deed and some heinous crime, or commanding something useful and beneficent: then such passage is not figurative. But, if the passage seems, either to command some flagitious deed and some heinous crime, or to forbid something useful and beneficent: then such passage is figurative. Thus, for example, Christ says: Unless ye shall eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood; ye shall have no life in you. Now, in these words, he seems to command a heinous crime or a flagitious deed. Therefore the passage is a figure, enjoining us to communicate in the passion of our Lord, and admonishing us to lay it up sweetly and usefully in our memory because, for us, his flesh was crucified and wounded. On the other hand, Scripture says: If thy enemy shall hunger, give him food; if he shall thirst, give him drink. Here, without all doubt, an act of beneficence is enjoined.
    • George Stanley Faber, Christ's Discourse at Capernaum: Fatal to the Doctrine of Transubstantiation (1840), pp. 147-149.

H

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  • But Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery.
    • Original German: "Das Christentum (lehrt 'die Verwandlung,' das) ist das Tollste, was je ein Menschengehirn in seinem Wahn hervorgebracht hat, eine Verhöhnung von allem Göttlichen,"
    • Alternative translation: "Christianity teaches 'transubstantiation,' which is the maddest thing ever concocted by a human mind in its delusions, a mockery of all that is godly."
  • To the gross senses the chair seems solid and substantial. But the gross senses and be refined by means of instruments. Closer observations are made, as the result of which we are forced to conclude that the chair is “really” a swarm of electric charges whizzing about in empty space. ... While the substantial chair is an abstraction easily made from the memories of innumerable sensations of sight and touch, the electric charge chair is a difficult and far-fetched abstraction from certain visual sensations so excessively rare (they can only come to us in the course of elaborate experiments) that not one man in a million has ever been in the position to make it for himself. The overwhelming majority of us accept the electric-charge chair on authority, as good Catholics accept transubstantiation.

J

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  • This only will I speak, and that in a word: they which brought in transubstantiations, masses, calling upon saints, sole life, purgatory, images, vows, trifles, follies, babbles, into the church of God, have delivered new things, and which the scriptures never heard of. Whatsoever they cry or crack, they bring not a jot out of the word of God... These they honour instead of the scriptures, and force them to the people instead of the word of God: upon these men suppose their salvation and the sum of religion to be grounded.
    • John Jewel, A Learned and Godly Sermon, made in the Latin Tongue, in St Mary's, in Oxenford, Upon the Sunday after the Ascension, in the Reign of King Edward the Sixth (1550 or 1551), quoted in The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury. The Second Portion (1847), p. 960

M

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  • Early man... sought to identify himself with the animals he especially admired, and when he ate their flesh it was not alone to nourish his body but also to enrich his psyche with their virtues. ...That aspiration... was to lead... to the physical horrors of cannibalism on the one hand and to the intellectual horrors of transubstantiation on the other. At a much earlier period it was to set up the curious institution of the totem... The falcon-god Horus, of the Egyptians, probably began as such a totem, and so did the cow Hathor and the serpent Neith.
  • Nothing announced so sudden a destruction. The people in general seemed attached to the ceremonies of catholicism; but there are bodies struck with lightning, who seem still to preserve their life and organization, but touch them, and they crumble into dust.
    The people had the appearance of believing in the mass, in transubstantiation, and in the most received dogmas of the catholic faith; but the people did not believe in them at all. All the sarcasms of Voltaire against the priests, all the pleasantries of the author of the Pucelle, had reached them...
    There was only a single step to take to lay the revolutionary axe to the root of altars loaded with gold and silver: had they been naked, they would have escaped the destroying hand.
    It is not their overthrow which ought to astonish, but it is having seen them fall in one day, with all the circumstances of the most profound contempt or hatred. The progress of irreligion was extremely rapid amongst the vulgar, who armed themselves at once with hammers and levers to break the sacred images before which six months back they bent the knee. They were easily persuaded that it was a useful thing to transform the temples into magazines, golden cups and crosses into money, the iron grates into bullets, and the copper cherubim into cannon. The mob thought, that after the decree of national sovereignty, the right of doing every thing, of commanding every thing, and of not obeying, was fully devolved to them alone.

P

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  • The victory of orthodox Christian doctrine over classical thought was to some extent a Pyrrhic victory, for the theology that triumphed over Greek philosophy has continued to be shaped ever since by the language and the thought of classical metaphysics. For example, the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 decreed that "in the sacrament of the altar... the bread is transubstantiated into the body [of Christ]." ...Most of the theological expositions of the term "transubstantiation" have interpreted "substance" [according] to the meaning given this term ...in the fifth book of Aristotle's Metaphysics; transubstantiation, then, would appear to be tied to the acceptance of Aristotelian metaphysics or even of Aristotelian physics. ...Transubstantiation is an individual instance of what has been called the problem of "the hellenization of Christianity."
    • Jaroslav Pelikan, The Shape of Death: Life, Death, and Immortality in the Early Fathers (1961) pp. 44-45, as quoted by Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality (1994) p. 332.
  • Mr. Gibbon has much to learn concerning the gospel before he can be properly qualified to write against it. Hitherto he seems to have been acquainted with nothing but the corrupt establishments of what is very improperly called Christianity; whereas it is incumbent upon him to read and study the New Testament for himself. There he will find nothing like Platonism, but doctrines in every respect the reverse of that system of philosophy, which weak and undistinguishing christians afterwards incorporated with it.
    Had Mr. Gibbon lived in France, Spain, or Italy, he might with the same reason have ranked the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the worship of saints and angels among the essentials of Christianity, as the doctrines of the trinity and of the atonement.

Films

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Interior shot, Sunday school. Sister Anne tries to explain to the boys how communion works, as well as Transubstantiation, which they can't understand.

Sister Anne: Now let me explain how communion works. The priest will give you this round cracker. And this cracker is the body of Christ.
Cartman: Jesus was made of…crackers?
Sister Anne: No.
Stan: But crackers are his body.
Sister Anne: Yes.
Kenny: What?
Sister Anne: In the book of Mark, Jesus distributed bread and said "Eat this, for it is my body."
Cartman: So we won't go to Hell as long as we eat crackers.
Sister Anne: No no no no!
Butters: Well, what are we eating then?
Sister Anne: The body of Christ!
Stan: No no no, I get it. Jesus wanted us to eat him, but he didn't want us to be cannibals...so he turned himself into crackers and then told people to eat him.
Sister Anne: No!
Stan: No?!
Butters: I can't whistle if I eat too many crackers.
Sister Anne: Look, all you need to know is that when the priest gives you the cracker, you eat it. Okay?
Boys: Okay...
Sister Anne: And then you will drink a very small amount of wine. For that, is the blood of Christ.
Cartman: Oh come on now, this is just getting silly.
Sister Anne: Eric, do you want to go to hell?
Cartman: No!
Sister Anne: Then stop questioning me.

Others

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  • 'Twas God the Word that spake it,
    He took the Bread and brake it:
    And what that Word did make it,
    That I believe and take it.
  • They had only three sacraments, baptism, eucharist, and the orders; and would not admit transubstantiation in the manner the Roman Catholics do. They knew nothing of purgatory; and the saints they said were not admitted to the presence of GOD, but were kept in a third place till the day of judgment. Their priests were permitted to marry, at least once in their life. Their rite was the Chaldaean or Syrian.…
    The uncontrolled power of Papal Rome had not then reached the Syrian churches in Travencore: they preserved their independence, and remained for ages unmolested, until the maritime discovery of India by de Gama: after which, priests and inquisitors from Goa disturbed their peace, burnt their unadulterated versions of the sacred scriptures, and compelled many of their churches to acknowledge the pope’s supremacy.
    • About Saint Thomas Christians. Mr. Wrede’s account of Syrian Christians, who contrary to Portuguese belief, followed the doctrine of Nestorius, and acknowledged the Patriarch of that sect residing in Syria, as their ecclesiastical chie quoted from Jain, M. (editor) (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. Volume IV Chapter16.

See also

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Wiktionary
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