The Eucharist

"The Holy Eucharist is a sacrament and a sacrifice. In the Holy Eucharist, under the appearances of bread and wine, the Lord Christ is contained, offered, and received." [1]  "The change of the entire substance of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ is called Transubstantiation." [2]  "'What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that THE BREAD IS THE BODY OF CHRIST AND THE CHALICE [WINE] THE BLOOD OF CHRIST.' (Sermons 272 [By St. Augustine.])" [3]  (EMPHASIS  original.)

It takes absolute to believe what the eyes see and the tongue tastes, bread and wine, are not what they are but the actual body and the blood of Christ after consecration.  I personally do not think it ends there.  After receiving Holy Communion and at some Masses the chance to partake in imbibing the blood of Christ, one needs to return to the pew and contemplate on one's knees the significance of what is  actually taking place after  the body and blood of Christ are inside one's body: the flesh of Christ is joined with and becomes one's flesh and the blood of Christ is infused into one's blood stream that goes straight into the heart.  The absorption of Christ into one's being is the holiest time at a Mass, and that time lasts long after the Holy Communion music has ended.  Indeed, it only ends when one does not think about the momentous event when absorption turns into retention, when Christ's body is living within one's own body and Christ's blood is coursing through one's arteries with one's own blood.

"Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.  For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them." [4], [5]


[1] http://www.ewtn.com/faith/teachings/eucha1a.htm
[2] Ibid.
[3] http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/father/fathers.htm
[4] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+6%3A53-56&version=NIV
[5] The operative word at the end of the quote is "remains".  "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them."  That word "remains" does not mean remaining just for the time being but forever.  The middle part of the quote, "[w]hoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood" does not require one to constantly eat transubstantiated bread and drink transubstantiated wine, but means that whoever believes without a single doubt in the transubstantiation actually eats the flesh of Christ and drinks His Blood and whoever does so faithfully, whether once in a lifetime, once in a blue moon, once a year or at every Mass every Sunday, every day or several times daily, will have eternal life.  It is also important to note that one who has never actually  eaten the body of Christ or drunk His blood is not specifically denied eternal life in Christ, notwithstanding the first part of the quote that clearly says "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you," for whoever one is, wherever one is, however one is raised is a child of God and as such, is loved dearly by God and whoever is loved by God and loves God dearly in return has in a way as mysterious as transubstantiation eaten "the flesh of the Son of Man and [drunk] his blood" and therefore has "life" which would then lead to "eternal life."