EpiscopalCenter at Duke University

It’s a simple question: what happens to the bread and wine in our celebration of the Holy Eucharist? There’s a simple answer: in the Eucharist, the people, the priest, the bread, and the wine are all transformed by the presence of Jesus Christ.

Ok, but what does that mean exactly? Could we be more precise? Well, yes and no. ‘Yes’ because starting in the early Middle Ages the Church struggled to define what we mean when we say the the bread and wine become Jesus’ Body and Blood. In the 13th century, Sir Thomas Aquinas explained what happened as transubstantiation. He held that when the bread and wine were conscrated, their ‘accidents’ (by which he meant their outward appearance) stayed the same, but their ‘substance’ (what they really are) changed. This is still the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.

Martin Luther, the great 16th century reformer, used the term consubstantiation to explain what happened when the bread and wine were consecrated. By this Luther meant that after consecration the bread and wine AND the Body and Blood of Christ were present and coexisted.

Ulrich Zwingli, another 16th century reformer, held that there was no change in the elements (i.e., the bread and wine) at all. Instead, he believed that the Lord’s Supper (another name for Communion) was a memorial rite and that Jesus Christ was present in its celebration and in the transformed fellowship of all believers present.

Anglicans (which includes Episcopalians), on the other hand, use the phrase real presence to describe what happens to the bread and wine in the celebration of Holy Communion. That’s a way of saying we believe Christ is actually present in the bread and wine that become his Body and Blood when they are consecrated, but we stop short of defining precisely how that happens. Rather, we believe what Jesus promised—that he would really be present to the Church gathered to celebrate the Eucharist. That’s a freeing promise for a lot of reasons, including that it frees us from believing we must be able to explain this ‘mystery of faith’ in order for it to be valid. Which is another way of saying that it’s God’s work and not our understanding that cause the bread and wine to become Christ’s Body and Blood.

That said, Anglicans believe that is the action of the whole Eucharist—i.e., the entire celebration from the gathering of the people on and not just the communion—that consecrates. So the whole liturgy is what connects us to God, not just the consumption of the bread and wine. After all, ‘liturgy’ literally means ‘work of the people’ in Greek. And that’s a whole ‘nother conversation which will be well worth having.