The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is a doctrine – an official teaching of the Catholic Church – and a profound mystery. With the words of consecration, the whole of Christ is truly present – Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity – under the appearances of bread and wine.
The doctrine is based upon the words of Jesus Himself when He instituted the Eucharist. Jesus took the bread and said, “This is my body” (Mt 26:26), and He took the cup filled with wine and said, “This is my blood” (Mt 26:28). When Jesus said, “This is my body,” He declared that the bread actually is His Body, and that He is really present.
We accept and believe what Jesus said as a matter of faith. There is no scientific evidence, definite proof or factual explanation. We take Jesus at His word because He is truth (Jn 14:6), He came into the world to testify to the truth (Jn 18:37), and the words that He spoke are spirit and life (Jn 6:63). St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, “Do not doubt whether this is true, but rather receive the words of the Savior in faith, for since He is truth, He cannot lie.”
The words of Jesus are clear and unambiguous, yet the doctrine of the Real Presence is questioned and doubted by some, and challenged, ridiculed or rejected by others. Recent public opinion polls have reported an alarmingly high percentage of those who claim to be Catholic who do not believe in the Real Presence. Other Catholics have wavered and their faith has eroded because of personal uncertainty, or because they have been swayed by the secular press, the teachings of misguided theologians or the objections of non-Catholic Christians.
There are a number of faulty explanations that are contrary to the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence: that the bread and wine remain bread and wine and that there is no change; that they become the spiritual presence of Christ, not the actual presence; that they become a symbol that represents Christ’s presence; that they are a reminder, memento, or foreshadowing of Christ; that they become more significant or important spiritually; or that they are simultaneously Christ’s body and blood but also ordinary bread and wine.
Over the centuries, some non-believers have attacked the Catholic belief in the Real Presence with claims that it is impossible, ridiculous or superstition. During outdoor Eucharist processions, some spectators hurled taunts and insults, and their behaviors were so disrespectful that the processions were taken off the streets and moved back into cathedrals and churches to uphold and protect the sanctity of the Eucharist.
In the face of questions, misunderstanding and attack, the Church has defined, defended and reinforced its teaching on the Real Presence. St. Ambrose, who lived in the fourth century, wrote, “Could not Christ’s word, which can make from nothing what did not exist, change existing things into what they were not before?”
The doctrine was enunciated by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and reaffirmed and rearticulated by the Council of Constance in 1415. During the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Trent declared in 1551, “By the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the Body of Christ our Lord.”
In his 1965 encyclical “Mysterium Fidei,” Pope Paul VI wrote, “The presence is called ‘real’ … it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes Himself wholly and entirely present.”
Father Michael Van Sloun is the pastor of St. Bartholomew Church of Wayzata, Minn., and he blogs at www.catholichotdish.com. This article was originally published by The Catholic Spirit, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Learn more
At www.ewtn.com/catholicism/teachings/holy-eucharist-43: Learn more about Church teaching on the Eucharist and, the institution of the Eucharist in sacred Scripture, and read excerpts from Church documents on the Holy Eucharist, including Pope Paul VI’s encyclical “Mysterium Fidei” noted above
At www.therealpresence.org: Read about reported Eucharistic miracles and download resources and prayers for Eucharistic devotion
Pew survey: Majority of Catholics don’t believe in ‘Real Presence’
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new study about the level of Catholic belief in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist showed that a majority of Catholics do not believe that the bread and wine used at Mass become the Body and Blood of Christ.
The Pew study, issued Aug. 5, showed that 69 percent of all self-identified Catholics said they believed the bread and wine used at Mass are not Jesus, but instead “symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.” The other 31 percent believed in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, known as transubstantiation.
“Most Catholics who believe that the bread and wine are symbolic do not know that the Church holds that transubstantiation occurs,” said Gregory A. Smith, associate director of research at Pew Research Center in Washington. “Overall, 43 percent of Catholics believe that the bread and wine are symbolic and also that this reflects the position of the Church. Still, one in five Catholics – 22 percent – reject the idea of transubstantiation, even though they know about the Church’s teaching.”
The numbers who believe in transubstantiation are higher among Catholics who go to Mass at least once a week, but are hardly overwhelming. About five of every eight churchgoing Catholics believe in the Church’s teaching of transubstantiation.
Split among the 37 percent who don’t believe that the Communion bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ are 23 percent who don’t know what the Church’s teaching is, and 14 percent who know the Church’s teaching but don’t believe it, Smith said.
According to Pew’s figures, a majority in all age groups believe the bread and wine used at Mass to be symbolic, and the majority grows larger as the age group grows younger. Catholics with a high school education or less are less likely to believe in transubstantiation, Hispanic Catholics believe in it less than whites, and women believe in it less than men.
— Mark Pattison, Catholic News Service
Eucharistic Adoration is the adoration of Jesus Christ present in the Holy Eucharist. In the many churches that have this adoration, the Eucharist is displayed in a special holder called a monstrance, and people come to pray and worship Jesus continually throughout the day and often the night.
Christ’s great love for us was shown when He was crucified on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins and give us eternal life. He loves us without limit, and offers Himself to us in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.
The worship and custody of the Holy Eucharist, independently of Mass and Holy Communion, can be traced to post-apostolic times. St. Justin, writing in his Apology around the year 150, says that deacons were appointed to carry the Blessed Sacrament to those who were absent from the liturgy. The young St. Tarsisius was taken captive and put to death while carrying the consecrated Species on his person. St. Eudocia, martyred under Trajan, was first permitted to visit her oratory and remove a particle of the Host which she took with her to prison. What appears to be the first explicit reference to a tabernacle occurs in the Apostolic Constitutions, compiled towards the end of the fourth century, which provided that “deacons should take the remaining particles of the Sacred Species and place them in the tabernacle.”
Implicit in these and similar provisions was the Church’s constant belief in the Real Eucharistic Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Thus, in the words of St. Augustine, “No one eats that flesh without first adoring it” (“Expositions on the Psalms,” 98:9). It was on this doctrinal basis that the cult of adoring the Eucharist was founded and gradually developed as something distinct from the Sacrifice of the Mass. At the Council of Trent, Protestants were condemned for denying that the Eucharist is at once a sacrifice and a sacrament; that it differs from other sacraments in not only producing grace “ex opere operato Christi” (deriving their power from Christ’s work), but containing in a permanent manner the Author of grace Himself.
In his 1965 encyclical “Mysterium Fidei,” Pope Paul VI wrote, “The Catholic Church has always devoutly guarded as a most precious treasure the mystery of faith, that is the ineffable gift of the Eucharist which she received from Christ her Spouse as a pledge of His immense love, and during the Second Vatican Council in a new and solemn demonstration she professed her faith and veneration for this mystery...
“No one can fail to understand that the Divine Eucharist bestows upon the Christian people an incomparable dignity. Not only while the sacrifice is offered and the sacrament is received, but as long as the Eucharist is kept in our churches and oratories, Christ is truly the Emmanuel, that is, ‘God with us.’ Day and night He is in our midst, He dwells with us, full of grace and truth. He restores morality, nourishes, virtues, consoles the afflicted, strengthens the weak. He proposes His own example to those who come to Him that all may learn to be, like Himself, meek and humble of heart and to seek not their own interests but those of God.”
Adoration means coming before the Real Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist. But what does that mean? What, or better who, is the reality of which we speak when we talk about the Real Presence?
This reality, as the Church has solemnly defined the truth for the faithful, is the “totus Christus,” the whole Christ: body and blood, soul and divinity. This is not a rhetorical expression nor a verse of poetry. It is an article of the undivided Roman Catholic faith.
There can be no doubt what the faithful are told when they are told to believe in this mystery. Once the words of consecration have been pronounced by a validly ordained priest, what used to be bread and wine are no longer bread and wine. Only the appearances or, rather, only the external physical properties of the former elements, remain. There is now on the altar Jesus Christ, true God and true man, full God and full man.
Does this mean that Jesus is present in the Eucharist? Yes. Is it Jesus in His divine nature? Yes. Is it Jesus in His human nature? Yes. But if Jesus in the Eucharist is really and truly present, is He there with all that makes Him not only man, but makes Him this man? Yes. After all, when God assumed human nature, He assumed this nature as a particular single human being. The divine Person of the Son of God did not merely in some abstract sense become human. He became a definite, historically specific human being.
Thus in the Eucharist is present the Jesus of history: the one who was conceived of His mother Mary at Nazareth; who was born in a stable at Bethlehem; who lived for 30 years in Palestine; and who walked and talked and wept and slept and ate and drank; who shed real red blood on the cross and who rose from the grave, and after His resurrection had the incredulous disciples put their fingers into His pierced side.
When, then, we speak of the Real Presence we imply that part of this reality, which is Christ, is the heart of flesh and blood that every human being has and also Christ has in the glorified body He now possesses since the resurrection.
Note what we are saying. We are affirming that the Sacred Heart of Jesus is not only a historical memory, as recorded by St. John when he tells us that the sacred side of the Savior was pierced on Calvary. Nor are we saying merely that, rising from the dead, Christ is now at the right hand of His heavenly Father in body and soul and therefore also with His human heart. Nor are we saying simply that in the Eucharist is some sort of abstract memorial of the real Christ, who is actually in heaven and no longer on earth. No; we profess on faith that Jesus is now simultaneously both in heaven and on earth; that He truly ascended into heaven and is truly still on earth; that although He left us visibly He is with us really.
This means that the heart of Christ is in our midst, because Jesus is in our midst. He is the same Jesus in heaven and on earth. So He must be present here with His Sacred Heart of flesh, living and beating in the bosom of a living human being.
He is present with His Sacred Heart, at once human and divine: human because He has a genuine human nature, like ours in all things but sin, and a truly divine nature, like that of the Father, with whom He is one God, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.
But that is not all. We know that the heart of Christ is more than just a physical organ of His human body. It is also the symbol of God’s love for the human race, and, indeed, of the eternal love (that obtains) within the Blessed Trinity.
The important aspect of this is the fact that we have in the Holy Eucharist not only the physical Christ in His human and divine natures and therefore His heart of flesh substantially united to the Word of God. We have in the Eucharist the effective means by which we can show our love for God, since it is not just our own affections when we unite them with the heart of the Eucharistic Christ. It is His affections joined with ours. His love elevates ours, and ours as a consequence is raised to a participation in the divinity.
But more than that. By our use of the Eucharist, that is, by our celebrating the Eucharistic Liturgy and by our reception of the heart of Christ in Holy Communion, we receive an increase of the supernatural virtue of charity. We are thus empowered to love God more than we would ever be able to do otherwise, especially by loving the people whom He graciously – though often painfully – places into our lives.
Whatever else the heart symbolizes, it is the world’s most expressive sign of outgoing charity.
It is precisely here that the Holy Eucharist supplies what we could never do by ourselves: loving others with total self-sacrifice. We must be animated by the light and strength that comes from the heart of Jesus Christ. If, as He said, “without me you can do nothing,” it is certainly impossible to give ourselves to others, tirelessly and patiently and continually, in a word, heartily, unless His grace gives us the power to do so.
And where does His grace come from? From the depths of His divine heart, present in the Eucharist, offered daily for us on the altar and available to us always in the sacrament of Holy Communion.
— Jesuit Father John A. Hardon
At www.therealpresence.org: Read about the history and miracles associated with Eucharistic Adoration, get resources for introducing
children to Adoration, find lots of tips on how to pray a Holy Hour, and learn more about practices such as the Forty Hours Devotion and the First Friday Devotion
Spend time with Our Lord
The Diocese of Charlotte is blessed to have Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament offered in five locations. All of the faithful, of any age, are invited to participate! Stop by anytime or sign up for a regular Holy Hour:
BELMONT
Belmont Abbey College’s St. Joseph Perpetual Adoration Chapel, 100 Belmont-Mt. Holly Road
Margaret Fox 704-648-8947
Details: www.belmontabbeycollege.edu/about/community
CHARLOTTE
St. Gabriel Church, 3016 Providence Road
Estelle Wisneski 704-364-9568
HICKORY
St. Aloysius Church’s Immaculate Heart of Mary Perpetual Adoration Chapel, 921 2nd St. N.E.
Karen Sadlowski 828-308-5454
Details: www.staloysiushickory.org/perpetual-adoration
HIGH POINT
Pennybyrn at Maryfield Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration Chapel, 1315 Greensboro Road
Edna Corrigan 336-324-4366
Details: www.maryfieldeucharistic.org
HUNTERSVILLE
St. Mark Church’s Monsignor Bellow Perpetual Adoration Chapel (located in the Monsignor Joseph A. Kerin Family Center), 14740 Stumptown Road
Mary Sink 704-892-5107 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Details: www.stmarknc.org/adoration