A couple of weeks ago I read an excellent, light-hearted column in the newspaper. A couple of sentences, referring to the author’s recent visit to a church, made me smirk: ““Please ask if you require a gluten-free host” deadpanned my order of service. Presumably Catholics don’t have this problem, the bread becoming miraculously gluten-free during transubstantiation.” Clearly, the columnist misunderstood the meaning of the fancy word “transubstantiation” – as many Catholics do too. In fact, it’s one of the main lines of questioning the Catholic faith. It’s based on the assumption that if a piece of unleavened bread has turned into the body of Christ, it should be possible to detect any physical, chemical or biological alteration by using scientific methods. On the grounds that no such modification can be found, the whole idea must be nonsense. Of course, from a purely tangible, scientific point of view, this is a correct conclusion. But at Mass, after the consecration of the bread and wine, we proclaim: “the mystery of faith”, not “the mystery of science”.
In order to understand what we believe as Catholics (and Eastern churches too) we have to refer to the philosophy that underlines our beliefs. Please, don’t switch off yet… In a broad sense, philosophy determines the way we see ourselves, the world around us, the meaning of life and so on. Quite often this term is used in a more specific fashion, like when people talk about particular approaches to the game by football coaches. Put simplistically, philosophy is a set of natural beliefs or assumptions that underlines our attitudes and behaviour. Conspiracy theories are good examples of twisted philosophies – they determine the way people see and interpret the world around them. Christian theology until the Reformation was based on Greek philosophy as represented by Plato and Aristotle. They identified two fundamental elements that define each entity: essence (or substance) and form. We know what a car is; our car park is now chock-a-block full of cars of different shapes, sizes, colours, and internal equipment – but we won’t mistake any of these for a bicycle. Here, in this church, there are a great number of people. Each of us is different from the other – we differ by height, weight, age, skin colour, hair, clothes and so on. But despite all those differences in form that make each one of us unique, we are essentially the same. At first glance, we know this is a human, not a dog. In everyday life, we can manipulate the form of things to our heart’s content – like having a different hairdo each week – while the essence of being a human remains unchanged.
In the sacramental context of the Eucharist, it is the essence of bread and wine that is changed while the form remains the same. The substance of bread changes to that of Jesus’ body while the form of bread remains the same – it looks like unleavened bread, it tastes like unleavened bread and the gluten content remains the same; so we use a different kind of bread for coeliacs. In other words, there are no tangible, scientifically measurable changes to the form of bread, but there’s a change to its substance; we call it “transubstantiation”. If you think this is a contorted theory, think again.
Last month I went to the vets to arrange having my elderly dog put down. I was presented with a number of offers on how to get my dog’s ashes afterwards. One of many reasons I didn’t consider any of them was my scepticism as to whether I would get the real ashes of my dog’s or just any old ashes. There wouldn’t have been any scientific way of proving it; I would have had to trust the company carrying out the cremation. It would have been a matter of my faith in proper diligence, procedures and so on. The same applies to the ashes of our loved ones. What makes them special is our belief because physically, chemically and visually all the ashes look the same. We hold them dear because we believe but to anyone else it will only be some fine powder.
Tonight we are celebrating the establishment of the sacraments of the Eucharist and priesthood; the latter is the service of the former. St Paul in the second reading reminds us that when we receive communion, we receive the Body and Blood of Christ. We are called to declare our faith that this is true when communion is given us with the words: “the body of Christ”; in response we say “Amen” – I believe so.
Image by lininha_bs from Pixabay
