On Transubstantiation

HOC EST ENIM CORPUS MEUM.



St Dominic Barberi replied to someone pestering him about this matter: "Our Lord said, 'This is My Body.' You say it is not His Body. I prefer to believe Jesus Christ."

The words of Institution could not possibly be plainer.

If someone believes that Jesus Christ is God; that He is the Truth; then they must believe that all His Words are true, and that He does not waste words. It is perfectly logical to deny that the Bread and Wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ and that the Bread and Wine themselves utterly cease to be - if one does not believe in the Divinity of Christ in the first place. But one who believes that Jesus Christ is the Truth must believe that all his words are true. There is no word more incontrovertible than the word est, is, ist, è, εστιν. Could Our Lord have used a clearer word than is, when He uttered the words of Consecration? If when He said, "This is my Body," it was not His Body, then there would have been a disjunction between what He said and what He thought: a lie: and Who will dare to accuse Jesus Christ of a lie? He said, "This is my Body;" he did not say "This is a simulacrum of My Body," or "This represents My Body," or "This is kind of like My Body," or "This is a symbol of My Body;" and with good reason: for if that had been the case, He would have been instituting a more or less pointless ceremony. No: he said, "This is My Body," and those who try to interpret those four words, which are as plain as the sun at noonday, nay, ten thousand times plainer, in any manner besides their literal and obvious signification, implicitly accuse Jesus Christ of a lie.

A metaphor, you say? No. Is it conceivable that Jesus Christ would have allowed the slightest ambiguity in this solemn moment? If what He was doing was something other than changing the bread He held into His Body, why did He use such a turn of phrase? What would He have said if He had intended to change bread into His body? It may be said that He could have used a formula which expressed the process of change. But clearest and most unambiguous of all are the words "This IS My Body."

What are we to understand by the word is? Any metaphorical or symbolic interpretation of the word is makes it absolutely synonymous with is not; and this is at worst a lie and at best a noxious waste of words. Can we accuse Our Saviour of either of those things?

Such a metaphor, at such a moment, would be pointless and dangerous.



It may be objected that if Jesus Christ could, and did, carry out this act, it does not follow that we can. We cannot change a created thing into the Uncreated Creator. No: and that is why Our Lord then said, Do this in memory of Me. Some will use the words "in memory of Me" as an argument against Transubstantiation; yet how they negate the words This is My Body I am at a loss to understand. When Our Lord uttered the words Do this in memory of Me he was giving His Apostles Sacramental Power: the Power to do what He was doing: to change bread and wine into God the Son, that the Faithful might be nourished by God the Son. That is the meaning of the words "Do this." And that sentence, Do this in memory of Me, was the formula instituting the Sacrament of Order, which gave the Apostles the Sacramental Power, I say, to confect the Eucharist, but also, importantly, to ordain their successors, that other men (viri) might be able to perform their office of priests of Christ.



Let it be clearly understood that the priesthood is not a job; it is the possession of Sacramental Power whereby a man (vir) participates in the Omnipotence of God.



(15th October, 2010. (St Teresa of Avila))