What is Transubstantiation? by Charles Cardinal Journet

In his book, The Mass: The Presence of the Sacrifice of the Cross, Charles Cardinal Journet gives a thorough historical & theological survey of the doctrine of transubstantiation.

Here are some summary points:

(1) The Promise of the Eucharist

The discourse on the Bread of Life becomes fully intelligible to us only when read in the retrospective clarity of the Last Supper account; and it reaches its summit with the verses 51-58, where the bloody sacrifice is predicted (“The bread which I shall give is My Flesh for the life of the world” (v.51)) as well as the manner in which one ought to participate in it (“Unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood you will not have life in you”). 133 So John 6 is aimed at the Last Supper accounts.

(2) The Institution of the Eucharist

The texts words of consecration from the Liturgical Tradition “never produce purely and simply one of the texts of Scripture… in the most ancient texts… [they] go back to a tradition prior to Scripture. We touch upon here a consequence of the fact that the Eucharist was celebrated long before Paul and the Evangelists had picked up the pen… We clearly have in such texts vestiges of the liturgical life of the first generation” (Jungmann, Missarum Sollemnia, 111).
“The same fact helps explain the variations that we are able to find in the scriptural accounts of the institution. They must come from different liturgical practices where these texts had been used. In Luke and Paul the words over the bread and wine are separated by a meal. In Matthew and Mark they are joined – no doubt by the practice of the liturgical milieu” (Jungmann 30-32).

(3) The Development of Dogma

“Development” happens not by new revelations but by new explanations of the evangelical revelation – a revelation given entirely at once by Christ to the Apostles.
“In declaring a teaching as revealed the Church can add, in all truth, that she has always held and believed it; she had always believed, of course, not in an explicit, conceptual and formulated manner, but in a manner implicit, pre-conceptual and pre-formulated” (141-2).
The Council of Trent taught that “the Church of God has always believed that immediately after the consecration the true Body of our Lord and His true Blood exist under the species of bread and wine, conjointly with His soul and divinity” (Session XII, ch. 3, Denz. 876). The Council would present the doctrine of transubstantiation as “a constant conviction in the Church,” although it needed ages in order to explain, conceptualize and formulize it.
This development always occurs “within the dogma itself, within the same sense, within the same thought” (ch. 23).
If God had “need” of Christ’s corporal presence in order to gather men together around His redemptive sacrifice, doesn’t God “need” this in a similar way today? The 1st time was out of love for us (John 3:16). Why can’t we consider that His love still does it?

(4) The First 5 Centuries of the Church

In this first stage, the Fathers of the Church “realize that the truth of her faith in the Real Presence implies a miraculous conversion of the bread and wine” (149).

St. Ignatius of Antioch (+110): “The Eucharist is the Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Flesh which suffered for our sins, the Flesh which the Father in His goodness has resurrected” (Epistle to the Smyrnians).
St. Justin Martyr (+155): “And this food is called among us Eucharistia [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.” —First Apology, 66
St. Irenaeus (+200): The bread and wine, “receiving the word of God, become the Eucharist, that is, the Body and Blood of Christ” (Against Heresies, V.2).
St. Gregory of Nyssa (383): “We now then have reason to believe that the bread, sanctified by the word of God, is transformed into the Body of God the Word” (Catechetical Discourse, 37).
St. Ambrose (397): “As soon as the consecration takes place the bread becomes Christ’s flesh” (De sacramentis); “Is not Christ’s word which is able to bring forth from nothing that which did not exist, is it not able to change, mutare, the things that are into that which they are not?” (De mysteriis).
St. Augustine (430): “It is the same Flesh which He gave us to eat for our salvation; and no one eats it if he does not adore it beforehand.”
St. Cyril of Alexandria (350): For just as the bread and the wine of the Eucharist before the holy invocation of the adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine, but the invocation having been made, the bread becomes the Body of Christ and the wine the Blood of Christ” (Catechetical Lectures 19 [Mystagogic 1], 7).

(5) From the Patristic Period to the Lateran Council (1215)

“When the Church recognized the fact that the Real Presence – which she always believed explicitly and conceptually – has a necessary prerequisite, under pain of collapsing, a miraculous conversion of the bread and wine, at that point she was able to define that this conversion, which she calls transubstantiation, was really pre-contained in the primitive evangelical revelation; and she was then able to declare, in all truth, that she has always believed it implicitly and pre-conceptually” (149-50).

3 key points to clarify during this time:

Seen by the senses VS. believed by faith: seen by senses = the appearance (or species or accidents) of bread & wine, which signify the Body & the Blood, VS. believed by faith = the the substance of the Body & Blood of Christ, the Eucharistic Body (reality & sign) but under a different mode & which lead to the reality = the Mystical Body.
The notion of change or conversion of the bread & wine into the Body & Blood of Christ: The transformation is very “secret” or “humble” insofar as the species/accidents of bread & wine remain unchanged, and yet the substance changes.
Why impanation is wrong: Although it would seem easier to suppose that the bread & wine remained unchanged and the Body & Blood of Christ descend into them, as Berengarius said in the 11th century, this theory of disastrous for many reasons: (1) destroys truth of Christ’s words – “This is My Body,” not “In this is My Body,” (2) proposes for adoration 2 subsisting things: bread & Jesus; (3) renders Real Presence impossible, contradictory & absurd, for Christ would have to become locally present (rather than substantially) and He would have as many bodies as their are hosts VS. Last Supper – after words of consecration there were 2 substantial presences of Christ’s one pre-existing unchanged Body: (1) the first natural, durable, under its proper appearances, and therefore local; (2) the other derived, sacramental, temporary, under borrowed appearances, and therefore not local but by mode of pure substance.

(6) Transubstantiation defined

The Fourth Lateran Council (1215): Used the word in a solemn profession of faith: “One indeed is the universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved, * in which the priest himself is the sacrifice, Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine; the bread (changed) into His body by the divine power of transubstantiation, and the wine into the blood, so that to accomplish the mystery of unity we ourselves receive from His (nature) what He Himself received from ours” (Denz. 430).
The Council of Trent (1551): “Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation… this marvelous and unique conversion of the entire substance of bread into the Body, and the entire substance of wine into Blood, not allowing anything to subsist but the species of bread and wine, a conversion which the Catholic Church calls by the most appropriate name ‘transubstantiation’ (Denz. 1642).

(7) The Technical Formula of the Dogma

The Church’s Magisterium… seeks to maintain with all its integrity, with all its profundity, let us say with all its scandal, the unimaginable sense of these simple evangelical words, “This is My Body” (154).
Understand these dogmas on two levels: (1) common sense – instinctive spontaneous knowledge; (2) analyzed knowledge – elaborated conceptual knowledge.
From common sense, we have experiences of the natural mystery of substantial transformation through nutrition. When I eat bread, what was bread becomes me, something of the bread passed into me, but precisely by ceasing to be bread. Something does remain, in a way, insofar as I can increased by it.
But in the supernatural mystery of transubstantiation, Christ pre-exists transubstantiation and is unchanged by it. It is a little at the moment of creation, when God created the world but was unchanged by it, or at the moment of the Incarnation, when Christ’s humanity was changed by the Word, but the Word was not changed by it. In transubstantiation, the entire substance of bread & wine change & the species/accidents remain (the empirically observable manifestations of its properties, like mass, quantity, quality) and take on two new relations: (1) relation of sign (bread) to thing signified (Body of Christ); (2) relation of containing to contained. The divine power alone sustains the accidents. This is required to maintain Christ’s words, “This is My Body.” Christ does not become locally present (and not by way of quantity – as if he multiplied) but sacramentally present and by way of quality – according to substance. After consecration, Christ remains (1) naturally and locally present in Heaven by mode of quantity and (2) supernaturally and sacramentally present in the Eucharist by mode of substance. It is metaphysically impossible for the same body to be present in two places locally (but not if one locally & another substantially).
“Thus therefore, that which Catholics adore in the Eucharist, the reality to which belongs their faith and love, is Christ alone. There is for them no more bread in the consecrated host; and the accidents and dimensions of the bread remain only in order to circumscribe the mysterious presence of Christ” (162).
“The Body of Christ, which is a corporeal substance, is wholly under each portion of species of bread, as the human soul, which is a spiritual substance, is found wholly in each part of the human body” (cf. STh I 8.2.3).
“According to the very words of consecration, the bread is really changed into the Body of Christ: here is faith. But the accidents, the dimensions of the bread remain: here is evidence” (164). The words of consecration say rigorously and strictly that a substance (bread) is changed into another substance (the Body of Christ).

Council of Trent:

First of all the holy Synod teaches and openly and simply professes that in the nourishing sacrament of the Holy Eucharist after the consecration of the bread and wine our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, is truly, really, and substantially [can. 1] contained under the species of those sensible things. For these things are not mutually contradictory, that our Savior Himself is always seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven according to the natural mode of existing, and yet that in many other places sacramentally He is present to us in His own substance by that manner of existence which, although we can scarcely express it in words, yet we can, however, by our understanding illuminated by faith, conceive to be possible to God, and which we ought most steadfastly to believe. Trent 874, DS 1636
If anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist there are truly, really, and substantially contained the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore the whole Christ, but shall say that He is in it as by a sign or figure, or force, let him be anathema. DS 1651.

(8) The Consequences of the Sacramental Presence

The Body of Christ is NOT multiplied: Rather it is the sacramental presence of Christ’s Body that is multiplied. “This is My Body” – This = the existing substance, which before the act was bread, is not, after the action, Christ’s Body. True every time it is said.
The Body of Christ is NOT divided: Rather it is the sensible appearances that are divided (the sign) and NOT the substance (the reality). Aquinas’ Lauda Sion: “Nor a single doubt retain, When they break the Host in twain, But that in each part remains What was in the whole before; Since the simple sign alone Suffers change in state or form, The Signified remaining One And the Same forevermore.”
The Body of Christ ceases to be present the moment when the species are altered: When the species or bread and wine are altered under the influence of physical or chemical agents, the sacramental presence immediately ceases (and Christ departs without any suffering).
Under the species Christ is as He is in Himself: Through a relation of capacity, the sacramental presence reflects as in a mirror the natural presence (at the Last Supper in regard to the mortal Christ, now in regard to the glorious Christ).
The presence in virtue of the words and the presence of concomitance: By virtue of Christ’s words, the Body is under the species of bread. By virtue of concomitance, the entire Christ, now in glory, is contained under each species.

Protestant Break from Transubstantiation:

Luther: “Consubstantiation” – The bread is not converted (it remains unchanged). The Body of Christ unites itself to the bread. Two substances present. “This is My Body” = “This is some bread where My Body is”
Zwingli: Pure symbol. “This symbolizes My Body.” Spiritually receive through faith.
Calvin: Calvin tried to reconcile Luther & Zwingli but ended up like Zwingli – Christ is only truly in Heaven. The substance of bread remains. Christ was only speaking symbolically. He is eaten by faith alone.

The Scandal of Love

“Christianity is sustained in time just as it entered: by preaching a folly of God which is holier than all human wisdom” (181). Christianity has absolutely refused to tone down the scandal of the divine revelations… “It is always the scandal of a God who loved the world that He gave His only Son in a gift so incredible, so complete, so irrepressible that it can be explained by nothing except that kind of folly which is inspired by the passion of love” (180).
“[I]f God so loved the world that He gave it the corporeal presence of His only Son, would He not love it so much that He would leave His Son in it? Would He take Him away at the Ascension? When He receives His Son back into the heavens in order to seat Him at His right hand, would He not (without taking anything away from His glory) find some marvelous means of secretly bringing Him to us in the midst of this exile, on this bloodstained planet, where His Kingdom and that of the prince of darkness confront each other?” (181)
Yes, He did it. And He continues to do it every day.
“The real Incarnation, the real redemption, the participation in the redemptive sacrifice through the real eating of the Victim in faith of love: these are the successive moments of a unique and unheard of mystery of divine love” (182) (cf. Eph 2:5, Jn 3:16).
“If God did such great things in order to declare His love in the Incarnation, what would He not do in order to consummate that love in the Eucharist, in order to give Himself now not in a general way to human nature, but to each member of the faithful in particular?” (182)

In the Context of the Liturgy

“The miracle of transubstantiation is due to the divine omnipotence, an omnipotence ordinarily attributed to the Father but common to the Three Divine Persons. This omnipotence, nevertheless, acts through the humanity of Christ. It enters immediately on the scene with the narration of the institution: “Who, the day before He suffered, took bread into His sacred and venerable hands…” (229).
“The liturgy of the Church is the context in which are inserted the very words of Christ. They alone are efficacious with regards to transubstantiation and the perpetuation of the redemptive sacrifice. It can be rather striking that these liturgical narrations of the institution, and especially the more ancient, never purely and simple reproduce one of the narrations from Scripture. The reason for this is, as has been said, that they precede the redaction of Scripture. The Eucharist was celebrated before St. Paul and the Evangelists had picked up the pen (cf. Jungmann, Missarum Solemmnia 111).
The liturgy of Christ consists in the efficacious words of transubstantiation. With each renewal of the unbloody rite of the Last Supper the now-glorious Christ comes silently to touch us by means of His Cross. The word “liturgy” takes on a different meaning, we believe, when it passes from the level of the canonical cultic dispositions of the Churches to the level of the bloody sacrifice celebrated one time in order to save the word, and applied, rendered present, to each succeeding generation. Christ’s sacrifice transcends all liturgical settings of the East and the West. It is at the same time and eminently, infinite adoration and infinite thanksgiving, infinite offering and infinite supplication, infinite praise and infinite propitiation, and act of infinite worship and an act of infinite love. All the prayers of invocation, of offering, of thanksgiving, which the liturgies distinguish and multiply before and after the very sacrifice of Christ, will never be but feeble reflections of the theandric Liturgy of the Savior in the broken mirrors of our hearts” (230).