Is the Eucharist truly and actually Jesus?
Right before communion, the priest holds up the Eucharist and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, blessed are we who are called to his supper.” “The Lamb of God” is a direct reference to Jesus. Sometimes the priest may directly say, “This is Jesus, who takes away the sins of the world.” When we hear this, we are being told that the Eucharist at which we are looking is actually Jesus. But Jesus Himself tells us when and how He will physically return. Jesus spoke to His disciples about the end of the age and said that no one knows the day or the hour when it will come:
“But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Matthew 24:36).
Jesus also told how He will return:
“For just as lightning comes from the east and is seen as far as the west, so will the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matthew 24:27).
Acts 1:11 also tells how Jesus will return. An angel shared the message that,
“This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.”
These verses tell us how Jesus will physically return to the earth. Neither of these verses describes His physical return as being through the changing of bread and wine into His body and blood. Yet as stated earlier, the Catholic Catechism teaches that,
“In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist, ‘The body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.’ ‘This presence is called “real” by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be “real” too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present’ ” (para. 1374).
It also teaches that,
“It is by the conversion of the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood that Christ becomes present in this sacrament” (para. 1375).
Jesus, on the other hand, said,
“If anyone says to you then, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ [Jesus] or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. False messiahs and false prophets will arise, and they will perform signs and wonders so great as to deceive, if that were possible, even the elect. Behold, I have told it to you beforehand” (Matthew 24:23–25).
With these words, Jesus was warning us about people who will say, “Here is Jesus” or “Here is the Christ” before His actual physical return.
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