Revelation215

Lewis - Death is Unnatural; We fight it in this world although we know it's defeated in eternity

[W]e follow One who stood and wept at the grave of Lazarus—not surely, because He was grieved that Mary and Martha wept, and sorrowed for their lack of faith (though some thus interpret) but because death, the punishment of sin, is even more horrible in His eyes than in ours. The nature which He had created as God, the nature which He had assumed as Man, lay there before Him in its ignominy; a foul smell, food for worms. Though He was to revive it a moment later, He wept at the shame; if I may here quote a writer of my own communion, ‘I am not so much afraid of death as ashamed of it.’ And that brings us again to the paradox. Of all men, we hope most of death; yet nothing will reconcile us to—well, its unnaturalness. We know that we were not made for it; we know how it crept into our destiny as an intruder; and we know Who has defeated it. Because Our Lord is risen we know that on one level it is an enemy already disarmed; but because we know that the natural level also is God’s creation we cannot cease to fight against the death which mars it, as against all those other blemishes upon it, against pain and poverty, barbarism and ignorance. Because we love something else more than this world we love even this world better than those who know no other.

From "Some Thoughts" in God in the Dock (1970)

Merton - Epiphany in Louisville on March 18, 1958

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream. Not that I question the reality of my vocation, or of my monastic life: but the conception of “separation from the world” that we have in the monastery too easily presents itself as a complete illusion: the illusion that by making vows we become a different species of being, pseudo-angels, “spiritual men,” men of interior life, what have you.

Certainly these traditional values are very real, but their reality is not of an order outside everyday existence in a contingent world, nor does it entitle one to despise the secular: though “out of the world,” we are in the same world as everybody else, the world of the bomb, the world of race hatred, the world of technology, the world of mass media, big business, revolution, and all the rest. We take a different attitude to all these things, for we belong to God. Yet so does everybody else belong to God. We just happen to be conscious of it, and to make a profession out of this consciousness. But does that entitle us to consider ourselves different, or even better, than others? The whole idea is preposterous.

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. And I suppose my happiness could have taken form in the words: “Thank God, thank God that I am like other men, that I am only a man among others.” To think that for sixteen or seventeen years I have been taking seriously this pure illusion that is implicit in so much of our monastic thinking.

It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one holds the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstakes.

I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

This changes nothing in the sense and value of my solitude, for it is in fact the function of solitude to make one realize such things with a clarity that would be impossible to anyone completely immersed in the other cares, the other illusions, and all the automatisms of a tightly collective existence. My solitude, however, is not my own, for I see now how much it belongs to them — and that I have a responsibility for it in their regard, not just in my own. It is because I am one with them that I owe it to them to be alone, and when I am alone, they are not “they” but my own self. There are no strangers!

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and “understood” by a peculiar gift.

Merton - Prayer of Trust

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,
And the fact that I think I am following
your will does not mean that I am
actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please
you does in fact please you.
And I hope that I have that desire in all
that I am doing.

And I know that if I do this, you
will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death, I will
not fear, for you are ever with me
and you will never leave me
to face my perils alone.

Keefe - Real Presence Not Physical, Not Part of Fallen World, but Rather Restoration of it

A question over the physical presence of the risen Christ in the Eucharist has been rattling around the English-speaking Church for the past decade. In recent months some published questions and answers concerning the "physical presence" of Christ in the Eucharist have been the subject of controversy.
One prominent pastor, after an unexceptionable affirmation of the traditional Eucharistic piety and doctrine supporting the exposition and adoration of the Eucharistic Lord, remarked ad cautelam that the Risen Jesus is not "physically present" in the Blessed Sacrament:
Contrary to what you may hear about the practice, Jesus is not physically present or contained in the tabernacle or the monstrance, nor is he a prisoner nor lonely, he does not need our company.
It is evident from the context in which this denial was placed that the "physical presence" he had in view is one which would submit the Eucharistic Christ to the accidents of space and time — a view of the Real Presence that is clearly ruled out by the Church’s historical tradition.
By now there is sufficient confusion and misunderstanding about what the Church means by the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist — a situation complicated by talk of the "many presences" of Christ — to warrant a review of the Church’s teaching.
. . .
[T]he conviction that the Real Presence is properly called "substantial" was firmly in place more than a century before Saint Thomas spoke of the Eucharistic presence of Christ as a presence "per modum substantiae", i.e., in the manner of substance.
By this term he meant to indicate a Real Presence whose objective reality is not empirical, and which therefore is not submitted to the fragmentation, the mutability and the corruption proper to fallen time and space.
It follows that, insofar as "physical" is understood to mean "empirical", the Real Presence is not "physical". . . . Anyone accustomed to that interpretation of the "physical" would understand a denial of the "physical" presence of Christ in the Eucharist to be a denial of his substantial or concretely actual Real Presence. It must be insisted that the Real Presence is precisely corporeal, objective, and historical: it is a concrete Event — presence, whether the Event be termed transubstantiation, or the offering of the One Sacrifice. It is in this specifically Catholic understanding — that the Eucharist is concretely an Event, identically the Event of the Cross, that the Catholic Church parts company with those Protestants who affirm, with Luther, a Real Presence, but who, with Luther, deny the Sacrifice of the Mass, and deny transubstantiation.
It is well to avoid language which can be so easily misunderstood. It is better by far to speak of a substantial Real Presence because it is by a Presence per modum substantiae that the Risen Lord is incapable of being "imprisoned" or "contained" in this fallen world, whatever we may do.
If this is elementary; it is also an inadequate, because merely negative, grasp of the meaning of Christ’s Real Presence per modum substantiae. It is important that we view positively the Risen Christ’s Eucharistic transcendence of the changes and corruption of our fallen world, which is to say, that we understand it not merely as a sort of miraculous immunity, but rather as Jesus the Christ’s Lordship of history.
Thus understood, the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the concretely corporeal and historical Event-Presence of the risen Christ, is the liberation of all creation, by its Head, from its ancient imprisonment by sin and the fear of death.
So viewed, we recognize in the Eucharistic Sacrifice the Head’s restoration to our fallen history of its free unity and salvific significance. This is His "recapitulation", His "re-heading", of the fallen world.
In the Mass the risen Christ, the second Adam, the Head, restores to the Good Creation — in signo, in the sacrificial institution of the Eucharistic One Flesh — that free and nuptial unity, the loveliness it had "in the Beginning," which is to say, that it had in the Christ, who is the Beginning, the Alpha as well as the Omega.
This Catholic conviction must trump the lis de verbis over whether the Real Presence of the Eucharistic Lord is "physical". His historical objectivity, His Sacrificial Event-Presence in the Mass and in the world, is Lordly: only thus is it redemptive.
Father Donald Keefe, SJ, author of Covenantal Theology, is professor of systematic theology teaching at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit.

From Donald J. Keefe, The Reality of the Real Presence in Adoremus Bulletin Online Edition – Vol. VIII, No. 1: March 2002.

Merz - Eucharist is Christ's Risen, "Spiritualized", Supra-Physical Body (Eucharistic Miracle Is Not)

During the Protestant Reformation, there were many attacks made against the purported teaching of the Church on the Eucharist. Pamphlets appeared, showing a giant Christ bearing marks of the Passion and several Catholics gnawing on His body. Although John 6:54 uses the verb Trogo, which means “to gnaw,” the pamphlet was a wildly distorted interpretation of Catholic teaching on the Eucharist. John uses Trogo to emphasize the reality of eating that is a necessary part of the Eucharist, but not to imply that the Eucharist has anything to do with gnawing on an arm or leg of Christ.
When we break the host at Mass during the “Lamb of God,” or when we chew the host after reception of Holy Communion, Christ does not suffer any injury. We do not physically touch, break, chew or taste the Body and Blood of Jesus, but only the physical characteristics of the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
In John 6:63, we read the words of Jesus, “It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” Sometimes, Protestants will point to this verse to say that Jesus used the word “flesh” earlier (“eat my flesh and drink my blood”) only metaphorically, because here he clearly says that “the flesh is of no avail.” But Jesus is making an important distinction between earthly, mortal flesh (“no avail”) and his own human-divine — and most importantly — risen, glorified flesh.
This is the body, blood, soul and divinity that we consume in the Eucharist. We do not eat mortal, earthly flesh; we do not eat the pre-risen, pre-glorified flesh of Christ. The Eucharist is the living flesh and blood of Christ, as he currently is, risen and glorified. We eat his Spirit-imbued flesh and blood, but only in and through the veil of the physical reality of the bread and wine, which are essential to the Eucharist as determined by our Lord. Understanding this distinction is vital as we seek to grow in our understanding of the true nature of the miracle of the Eucharist.
Catholics do believe in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, in which the merely physical characteristics of bread and wine mediate the glorified, supernatural reality of the Risen Jesus. Is the resurrected and glorified body of Jesus as he now is, ascended in heaven, real? Absolutely! Is it physical? Yes, the body of the Risen Jesus — unmediated by the Sacrament of the Eucharist — is physical, but it is much more than physical, at least as understood on this earth.
In this world, all that is physical is subject to decay, but the risen body of Jesus is not subject to decay or death of any kind. As St. Paul writes, it’s a spiritual body (1 Corinthians 15:44). A spiritual body is a physical body that has been completely penetrated and so transfigured by the Holy Spirit. It’s been thoroughly spiritualized. Non-Christians (and even some Christians) will use the term “spiritual” in a derogatory way: “You have a spiritual way of looking at things, whereas I deal with physical reality!” But Christians know that the spiritual is the most real. The physical decays and passes away, but the spirit is immortal. When the Holy Spirit completely imbues a physical body, it becomes a resurrected, glorified body, what St. Paul called a spiritual body, which is more than physical. The Eucharist is a Sacrament of this. The Real Presence of Christ as He is in heaven is mediated to us through the Sacrament.
Eucharistic miracles
I think it’s helpful to contrast the Sacrament of the Eucharist, which we consume at Mass, and the examples of Eucharistic miracles that have occurred several times over the centuries (and which we never consume).
A Eucharistic miracle occurred in the parish church of the Italian town of Lanciano in the eighth century. A monk of St. Basil was celebrating Mass and doubting the Real Presence. Suddenly, the host appeared like flesh and the wine like blood. There were many eyewitness accounts of the event. The host had the same qualities as human heart tissue with the blood registering AB-negative. Both the miraculous flesh and the five globules of blood remain on display (remarkably well preserved) in Lanciano 12 centuries later.
No one has ever desired to consume this tissue or blood, and the Church would not allow it, not simply for the reason of preserving a kind of relic, but because the Eucharistic miracle is no longer the Sacrament of the glorified flesh and blood of the Risen Christ. . . . The miracle of Lanciano is that the Sacrament of the Risen Christ has become a physical relic of the pre-glorified body. It has become something that the Sacrament of the Eucharist is not.
Glorified body
We believe that, under the appearance of bread and wine and mediated through the Sacrament, we receive the living, glorified body, blood, soul and divinity of the Risen Christ.
In the consecrated host, all the physical elements of bread remain — philosophically, these are called the “accidents” of bread: its taste, color, size, molecular and chemical elements. However, the “substance” of bread, its “bread-ness,” which we cannot directly perceive, has been changed into the “substance” of “Christ-ness” (hence, the term transubstantiation).
By way of analogy, perhaps one could say that the spirit or soul of the bread has been changed, while the body of the bread remains the same. But this change affects it on the deepest and truest level. If scientists did a physical, chemical, molecular analysis of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, they would find only the qualities of unleavened bread. This is what is “physical.”
And these physical elements may be so changed (either by corruption or mixture with something else) that they are no longer recognizable as bread to be eaten or wine to be drunk, in which case, per St. Thomas Aquinas: “then Christ’s body and blood do not remain under this Sacrament” (Cf. Summa Theologiae III:77:4).
The Real Presence of the body and blood of Christ is incorruptible, whereas the physical elements of bread and wine, even after consecration, are nonetheless corruptible. In other words, the only part of the consecrated host that is physical is the appearance (“accidents”) of bread and wine. The “substantial” presence of Christ is supra-physical.
Is Christ “physically” present in the Sacrament of the Eucharist? If “physical” means the accidents of taste, color, size and molecular and chemical makeup, then the answer is no. Christ is truly present in “substance,” but only in a mediated way through the Sacrament of the Eucharist. His physical, unmediated presence is what we await with blessed hope at the Second Coming of the Lord at the end of time.
When we consume the Holy Eucharist, the physical accidents of bread and wine are broken down and become part of our bodily metabolism, but the spiritual reality, the most real and enduring reality, is that we become part of the Body of Christ. Only spiritualized flesh and blood could possibly make that happen! This is why the Catholic Church teaches that Christ is not physically present in the Eucharist in an unmediated way, but He is truly, substantially present in His spiritualized and glorified body, blood, soul and divinity.
Taste and see the goodness of the Lord!

Fr. Merz is pastor of St. Thomas More Newman Center Parish in Columbia, diocesan vicar for permanent deacons, and chairman of the Diocesan Liturgical Commission.

From Daniel Merz, SLD, "Priest of the diocese explains Christ’s presence in the Eucharist" in The Catholic Missourian, September 26, 2024.

Salkeld - Transubstantiation Based on God's Role as Creator and Affects Many Other Doctrines

The recent Pew Survey results, suggesting that only a minority of Catholics accept their Church’s teaching on Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist, have led to widespread hand-wringing in the Catholic community. . . .
[I]t was noted by some that the survey used a term, “actually,” to describe Christ’s presence that the Church itself does not use, leading, perhaps, to confusion (and false negatives) on the part of respondents. Moreover, it was pointed out, the question seemed to presume a dichotomy between sign and reality that is foreign to Catholic sacramental theology.
Which brings us to the topic of transubstantiation. For while the Church does not anywhere teach that Christ is “actually” (or, for that matter, “physically,” or “literally,” to take two other terms of indeterminate meaning and no theological pedigree) present in the Eucharist, it does teach that he is really, truly, and substantially present. Moreover, this last adjective, substantialiter in the Latin, made its emergence in the history of theology right when the Church needed a way of speaking about Christ’s Eucharistic presence that accounted for both the reality of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist and for the fact that that reality is, as with any sacrament (just check your Baltimore Catechism) mediated through signs.
It is probably helpful, at this stage, to point out just what the theological tradition has meant by “real.” For contemporary people, “real” often means simply physical, existing in space; “actual” might suffer from the same interpretation. But many (even most) of us believe in things that are not “real” in this sense. “Justice,” for instance, or “truth,” or, perhaps, “the soul,” or, preeminently, “God.” What the Church has meant by “real” in the case of Christ’s Eucharistic presence is, in fact, something quite precise, namely, that in the Eucharist God is the actor who determines the reality. Christ’s presence is not, then, something a group of humans conjures by their own powers of memory or of symbolic meaning making, as formidable as those powers may be. It is a gift of God, a gift of the creator who makes things to be what they are. . . .
Aquinas’s work on transubstantiation is rightly recognized as the classic articulation. Trent quoted it almost verbatim three centuries later (basically changing one technical term to make the point that one does not need to be an Aristotelian philosopher to affirm transubstantiation). Other theologies of transubstantiation that followed Thomas are almost universally seen as regressions from the ideal.
What makes Thomas’s work so perennial in this arena? It is, quite simply, that, better than anyone since, Thomas managed to articulate a presence that is undoubtedly real—in a certain sense more real than physical reality—and undeniably sacramental.
In my book, I spend the bulk of a lengthy chapter walking through Thomas’s doctrine of transubstantiation in the tertia pars of the Summa Theologiae demonstrating just this. In question 75, Thomas spends one article comparing transubstantiation with consubstantiation and the next with annihilation/replacement. Consubstantiation is rejected as, essentially, unsacramental. Ditto for annihilation/replacement. But what many fail to recognize is that neither are sufficiently eschatological. In the work of redemption, God does not leave unchanged or annihilate creation, but transforms it. The bread and wine cannot exist alongside Christ’s body and blood. Nor can they be replaced by Christ’s body and blood. They must become Christ’s body and blood. In this they are the catalysts for the change that the Eucharist effects on the whole world. . . .
In the last article of question 75, Thomas undertakes another comparison to help his reader to better comprehend what is and is not indicated by transubstantiation. In this article transubstantiation is compared with two other kinds of “change”: natural change and creation ex nihilo (out of nothing). . . .
It has been said that the theology of Thomas Aquinas is like a hologram. Every part contains every other part. Therefore, to study any question from his corpus in depth is to get an introduction to his theology as a whole. This was certainly my experience. And my study of transubstantiation has equipped me to write and teach about not just the sacraments, but Christology, ethics, Christian anthropology, ecclesiology, eschatology, the doctrine of God, even Scripture. The laser beam that shot out from the doctrine of transubstantiation and subsequently unfolded the whole hologram of Thomas’s theology for me was undoubtedly his doctrine of creation, specifically, the way Thomas understands the relationship between God and creation.
Which takes us back to Aristotle and article 8 of question 75 of the Summa. Aristotle believed in the eternity of the universe. Since something exists, something has always existed. It is only the Judeo-Christian understanding of a radically other and transcendent God that could make any sense of the universe having a beginning, of a creation out of nothing. And of such a God Aristotle was quite innocent. Aquinas, though he finds Aristotle’s categories quite useful, breaks with Aristotle on the foundational question of the eternity of the universe. And this has radical consequences for the way he can use Aristotle in his theology, not least on the question of the Eucharist.
This is because it is only a creator God like the God of the Judeo-Christian biblical and philosophical tradition that could possibly change bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood without transforming their physical characteristics. In article 8 of question 75, Thomas distinguishes transubstantiation from natural change, or transformation, because in natural change natural causes act in natural ways to produce change. So, for example, a fire can turn a wooden log or plank into smoke and ashes. But he also distinguishes it from creation ex nihilo, which is not, properly speaking, a change at all, since there is literally no thing that becomes some other thing. While it is unlike both natural change and creation ex nihilo in these ways, transubstantiation is like natural change in that one term becomes another term, and like creation ex nihilo in that only the power of a transcendent creator God could effect it.
Because a creator God gives existence, and is always giving existence, the meaning of existence itself shifts radically from Aristotle to Aquinas. For Aristotle, existing substances are radically independent. For Thomas, even the independence of existing substances is being given, moment by moment, by God. The very independence of the creature depends on God. This metaphysical move makes what many have observed is impossible in an Aristotelian universe—the conversion of one substance into another without a concomitant change of physical characteristics, what Aristotle and Thomas call “accidents”—possible in a world held in being by a transcendent creator God. . . .
And this, I suggest, is the bigger question behind the Pew Survey results. As disappointing as the results were, they are not surprising. And not simply because of irreverent liturgies or inadequate catechesis. The deeper issue underlies those realities as well. We do not live in a world where people, even many Christian people, have a sense of the transcendent power of God and of God’s intimate, but non-competitive, relationship with creation.
The doctrine of real presence is not the only thing affected by this. We can easily imagine disappointing results on similar survey questions asking things like: Do Catholics believe Jesus is God or a great human teacher?; Do Catholics believe in creation or evolution?; Do Catholics believe in God’s providence or in free will?; Is Scripture is the infallible word of God or a culturally conditioned artifact (instructive, it is implied, but not authoritative)?; and, Is contraception wrong? (This latter fits the pattern because the question in the background of it, and of any similar ethical question, is something like: “Is morality derived from the nature of things as given by their creator or determined by Church authority?). Every one of these is, at root, a false dichotomy that is posited because God is imagined to be in competition with creation.
Transubstantiation is not, then, one disconnected and esoteric doctrine that a Catholic can take or leave. It is an articulation of faith in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist seeking understanding in the theological context of a deep appreciation of the relationship between God and creation. To affirm it is to affirm something foundational to the whole Christian worldview. Not to put too fine a point on it: it affirms that God is God and creation is creation.
O salutaris Hostia,
Quae caeli pandis ostium.

From Brett Salkeld, "Transubstantiation Isn't a Disconnected Doctrine" in Church Life Journal November 13, 2019.

Ramage - "Mystical Elevation" Perspective on Transubstantiation (Barron/Ratzinger/Sokolowski)

[Bishop Robert Barron, Monsignor Robert Sokolowski, and Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI] share the conviction that transubstantiation might be more profoundly understood if we approach it beyond the confines of a strictly Aristotelian framework. Their goal is not to do away with the Church’s classical understanding, but to complement it by emphasizing that the Real Presence is not the result of an inner-worldly transformation of one substance into another at the same level of being. This intriguing perspective suggests that transubstantiation is best conceived as the elevation of nature to a higher ontological plane, a lifting of creation above itself resulting in a non-competitive presence of God within the created order. , , ,
Elevated to a Higher Order: Benedict XVI on Transubstantiation
[W]hile by no means opposing earlier magisterial teaching, the manner in which [Pope Benedict] described the mystery of transubstantiation stands out in relation to what we find in traditional sources like the Council of Trent:

[W]hat happens to the bread and wine in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist? Something is not added to them temporarily, but rather bread and wine are snatched away from the things of this world so as to enter into the new world of the risen Jesus Christ. . . . [The] bread and wine are no longer created realities of this world that consist in themselves, but rather are bearers of the mysteriously real form of the Risen Lord.¹

These words are but a short distillation of a theological vision that Ratzinger elaborated in greater depth at various points during his active ministry. For instance, in the tremendous little book God is Near Us, Cardinal Ratzinger exhibited a special sensitivity to doubts faced by the faithful, and this awareness prompted him to address a series of obstacles to belief in the real presence of the Lord. . . .
The third and final of these challenges confronted by Ratzinger is especially crucial today, as it touches on the claim that the doctrine of the Real Presence has no place in a modern scientific worldview. In Ratzinger’s words, this same blunt question can be framed in several different ways:

Has the teaching about the Real Presence of Christ in the eucharistic gifts not long been refuted, rendered obsolete, by science? Has the Church not, with her concept of substance—for she speaks of “transubstantiation”—fettered herself, to far too great an extent, to a science that is basically primitive and obsolete? Do we not know precisely how material is constituted: made up of atoms, and these of elementary particles? That bread is not a “substance,” and, in consequence, none of the rest of it can possibly be true?²

In response, the cardinal opened with a reflection on what the Church means and does not mean with the words “substance” and “transubstantiation,” noting that the word “substance” was initially adopted by the Church “precisely to avoid the naïveté associated with what we can touch or measure”—to avoid the misapprehension that we “eat flesh, as cannibals would do.”³ Having ruled out this misconstrual of the Real Presence, Ratzinger characteristically paused to reflect on the providence surrounding such mistaken attempts to capture the Eucharistic mystery. Even as errors are not intrinsically desirable, the cardinal observed that disputes like these have nevertheless “helped the Church to develop a more profound understanding of reality.”⁴ Echoing the thought of one his favorite theologians, John Henry Newman, Ratzinger adds that this struggle indeed contributed positively to the development of doctrine in the Church—of making explicit truths that had hitherto been held truly but only implicitly:

After wrestling with the difficulty, the insight was made explicit: “Reality” is not just what we can measure. It is not only “quanta,” quantifiable entities, that are real; on the contrary, these are always only manifestations of the hidden mystery of true being. But here, where Christ meets us, we have to do with this true being. This is what was being expressed with the word “substance.” This does not refer to the quanta, but to the profound and fundamental basis of being. Jesus is not there like a piece of meat, not in the realm of what can be measured and quantified. Anyone who conceives of reality as being like that is deceiving himself about it and about himself. . . . Concerning the Eucharist it is said to us: The substance is transformed, that is to say, the fundamental basis of its being. That is what is at stake, and not the superficial category, to which everything we can measure or touch belongs.⁵

. . .
While not renouncing the Medieval theology of transubstantiation (indeed, he begins here by praising Aquinas’s text for the liturgy of Corpus Christi), Ratzinger explains the doctrine in different language from that deployed by Thomas Aquinas. . . . Instead, Ratzinger describes transubstantiation as the event in which the Lord takes ordinary bread and wine and lifts them up into an unfathomably higher order of existence:

What has always mattered to the Church is that a real transformation takes place here. Something genuinely happens in the Eucharist. There is something new there that was not before. Knowing about a transformation is part of the most basic eucharistic faith. Therefore it cannot be the case that the Body of Christ comes to add itself to the bread, as if bread and Body were two similar things that could exist as two “substances,” in the same way, side by side. Whenever the Body of Christ, that is, the risen and bodily Christ, comes, he is greater than the bread, other, not of the same order. The transformation happens, which affects the gifts we bring by taking them up into a higher order and changes them, even if we cannot measure what happens.⁶

Inspired by St. Augustine, at this point Ratzinger presents an analogy with bodily nourishment to spell out what is taking place here. He begins by recalling the saint’s experience in which a voice informed him, “I am the bread of the strong, eat me! But you will not transform me and make me part of you; rather, I will transform you and make you part of me.” Teasing out the theological implications of this event, Ratzinger explains that Eucharistic transubstantiation functions in the inverse manner of natural metabolic processes. In the ordinary course of things, a being of higher ontological status assimilates lower beings so that they become part of his own substance. But with Eucharistic communion it is the other way around: Christ lifts us beyond ourselves, drawing our lives into his.⁷
Ratzinger then adds these words on the question of how it can be that the Eucharistic species that have been “lifted” or “taken up,” undergoing substantial change while remaining the same from the standpoint of physical appearances:

When material things are taken into our body as nourishment, or for that matter whenever any material becomes part of a living organism, it remains the same, and yet as part of a new whole it is itself changed. Something similar happens here. The Lord takes possession of the bread and the wine; he lifts them up, as it were, out of the setting of their normal existence into a new order; even if, from a purely physical point of view, they remain the same, they have become profoundly different.⁸

Bishop Barron and Monsignor Sokolowski: The Eucharist as Sacramental Prolongation of the Incarnation
. . .
Like the late pontiff, it appears that Barron and Sokolowski are not fully satisfied with a strictly Thomistic approach to articulating the Eucharistic mystery. Even as he continues to employ traditional Aristotelian and Thomistic language, Bishop Barron contends that an insufficient grasp of this framework can make it tempting to reduce Christ’s presence in the Eucharist to the same level of being occupied by physical creatures:

Within an Aristotelian framework, the Real Presence comes to be thought of as a sort inner-worldly change, some new and unprecedented way for finite natures—one spiritual and the other material—to relate to one another. But within the biblical context, things can make a bit more sense. For, in this reading, God is not one nature among others, one being within the world, but rather the Creator of the world, the ground of all finite things.⁹

At this juncture, the bishop references Monsignor Sokolowski, who urges us to beware of regarding our Lord’s Eucharistic presence as that of a worldly substance akin to that of any creature that we might encounter in this world:

The Real Presence in the Eucharist is therefore not just the concealed presence of one worldly substance under the appearances of another, but the presence of the full mystery of God’s being and his work, the mystery hidden from all ages and now made manifest to us, the point of the universe and of creation. It is this presence, this glory, that is the substance of the Eucharist and the core of the doctrine of Transubstantiation.¹⁰

In identifying this as the core of the Church’s doctrine of transubstantiation, Barron and Sokolowski echo Ratzinger’s teaching that I unfolded above. As these theologians see it, our Lord’s Eucharistic presence is not such that he exists “in the same way, side by side” with the creatures he has made. The transubstantiated host is no longer on the same plane of being as the bread had previously existed, for it has been taken up into a higher order of reality through the sacrifice of the Mass.
Returning to Barron’s writing, the bishop proceeds by elaborating on an idea that Ratzinger only briefly touched on. Importantly, he recalls the Thomistic distinction between two orders of causality: divine and creaturely (i.e., God as the primary cause of all things and creatures as secondary or instrumental causes). However, Barron develops this in a direction that Aquinas did not explicitly go:

And thus God can relate to matter in a non-competitive way, becoming present through it without undermining it. The supreme instance of this non-competitive involvement of God within creation is, of course, the Incarnation, and the Eucharist is nothing but a sacramental prolongation of the Incarnation. Thus, God can use the material as a vehicle for his presence without ceasing to be God and without overwhelming the matter that he uses. The Eucharist does not involve the supplanting of one finite nature by another—as though a tree becomes a leopard but continues to look and react like a tree—but the non-competitive presence of God within an aspect of nature he has made. . . . [W]hen the Church speaks of Christ being substantially present in the Eucharist, even as the material appearances of bread and wine remain, it is assuming this uniquely biblical perspective on the relation of spirit and matter.¹¹

From this standpoint, understanding the doctrine of transubstantiation requires us to grasp that the conversion of the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood is not the same sort of action by which bread might be transformed into some other creaturely being like a rock, tree, or cat. As Barron stresses, it is not as if one finite nature supplants another in the Eucharist but rather that God—who exists on an altogether higher order of being in comparison with creatures—becomes present in a non-competitive way “within an aspect of nature he has made.”
Note that Bishop Barron is not claiming to advance a position akin to the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation. Like Ratzinger and Sokolowski, Barron rejects the notion that the substances of ordinary bread and wine coexist alongside our Lord’s body and blood in the Eucharist. The bishop’s position would likewise distinguish itself from the theory of impanation, according to which Christ is present in the Eucharist through a substantial union of his human body with the substances of bread and wine. Rather than saying that God has been made bread (Deus panis factus), for Barron the nature of transubstantiation is such that the bread and wine as they previously existed have indeed been transformed and now exist on an altogether higher order of being.
In this connection, it is especially important and beautiful that Bishop Barron describes the Eucharist as “nothing but a sacramental prolongation of the Incarnation.” Often attributed to second-century Doctor of the Church St. Irenaeus of Lyon, this view invites us to consider our Lord’s presence in the Eucharist in an analogous way to the manner he dwelt on the earth as a man. As Christ’s human nature was not overwhelmed or destroyed but rather ennobled by its union with the divine person of the Word, this perspective holds that the Eucharistic species are transformed and elevated by virtue of their being “taken up” into the divine nature. As such, they are no longer the substance of bread and wine any more than Jesus Christ was substantially a human person. As there is no second hypostasis (no human person) in Jesus but only the divine person of the Word united to his human nature, after consecration the hypostases of bread and wine are truly gone—which is to say transubstantiated. . . .
Even granted [some] lingering issues, the proposal presented in various ways by Ratzinger, Barron, and Sokolowski is a welcome contribution toward unveiling the meaning of transubstantiation in language that is accessible to modern man. Whatever we may make of the intricacies surrounding the ins and outs of how precisely it all transpires, the overarching claim that the Eucharist extends the Incarnation through space and time is true and valuable. It provides us a way of envisioning that, just as God was made present in the world in his body, blood, soul, and divinity two thousand years ago, this presence continues to abide with us in the Eucharist.
Further, I find that this modern approach to transubstantiation in terms of elevation coheres well with the Christian conviction that the entire created order will one day be renewed and transfigured rather than subverted or destroyed (see Rom 8:21–22). Indeed, so bold was Ratzinger’s perspective on the eschatological end of creatures that he spoke of a time when the entire created order will one day be “transubstantiated” in heavenly glory.¹² On the solemnity of Corpus Christi, Benedict expounded on this concept by teaching that “this little piece of white Host . . . appears to us as a synthesis of creation” and that “in some way, we detect in the piece of bread, creation is projected towards divinization, toward the holy wedding feast, toward unification with the Creator himself.”¹³ In a remarkable homily, the pontiff taught that the role of the priesthood is “to consecrate the world so that it may become a living host, a liturgy: so that the liturgy may not be something alongside the reality of the world, but that the world itself shall become a living host, a liturgy.”¹⁴

1 Benedict XVI, “The Meaning of Communion,” in What Is Christianity? The Last Writings (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2023), 156–57.
2 Joseph Ratzinger, God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003), 83–84.
3 Ratzinger, God Is Near Us, 84.
4 Ratzinger, God Is Near Us, 84.
5 Ratzinger, God Is Near Us, 85.
6 Ratzinger, God Is Near Us, 86.
7 Ratzinger, God Is Near Us, 77–78.
8 Ratzinger, God Is Near Us, 86.
9 Robert Barron, This Is My Body: A Call to Eucharistic Revival (Grove Village, IL: Word on Fire, 2023), 107.
10 Robert Sokolowski, “The Eucharist and Transubstantiation,” in Christian Faith and Human Understanding: Studies on the Eucharist, Trinity, and the Human Person (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 103.
11 Barron, This Is My Body, 107-108.
12 Benedict XVI, Address at the Commemoration of the 65th Anniversary of the Priestly Ordination of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI (June 28, 2016).
13 Benedict XVI, Homily for the Mass of Corpus Christi (June 15, 2006).
14 Benedict XVI, Homily (July 24, 2009).

From Matthew Ramage, "Mystical Elevation: A Modern Perspective on the Ancient Doctrine of Transubstantiation" in Church Life Journal, September 18, 2025.