Choose a topic from Part 3a:
1. The words of consecration, pronounced by the priest,change bread and wine into the true body and blood of Christ. Thissacrament is not a symbol or sign of Christ's body and blood;it is, in actual fact, the body and blood of Christ.
2. By the consecration, the substance of the bread and thesubstance of the wine cease to exist, and there remains only thesubstance of the living Christ.
3. The substance of the bread and the substance of thewine are not merely dissolved or disintegrated, either gradually orinstantaneously; neither are these substances annihilated. They arechanged into the body and blood of Christ.
4. The whole substance of the bread is, by divine power,changed into the whole substance of the body of Christ. And thewhole substance of the wine is, by divine power, changed into thewhole substance of the blood of Christ.
5. The accidentals or accidents of bread and wine (suchas, size, color, shape, taste) remain after the change, which iscalled tran-substantiation, has taken place. Theseaccidentals do not become theaccidentals of Christ; theyremain the accidentals of bread and wine, even though the substanceof bread and the substance of wine no longer exist to be qualifiedby these accidentals.
6. The element in a bodily thing that makes it the kind ofsubstance that it is, is called the substantial form ofthat thing. When a substantial form is joined with primalmatter, it constitutes the matter as an existing bodilysubstance of a definite kind. Now, in transub-stantiation, thesubstantial form of bread (that which constitutes the bread as thiskind of substance and no other) is removed; it does not remain, forthe substance is now not bread at all, but the substance of theliving Christ. And the same is true of the substantial form of thewine; it does not remain, for, by transubstantiation, that whichwas wine is now not wine at all, but the substance of the livingChrist.
7. Transubstantiation is an instantaneous change. There isno consuming of time, no movement of the elements (bread and wine)through successive stages or degrees as the change occurs whichturns bread and wine into the body and the blood of Jesus Christ.That which infinite power accomplishes need not be worked bydegrees, or with time intervals, as though some effort and skillwere being applied to the work.
8. To say, "The body of Christ is made out ofbread," is true when the words are rightly understood, thatis, when these words are understood to mean, "Bread is changedsubstantially, and is now no longer bread, but the body ofChrist."
"The one thing necessary which Jesus spoke of to Martha and Mary consists in hearing the word of God and living by it."
R. Garrigou-Lagrange, OP
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"A tree that is cultivated and guarded through the care of its owner produces its fruit at the expected time.
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St John of the Cross, OCD - Doctor of the Church
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"When the devil has failed in making a man fall, he puts forward all his energies to create distrust between the penitent and the confessor, and so by little and little he gains his end at last."
St Philip Neri
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