264. Bread without wine = the whole Christ
264. BREAD WITHOUT WINE = THE WHOLE CHRIST
Is the Church right to give us the Eucharistic bread without the wine? When she offers Communion under both species, is it right to receive the bread only, if this is necessary for practical purposes such as avoiding infections or not risking spillage?
If the bread and the wine signify His broken, bloodless Body and His spilled Blood (outside His body), do we receive just the Body when we receive the “bread” and just the Blood when we receive the “wine”? Or is the whole Christ present in each of the elements (or, as the theological formula puts it, “under each sacramental species (kind)”?
The whole Christ is under each sacramental species . . . because now Christ’s Blood is not separated from His Body, as it was at the time of His Passion and death. Hence if this sacrament had been celebrated then, the Body of Christ would have been under the species of the bread but without the blood, and under the species of the wine the Blood would have been present without the Body. . . .
In Christ’s Passion, of which this is the memorial, the other parts of the body were not separated from one another, as the blood was, but the body remained entire, according to Exodus 12:46: You shall not break a bone thereof. And therefore in this sacrament the Blood is consecrated apart from the Body, but no other part is consecrated separately from the rest (III,76,2).
As Augustine says: Each receives Christ the Lord, Who is entire under every morsel, nor is He less in each portion, but bestows Himself entire under each (III,76,3).
Once again, St. Thomas shows how concrete and realistic the Faith is, when he says that if we had received the Eucharist between the time of Christ’s death on the Cross and the time of His Resurrection, we would have received the Body without the Blood, just as we would have received the Body without the soul. But now “the whole Christ is under each sacramental species.”
His body and blood were separated on the Cross, but His body was not broken in any other way. (See John 19:31-37.)
As Christ is wholly present in each of the millions of consecrated Eucharistic wafers around the world, even though the wafers are separated from each other physically in time and space; and as He is wholly present in each drop of consecrated wine in all the Eucharists around the world, so He is wholly present in the bread alone without the wine, or in the wine alone without the bread.
Therefore when we receive only the bread, we are not receiving any less of Christ in any way than when we receive both the bread and the wine.
The advantage of receiving under both species instead of only one is that the death that is signified is signified more completely, dramatically, and perfectly. The sign aspect of the sacrament, relative to our subjective human consciousness, especially our imagination, is more complete; but the objective reality of the Presence is not.
The practical “bottom line” is a sort of “best of both worlds” situation: on the one hand, receiving under one species is receiving not one iota less of Christ’s reality, yet on the other hand receiving under both species is a special privilege too because it is receiving Him in a more symbolically complete way. It is like the difference between Baptism by pouring and Baptism by immersion.