What is the Eucharist?

[Dimmesdale]

I want to ruminate a little about the Eucharist (Real Presence). Without ridicule, condescension, or arrogance as to my own position. I feel now I should be more respectful regarding these topics, despite there being, to my mind, serious issues with this particular subject.

How would I begin? There are so many angles you can look at this.... I will start from the most common sense perspective, at least what I think it to be, properly....

Jesus is said to be "Substantiality Present" "Soul, Body and Divinity" within the consecrated elements. (Or AS the elements?)

Now wait a minute. How could Jesus, or Jesus' body, become? How could this change be effected. Isn't God eternal? So how could something pre-existing come about, "spring" from a created being, entity; namely, bread and wine? What happened to the original bread and wine? The substratum?

But it is said that Jesus adopted a human nature. Okay, but Jesus' SOUL, his Original Eternal Being, was already pre-existing. So how could his eternal self "become" in, (or Rather, AS consecrated elements?)

Is the Eucharist spirit or is it a mere lump of matter? Is matter "SOUL, Body, AND DIVINITY?" (By the way, I am not being sarcastic, I just want to emphasize these points, for even my own clarity).

It seems as though we need to be backed into a bit of a corner. The Eucharist is Either/OR Spirit or Matter, or Spirit merely ATTENDS the matter, or there may be a Both/And (If Body and Soul are "Absolutely" United -- As I have heard Christ having a "glorified body.").

So does that mean that God's flesh is Divinity, but not a lock of his hair? A lock of his hair is after all a part of his body.....

(To be cont'd)

[Dimmesdale]

I don't mean to be sarcastic or sneering. But hearing a Catholic talk condescendingly about Hinduism and how it all doesn't make sense, to me is rightly ironic. What is the Eucharist? Is it bread and wine? Or is it the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ? What is the meaning of "change" in that case? Either the bread and wine ceases to exist, or it remains what it is. But no, in the Catholic Doctrine it is outright supplanted by another being. How is that possible? In creation ex nihilo, at the very least nothing has to be shell-switched - only drawn out of 'nothingness.' In this case the bread and wine is the bread and wine. It remains what it is. So how can it be something radically different? It seems like the least commonsensical thing to consider.

On the other hand, in Vedic religion, God, even though he expands himself limitlessly, in manifold forms, they all remain the same eternal Being. Since matter and spirit are one and the same for God, he can convert matter into spirit as he sees fit. The material situation is only created by a cloud in the spiritual world, the mahat-tattva, which portions off a part of the spiritual energy. What we construe as material then, is only the shadow side of spirit. Once it is unfolded or realized in relation to the Supreme Absolute, it regains all its original potency that it never really lost. God remains the complete balance. All things refer back to him, in the ultimate issue. Where is the contradiction? Where is the special pleading? Where is the so-called non-sense?