In his book, The Mass: The Presence of the Sacrifice of the Cross, Charles Cardinal Journet provides a following insight into the question: What are the effects of receiving the Eucharist?
In his Summa, Aquinas reveals that the best way to understand the secret of sacramental graces is to become attentive to the symbolism of each sacrament (cf. STh, III, 79.1):
Following this line of thought, the Bread and Wine Indicate:
- The Body & Blood of Christ: By eating His Body and drinking His Blood, Christ invites us to enter mysteriously into the drama of His Passion and into the work of redeeming the world.
- Nourishment and Comfort: The sacramental species signify that what eating and drinking are for the biological life, nourishment and comfort, Eucharistic Communion is for the spiritual life, Bread (nourishment) and Wine (comfort).
- Union of many: As food unites us to it when we consume it, so we are united to Christ and to His Mystical Body. St. Augustine called the Eucharist a sign of unity and bond of charity. (cf. Trent 875, DS 1638). Consuming the Eucharist is the symbol and cause “ex opere operato” of the lasting union of charity.
Communion with Christ creates Communion among His members
“The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” (1 Cor 10:16-17)
- The Blood of Christ is a unifier… The Body of Christ is called bread because of the appearances which cover it; more profoundly, because it gives life to the world (Jn 6:33). It is one bread, a unifier capable of uniting all to Him, beginning with those who receive it. The sacramental Body of Christ is the cause of unity of Christ’s Mystical Body. According to the Apostle, it is through the Body and Blood that we have communion – that is to say, it is through Christ in the act of His bloody sacrifice, just as at the Last Supper. It is there, in fact, that the supreme and permanent source of the Church Militant’s unity resides” (185).
- Since transubstantiation does not multiply Christ (who is a unity) but rather His presence, when we receive Holy Communion, we unify our multiplicity with the contact of His unity.
The Sacramental Sign and the Signified
- Pure sign = The species of bread & wine – that which we see.
- Sign + Reality = Christ’s Body & Blood – that which we believe: “The common spiritual good of the entire Church is contained substantially in the very sacrament of the Eucharist” (STh I, 20.4.1).
- Pure reality = The Mystical Body – a reality not contained substantially in the Eucharist but is the proper effect of the cause. The sacramentalized Christ is the cause of the Church’s unity. Since the cause must be adequate to its effect, only a Real Presence of the Body of Christ can realize the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ (and Trinitarian union, cf. Jn 14:23). The Eucharist has also an eschatological character since it contained the Body of the Resurrected One, Who promises to raise us all up on the last day (Jn 6:39-40, 54).
Prodigal Catholic 