How to 'Let Your Light Shine' to Illumine the Path to God
If You Think the Eucharist Is a Mere Symbol, Read On
Photo by Thays Orrico on Unsplash
By Michael J. Cummings
Polls suggest that millions of U.S. Catholics do not believe—or are unaware—that Jesus Christ is truly present in the Holy Eucharist. “Truly present” means that when Catholics receive Holy Communion, they literally receive the flesh, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ.
The results of polls on this subject vary significantly depending on the wording of the question and the number of Catholics surveyed. Consequently, the percentage of Catholics who think the consecrated bread and wine are mere symbols of Christ’s body and blood can range between ten percent and more than fifty percent. There are approximately 70 million avowed Catholics in the U.S. If the lower percentage—ten percent—is correct, it still means that seven million Catholics believe they are receiving bread and wine.
The miraculous transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ takes place at the consecration in the mass, which repeats the words of Christ at the Last Supper. Invoking the Holy Spirit and acting in the person of Jesus (Latin, in persona Christi), the priest elevates a wafer of bread (host) and recites Christ’s words: “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my body, which will be given up for you.” After lowering the consecrated host and placing it on a paten (a metal receptacle), he elevates a chalice containing wine and again speaks Christ’s words: “Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me.”
The church has a special name for changing bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ: transubstantiation. Trans- is a prefix of Latin origin that means across, beyond, or going from one place to another. English words that use this prefix include transportation, translation, transmission, and transcontinental. The last part of the word, -substantiation, refers to substantial change. Thus, transubstantiation means going from being one substance to another.
In other words, bread becomes the body of Christ and wine becomes his blood. The host will still taste like bread and the wine like an alcoholic beverage. Nevertheless, they have become Christ’s body and blood. Scripture attests to this fact in the following passages from the Douay-Rheims version of the bible.
Matthew 26: 26-28 (Jesus Speaks)
And whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke: and gave to his disciples, and said: “Take ye, and eat. This is my body.” And taking the chalice, he gave thanks, and gave to them, saying: “Drink ye all of this. For this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins.”
John 6: 51-55 (Jesus Speaks)
“I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world.” The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Then Jesus said to them: “Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day.”
1 Corinthians 10:16 (St. Paul Speaks)
“The chalice of benediction, which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread, which we break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord?
Among the church fathers who affirmed the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist were the following:
St. Ignatius of Antioch (died between 108 and 140)
St. Irenaeus (ca. 125-202)
St. Justin Martyr (died 165)
St. Clement of Alexandria (ca.150-ca. 215)
St. Cyril of Jerusalem (ca. 313-386)
Hippolytus of Rome (ca. 165-ca. 235)
St. Jerome (ca. 345-420)
St. Augustine (354-430)
At the church Council of Ephesus in 350, attendees also affirmed the presence Christ’s flesh and blood in the Eucharist. At the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the Catholic Church approved transubstantiation as a doctrine.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Part 2, Section 2, Chapter 1)
It is Christ himself, the eternal high priest of the New Covenant who, acting through the ministry of the priests, offers the Eucharistic sacrifice. And it is the same Christ, really present under the species of bread and wine, who is the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice.
Further testimony of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist comes in the form of putative miracles involving consecrated hosts, usually ones that had been dropped on a floor and discovered hours or days later. Because the Eucharist is sacred, a priest stores a found host in a sealed container of water until it dissolves, then pours the contents into a sink equipped with a pipe that carries the dissolved host underground.
In the Church of Santa Maria y Caballito Almagro in Buenos Aires, Argentina. in 1996, a priest who found a host in the back of his church began following this procedure. Two days later, when he opened the container to dispose of its contents, he saw a host with what appeared to be blood stains. Red stains on hosts are not uncommon; often the stains result from bacterial activity. Nevertheless, the priest reported his discovery to an auxiliary bishop, Jorge Bergoglio (elected years later as Pope Francis). Bergoglio ordered it to be photographed, preserved, and observed1. Three years passed, but the host did not decompose. A scientist sent a sample of it to New York for analysis. A prominent physician, Frederick Thomas Zugibe—an expert in forensic medicine and anatomy, and a fellow in the College of American Pathologists—led a team of scientists that examined the sample. To assure objectivity, the scientist in Argentina did not disclose information about what it was and where it came from.
After the American team’s analysis, Zugibe reported that the sample contained living tissue from the left ventricle of the human heart. The tissue indicated that it had come from a person suffering great pain and stress, as in the crucifixion.2
In similar incidents in Sokólka, Poland, in 2008 and Legnica, Poland, in 2013, scientists found human heart tissue in two hosts, each from a person said to be in extreme agony, according to Wikipedia. Over the centuries, there have been many other reputed Eucharistic miracles, some believed to be of supernatural origin, others explainable by natural causes.
The blood type in the seemingly genuine Eucharistic miracles has always been recorded as AB, the same blood type found on the Shroud of Turin. The U.S. National Library of Medicine reported that testing revealed type AB was also found on the tunic Christ was said to have worn before the crucifixion and on a cloth said to have been wrapped around his head after the crucifixion.3
The church does not require Catholics to believe in any of the reported miracles that science cannot explain. But it does accept scores of them as evidence of the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. All Catholics can witness the profound miracle of the transubstantiation every time they go to mass. When they “take and eat,” they receive Christ himself.
Sources
1. “Eucharistic Miracles: Buenos Aires, 1996. St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church, Shrewsbury, MO. <https://www.stmike.org/from-the-pastors-desk/Eucharistic-miracles-buenos-aires-1996>.
2. “Scientifically Investigated Miracles of the Holy Eucharist: Part Two.” Archdiocese of San Francisco. Magis Center. No date. <https://sfarch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Eucharistic_Miracles_class_2-BnW-small.pdf>.
3. Kearse, Kelly P. The relics of Jesus and Eucharistic miracles: scientific analysis of shared AB blood type. US National Library of Medicine, PubMedCentral, 2024. <https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12491371/>
About the Author
Before retiring, Michael J. Cummings was a public-school English teacher, a journalist for 17 years, an adjunct instructor of English for 19 years at the Pennsylvania College of Technology, a freelance writer, and the author of more than thirty e-books and five print books. He was born in 1941 in Williamsport, Pa.
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