Thursday, 4/18/13
Jesus said, “The
bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world.” And since he
followed that up at the Last Supper by telling his disciples to do the same in
memory of him, we believe that the Holy Communion we receive is really his
Flesh. But, can we say in what way it becomes his Flesh?
The Fourth Lateran
Council in 1215 told us that what we receive is really the Flesh of Christ,
because by the words of consecration the substance of bread disappears, to be
replaced by the substance of Christ’s Flesh. The Council said this replacement
should be known as Transubstantiation.
Since we know that
the only working definition of a substance is its molecular make-up, and since we
know that there is no change in the molecular make-up of what was bread; the
word Transubstantiation cannot
logically be applied to the change we believe takes place.
For ourselves it is
enough to believe that Jesus comes to us in Holy Communion, because he said he
would come to us.
It may not be wrong
for us to go along with what the Anglican priest George Herbert wrote:
I am sure, whether bread stay, or
whether bread fly away, concerneth
bread not me.
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