The Eucharist and Celiac Disease

Someone recently asked me how the Eucharist can be at the same time healing and yet make those with celiac disease ill. If it is transubstantiated into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, how can it still be bread? If the substance has changed, how can it still trigger an autoimmune reaction? This can be hard to understand (for all of us) and cause some anguish, especially in those with celiac disease. I have not come across much on the topic of celiac disease and the Eucharist. However, I did read something recently on the Eucharist and substance and accidents which may be helpful: Bishop Robert Barron’s little book for the USCCB’s call for a Eucharistic revival, This Is My Body.¹

There is something interesting about the substance and accidents of the Eucharist from a metaphysical point of view. Take grapes, for example. The substance is grapes, the accidents are red or green or black/blue, oblong or round, big or small, type (Thompson, Chardonnay, Merlot, etc.). What grapes are does not change, but the accidents are changeable within a range typical of grapes (the properties specific to grapes). We can taste, touch, smell, see the accidents. Not all green things or round things are grapes, but only the things that have the substance “grapes” and the properties (or qualities, in metaphysics) of grapes. But when the grapes are made into wine, some of the accidents are the same (red/white, grape-y flavor, etc.) but the properties have changed to those of this new substance called “wine” (alcoholic, liquid, not solid, sweet or dry depending on the type of grape used, etc.).

Before the consecration, the substance of the host is bread, the accidents are unleavened (or leavened for the Orthodox), round (or cubes for the Orthodox), wheat, white or tan, etc. And it has the properties of the thing we call “bread.” After the consecration the substance of the host is no longer bread but now is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ. And while the accidents are bread, the properties are Christ’s Real Presence. “Bread” is now an accident, not a substance. It is a foundational element of our faith that it is now really Christ (because Christ himself said so, see Mt 26:26; Mk 14:22; Lk 22:19). We still see, smell, taste, feel the accidents of bread (physically reacting to it as if it was bread, including the reactions of celiac disease), and along with that we now experience an additional reality, Christ’s Real Presence (substance). The properties then of the Eucharist, after the transubstantiation of the bread, now no longer bread in substance, are healing and life; we are made into the Body of Christ; there are real consequences to partaking: bad, if we partake unworthily (1 Cor 11:27–30); and good, “adapting one who eats it to eternal life.”² Bishop Barron says, “The Eucharistic elements, fruit of the earth and the work of human hands, are not destroyed or annihilated through the power of Christ, rather they are transfigured, elevated into vehicles for Christ’s self-communication.”³ (I highly recommend reading Bishop Barron’s short book. Perhaps and appropriately, make it your spiritual reading during Eucharistic Adoration.)

This understanding or “head knowledge” of transubstantiation may not be of much comfort to those with celiac disease. The heart, so much in love, wants to be united to Christ in this sacrament, the ultimate earthly closeness to Christ Jesus. From that perspective, keep in mind that the consecrated wine is itself the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ. So partaking of the Blood is also partaking of the Eucharist. Another thing that may be helpful for those unable to partake of the Body of Christ in the Eucharist is spiritual Communion. Many found this out during the COVID-19 pandemic when it was difficult to go to Mass. According to saints, such as St. Teresa of Avila,⁴ St. Thomas Aquinas,⁵ and St. Alphonsus Ligouri,⁶ spiritual Communion is profitable, bestows grace, and nurtures our faith. A third thought, something that comes to my mind often when I’m suffering, is that we can give our suffering a purpose. St. Paul shows us that purpose: “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the Church” (Col 1:24). Christ suffered much and also left his suffering open for us to add our suffering to his for the good of the Church. (Please add comments below if you have other ways we can comfort those suffering with celiac disease or unable to receive the Eucharist.)

Notes

¹ Bishop Robert Barron, This Is My Body: A Call to Eucharistic Revival (Elk Grove, Ill.: Word on Fire, 2023), https://bookstore.wordonfire.org/products/this-is-my-body.

² Ibid., 71.

³ Ibid., 97.

⁴ Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, trans. E. Allison Peers (Image Books, 1964), chap. 35, https://ccel.org/ccel/teresa/way/way.i.xli.html. “When you hear Mass without communicating, daughters, you may communicate spiritually, which is extremely profitable, and afterwards you may practise inward recollection in exactly the same way, for this impresses upon us a deep love of the Lord. If we prepare to receive Him, He never fails to give, and He gives in many ways that we cannot understand” (106). Pope John Paul II quotes this passage in Ecclesia de Eucharistia (2003), no. 34, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_20030417_eccl-de-euch.html.

⁵ Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, III, q. 79, a. 1, ad. 1: “This sacrament [the Eucharist] has of itself the power of bestowing grace; … even from desire thereof [for the Eucharist] a man procures grace whereby he is enabled to lead the spiritual life.” https://aquinas101.thomisticinstitute.org/st-iiia-q-79#TPQ79OUTP1.

⁶ Alphonsus Liguouri, “The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ,” in The Holy Eucharist, vol. 6 of The Aesthetical Works, ed. Isaac M. Kassock (1887; CreateSpace, 2015), chap. 4, 2.4: “It will be found likewise to contribute very much to keep fervor alive in the soul, often to make a spiritual Communion, so much recommended by the Council of Trent, [Sess. xiii. cap: 8.] which exhorts all the faithful to practice it. The spiritual Communion, as St. Thomas says, [Summa theologiae, III, q. 79, a. 1] consists in an ardent desire to receive Jesus Christ in the Holy Sacrament; and therefore the saints were careful to make it several times in the day” (264).