262. Transubstantiation
262. TRANSUBSTANTIATION
Why isn’t the Catholic doctrine of “transubstantiation” impossible and illogical?
Whether bread can be converted (changed) into the Body of Christ?
Eusebius Emesenus says: To thee it ought neither to be a novelty nor an impossibility that earthly and mortal things be changed into the substance of Christ.
Since Christ’s true Body is in this sacrament, and since it does not begin to be there by local motion, nor is it contained therein as in a place. . . .[I]t must be said then that it begins to be there by conversion of the substance of the bread into itself.
Yet this change is not like natural changes, but is entirely supernatural, and effected by God’s power alone. Hence Ambrose says: See how Christ’s word changes nature’s laws, as He wills: a man is not wont to be born save of man and woman; see therefore that against the established law and order a man is born of a Virgin; and: It is clear that a Virgin begot beyond the order of nature . . . Why, then, do you look for nature’s order in Christ’s body, since the Lord Jesus was Himself brought forth of a Virgin beyond nature?. . .
God is infinite act (actuality); hence His action (“second act,” activity) extends to the whole nature of being. Therefore He can work not only formal conversion (change), so that diverse forms (natures, essences, species) succeed each other in the same (material) subject, but also the change of all being, so that the whole substance (being, reality) of one thing be changed into the whole substance of another. And this is done by divine power in this sacrament; for the whole substance of the bread is changed into the whole substance of Christ’s Body, and the whole substance of the wine into the whole substance of Christ’s Blood. Hence this not a formal but a substantial conversion; nor is it a kind of natural movement, but, with a name of its own, it can be called transubstantiation. . . .
Form cannot be changed into form, nor matter into matter, by the power of any finite agent. Such a change, however, can be made by the power of an infinite agent, which has control over all being, because the nature of being is common to both forms and to both matters; and whatever there is of being in the one, the Author of being can change into whatever there is of being in the other. . . (III,75,4).
This change is effected by a power which is infinite, to which it belongs to operate in an instant. . . . Thus it is written (Mk 7:34) that when Christ had said, “Ephata,” which is “Be thou opened,” immediately his ears were opened and the string of his tongue was loosed (III,75,7).
The Eucharist is no more impossible than the Incarnation. Indeed, it is the extension of it.
“With God all things are possible”, and only what is self—contradictory and therefore meaningless is not possible even for God because it is not a thing at all. “A round square” or “a good sin” does not suddenly become meaningful because you add the words “God can do this” to it. But “with God all things are possible” because His power is unlimited. If not, God would not be God, but a creature. It takes finite power to effect a finite change, but infinite power to effect the infinite change from absolute nonexistence to existence, i.e., to create a universe not from something but from nothing.
If by command God can change nothingness into the universe without any previously existing physical cause, He can certainly change bread and wine into His Son’s Body and Blood. If He can change corpses into living persons, He can change bread into Christ’s Body. If He can feed five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes, He can feed a billion Catholics with His Son’s Body. If He can change water into wine, He can change wine into His own Blood, and He can change our blood into something “eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man” in the resurrection.
(“Substance” does not mean “chemical element” in St. Thomas’ Aristotelian, pre—modern, pre—scientific language. It means “what the thing essentially is”, its essential nature.)