WHAT HAPPENS AT THE CONSECRATION
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
After last time's E-Letter, which dealt in part with Communion by intinction, I received several responses that illustrated confusion about the practice itself and about whether there ought to be concerns about passing along germs, whether Communion is by intinction or otherwise.
One person wrote:
"I have known priests who have taken the cup after lepers have drunk from the same cup. How could Christ contaminate anyone? Has it ever been recorded that persons have become ill after sharing the cup? To do otherwise appears to me to be a serious lack of faith."
Let's review what happens at the Consecration.
When a priest, with the right intention, says the words of Consecration over the bread and wine, the bread ceases to be bread, and the wine ceases to be wine. They become the body and blood of Christ.
Because bread is a solid and wine a liquid, and because of the words of institution at the Last Supper, we say that the bread becomes the body of Christ while the wine becomes the blood of Christ, but this usage confuses some people. They infer that what had been bread is now only the body of Christ but not also his body and that what had been wine is now only the blood of Christ but not also his body. This is not so.
The glorified Christ is indivisible. To receive him at all is to receive all of him. To receive his body is also to receive his blood, and to receive his blood is also to receive his body. Whether one receives Communion only under the appearance of bread or only under the appearance of wine, one receives both Christ's body and his blood.
Note that I wrote "under the appearance." While the consecrated bread ceases to be bread and the consecrated wine ceases to be wine, they maintain their original appearances. No visible change can be detected in the consecrated elements. No microscope, no matter how fine, will show the slightest alteration. What is on the paten will appear to be plain bread. What is in the chalice will appear to be plain wine.
In the Middle Ages the change effected at the Consecration (the technical term is "transubstantiation") was explained this way: Any created thing has two aspects, its substance and its accidents. The substance is what the thing is in and of itself, "deep down inside," so to speak. Its accidents are what can be perceived by our five senses and, thus, what can be perceived by scientific instruments.
(Nowadays, it often is useful to write of "appearances" instead of "accidents" because the latter term tends to bring to mind colliding automobiles. I will use "appearances" from here on.)
Take, for example, the red jacket I am wearing as I write this. The substance (or underlying essence) of the jacket might be called its "jacketness." It is what makes the jacket a jacket and not a jackal. The outward manifestations of the jacket--its color, shape, texture, scent (freshly laundered!), and so on--make up its appearances.
Appearances are not able to stand by themselves. They always adhere in something. My jacket is red, but you never will find a lump of redness on your table. The fleece my jacket is made from is soft, but you never will find a box filled with softness. The jacket has long sleeves, but you never will be able to take up a handful of longness. Redness, softness, and longness never can be found existing on their own but only as attributes of some object. Thus we have a distinction between a thing's substance (what it really is "deep down inside") and its outward appearances.
As a mental experiment, you might be able to imagine that a thing's substance changes while its appearances do not or that its appearances change while its substance does not. In our everyday world, though, substance and appearances always go together as a package deal. If I were put my jacket in a fire, not only would its color, shape, texture, and scent change, but so would its substance. It would be a jacket no longer.
In the everyday world substance and appearances always go together, but there is no theoretical reason why that must be so. I mean that God is able, in any particular instance, to change just the one or the other. He can take something and change its appearances, leaving its substance as it was, or he can change the thing's substance while not changing its appearances.
While God has the power to do this, in fact he does not do it, except in the instance of the Eucharist. When the bread and wine are consecrated, their appearances remain exactly the same as before, but their substances change. The "breadness" and "wineness" disappear entirely. Taking their places are Christ's body and blood.
How can this be proved scientifically? It can't. Science can examine only a thing's appearances. If they do not change, science will detect no change. This means that the unbeliever who scoffs at the Eucharist because he sees nothing altered under the microscope just does not understand what we say is going on. The Church teaches that the substance of the bread and the substance of the wine are altered, and substance is something that no microscope can perceive.
I said that nowadays it might be more useful to use the term "appearances" rather than "accidents," which was the term used in the Middle Ages. But even "appearances" has limitations. To some it implies that all I am talking about is how the Eucharistic elements look, but the term needs to be used more widely because it also refers to how the elements act.
For example, although the consecrated bread no longer is bread, when you swallow it, it will act in your body as though it were bread. If you are someone who cannot consume wheat-based food because of the gluten, having anything from a mild buzz to a severe allergic reaction if you do, then you will find the same thing happening to you if you receive a consecrated host.
If you have a sensitivity to alcohol, you will experience that same sensitivity if you receive from the Communion cup. In fact, if someone were to drink a lot of consecrated wine, he would end up with the same morning-after feelings that he would have if he drank the same amount of wine at home.
Now consider the plain wine that you drink at home (in a moderate amount, I presume). Do you share your wine glass with guests who are visiting? Not likely. Probably you give everyone his own glass. Most of us do not drink from other people's glasses because we do not want to catch their germs, nor do we offer our glasses to others, because we do not want to spread whatever infection we might have.
Does this reticence become irrelevant at Mass? The person who wrote to me seemed to think so: "How could Christ contaminate anyone?"
Well, of course he would not and cannot. But, in the consecration, bacteria and viruses are not transubstantiated. If there are bacteria or viruses in the chalice before the consecration, they are still there after the consecration. If the communicant ten places ahead of you in line suffers from the flu and deposits his viruses on or in the Communion cup, his viruses are there even though they are next to the blood of Christ.
"Has it ever been recorded that persons have become ill after sharing the cup?" asked my correspondent. Yes, it has.
I recall an account written by a priest. He said that at his former parish, where Communion was under both kinds and where, at the end of Communion, he consumed what remained in the Communion cups, he persistently felt under the weather, as though he had a months-long, low-grade cold that would not quite manifest itself. Then he was transferred to a neighboring parish where Communion was given under the form of bread only. Within a short time his ailment went away. Other priests and many laymen have reported the same kind of thing.
My correspondent ended by saying, "To do otherwise appears to me to be a serious lack of faith." I think this means that to think God would allow germs to be passed by means of the Communion cup suggests that one believes that God is powerless to prevent the passing of those germs. Of course, he is not powerless to do that, but in fact he does not do so. It betrays no lack of faith to say as much.
Here is another way to look at it. When you return to your pew from Communion, the person kneeling next to you, if he had a cold before Communion, still has a cold. If he sneezes in your direction, you might catch his cold, even though, at the moment, he is a "temple of the Holy Spirit" because Christ literally is within him.
p.s., If you have a comment about anything appearing in this E-Letter, please do not hit your Reply button. Instead, go to Catholic Answers' discussion forums at
http://forums.catholic.com
where you may post your comment in the forum dedicated to the E-Letter. You will find a thread devoted to this issue of the E-Letter. Feel free to add your comment in the form of a reply to that thread.
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