267. Why Christ’s Presence is invisible
267. WHY CHRIST’S PRESENCE IS INVISIBLE
Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is invisible, imperceptible except by faith. Is this for the same reason that I (i.e., my soul, my personality) am invisible to you, or is it for another, different reason?
Do angels and demons perceive Him in the Eucharist as we cannot?
Christ’s Body as it is in this sacrament cannot be seen by any bodily eye . . . because Christ’s Body is substantially present in this sacrament; but substance as such (as distinguished from accidents) is not visible to the bodily eye, nor does it come under any one of the senses, nor under the imagination, but solely under the intellect, whose object is what a thing is (substance). And therefore, properly speaking, Christ’s Body, according to the mode of being which it has in this sacrament, is perceptible neither by the sense nor by the imagination, but only by the intellect, which is called the spiritual eye.
(But) it is perceived differently by different intellects. For since the way in which Christ is in this sacrament is entirely supernatural, it is visible in itself to a supernatural intellect, i.e., (1) to the divine intellect, and . . . (2) to a beatified (in Heaven) intellect, of angel or of man, which through the participated glory of the divine intellect sees all supernatural things in the vision of the divine essence. But (3) it can be seen by a wayfarer through faith alone, like other supernatural things.
And not even the angelic intellect of its own natural power is capable of beholding it; consequently the devils cannot by their intellect perceive Christ in this sacrament except through faith, to which they do not pay willing assent. Yet they are convinced of it from the evidence of signs, according to James 2:19: The devils believe, and tremble (III,76,7).
“Substance”, in St. Thomas’ traditional and commonsensical Aristotelian terminology, means not “chemical element” but a thing, an entity, a being—linguistically, a noun. “Accidents” means not “mistakes” but “attributes of substances”, whether essential and permanent (these are called “properties” or “proper accidents”) or temporary and changeable. “Accidents” include qualities, quantities, relations, times, places, actions, and passions (receptions). They exist only in substances, not in themselves. I can give you blue socks at 3:00 P.M. but I cannot give you blue or 3:00 P.M.
We can see some accidents, but not substances as distinct from accidents. We see substances only in and through their accidents—e.g., we see socks under the appearances of shape and color. When Christ’s contemporaries perceived His body, they perceived it by His accidents: bearded, white skin, etc. We do not perceive any such accidents in His Body in the Eucharist. But it is the same Body, the same reality, the same substance.
The philosophical category of “substance” is so essential to the Catholic faith that it is used to express the central, most important, and most distinctively Christian doctrine of all, the divinity of Christ, in the Nicene Creed, in which we confess that Christ is “consubstantial” (of one substance, or “one in being”) with the Father.
We cannot perceive Christ’s Body in the Eucharist by the senses (whether or not they are amplified by microscopes or other scientific instruments) or the imagination, which is the mind’s power to form sense images when the senses are not sensing them. We “perceive” (are aware of) His Body only by faith. Faith is not a feeling; faith is a knowing—a knowing not by sensation or by logical proof but by divine revelation. God said it and therefore we believe it, because God is God.
Angels cannot perceive His presence there either, though God can supernaturally enlighten angels to see it. He can even do that to us, and in fact did, very rarely, by miracle, to a few saints.
Devils (fallen angels) cannot perceive Him there either, by senses (they have none), by faith (they have none), or by their own intellect, directly; “yet they are convinced of it from the evidence of signs”, as St. Thomas says, because they are not stupid. They see the life—changing effects of Eucharistic Adoration better than many parish administrators do! And they tremble.