Eucharist and Incarnation: Thoughts from Mgr. Sokolowski

As we approach the Christmas season, I think it is important to think about our Eucharistic Feast and Transubstantiation in light of the Incarnation. Interestingly enough, this was the heart of the late Lancelot Andrewes' framework for discussing real presence. In looking through Sokolowski's book Christian Faith & Understanding: Studies on the Eucharist, Trinity and the Human Person, we find some very interesting insights into the mystery of Real Presence. I will allow his words to explain:

In the Eucharist, therefore, it is the radical worldliness of the Incarnation, its materiality, that calls for Transubstantiation in the Eucharist. It is the incarnate divinity, the word made flesh and not simply the divine nature, that is present in the Eucharist. If I may use the terms, the body of Christ, because it is material, "displaces" or "dislodges" the bread. Whatever matter may be, it takes place, it is located. Through Transubstantiation, the bodily presence of the transcendent divinity, in the person of the Son, takes its place among us in a manner that follows upon the Incarnation, and it does so by replacing the substance of bread and wine.

However, not everything of bread ceases to exist in the Eucharist. As St. Thomas says, "the accidents, which are the proper object for the senses, are genuinely there." The accidents and natural characteristics of bread are truly there; we should not think of the species of bread and wine as merely images in our minds. They are part of the world and they provide the place where Christ is present. St. Thomas says that these accidents serve as a kind of subject for the presence of Christ: "Strictly speaking, there is no subject in this change....All the same, the accidents which remain do bear a certain resemblance to a subject." The sacramental presence of the Word occurs here in this place and at this time, and it thus bears the signature of the Incarnation. The visible and tangible forms of bread and wine, the forms present to the senses, remain as they are, but the substantial form, the form present to the understanding, does not: the body of Christ is now present to the understanding, but to an understanding enlightened by faith, an intelligence guided not by vision, touch, or taste, but by hearing. We recall also that the Eucharist directs us toward the celestial liturgy and our future participation in it, where no sacramental presence, no appearance of bread and wine, will be needed, and where the same God who is now an object of faith will be present to vision. In that celestial liturgy the bread and wine are no longer required for the presence of Christ, but his human being, the fruit of the Incarnation, does remain. For our present state, however, the bread and wine are a worldly expression of the glorified body of Christ that is present to the Father, a worldly expression that we return to the Father in the Great Amen of our Eucharistic Prayer.

I would think that this is a very clear way of thinking about Transubstantiation and Incarnation and the reality of Christ's presence in the sacred gifts of bread and wine. Eucharist and Incarnation thought about in the doctrine of Transubstantiation makes the most theological sense of any other 'theory' of presence put forth by Protestants. The logic of Incarnation leads on to the doctrine of Transubstantiation and should not be seen as separate truths but are quite interrelated and should be discussed together. Maybe a good Christmas homily would be on Real Presence!