Chapter I. The Nature and Effects of the Eucharist

THE Council of Trent teaches ‘“‘that in the august sacrament of the holy Eucharist after the consecration of the bread and wine our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, is truly, really, and substantially contained under the species of those sensible things. For neither are these things mutually repugnant—that our Saviour himself always sitteth at the right. hand of the Father in heaven, according to the natural mode of existing, and that nevertheless he be in many other places sacramentally present to us, in his own substance, by a manner of existence which, though we can scarcely express it in words, yet can we by the understanding, illuminated by faith, conceive, and we ought most firmly to believe, to be possible unto God; for thus all our forefathers, as many as were in the true Church of Christ, who have treated of this most holy sacrament, have most openly professed that our Redeemer instituted this so admirable a sacrament at the Last Supper, when, after the blessing of the bread and wine, he testified in express and clear words that he gave them his own very body and his own blood. And this faith has ever been in the Church of God, that immediately after the consecration the veritable body of our Lord and his veritable blood together with his soul and divinity are under the species of bread and wine.”¹ It does not belong to the province of moral theology to prove or to defend this dogma of our Faith. We accept the teaching of the Church that the holy Eucharist is a sacrament in which under the species of bread and wine we receive Jesus Christ, the spiritual food of our souls. It is not merely a sacrament while it is received by the communicant, or while it is consecrated by the priest in Mass.

It is a permanent sacrament, under which our Lord remains present as long as the sacred species remain unchanged. It gives sacramental grace to the soul while it is being swallowed as food, and the divine presence remains in the communicant until the species of bread and wine are corrupted.

Although in the consecration there is a twofold matter and form, yet these constitute only one sacrament, for the species of bread and wine together signify a complete spiritual repast, just as food and drink go to make one meal for the body.

¹ Sess. xiii, c. 1, 3.

The effects which the holy Eucharist produces in the soul are set forth by the Council of Trent: ‘‘ Our Saviour wished that this sacrament should be received as the spiritual food of souls, whereby may be fed and strengthened those who live with his life who said, ‘ He that eateth me, the same also shall live by me’; and as an antidote, whereby we may be freed from daily faults, and be preserved from mortal sins. He would, furthermore, have it be a pledge of our glory to come, and everlasting happiness, and thus be a symbol of that one body whereof he is the head, and to which he would fain have us as members be united by the closest bond of faith, hope, and charity, that we might all speak the same things, and there might be no schisms amongst us.”¹ Besides being an antidote by which we are preserved from mortal sin, it is a very probable opinion that if the Eucharist is received by one in a state of mortal sin, of which he is not conscious and to which he is not attached, that sin will be forgiven. For the sacraments give grace to all who put no obstacle in their way, and such a communicant cannot be said to put an obstacle to the grace of the sacrament. But the entrance of grace expels all mortal sin from the soul. This is the teaching of St Thomas² and many other theologians.

¹ Sess. xiii, c. 2.

² Summa, 3, q. 79, a. 3.