Transubstantiation: It’s Like Magic, but Logical

“John Paul!” I whispered to my 2-year-old nephew as we knelt in the pew after going up to communion (okay, I knelt.  He slowly turned in circles saying, “Body!  Chwist!  Body!  Chwist!”) “You should talk to Jesus now.  Jesus is in Aunt Sister’s tummy!”

He looked at me variously.  “Aunt Sistew,” he said with certainty, “is not pwegnant.”

For a little boy whose mom is pregnant (and whose aunt is pregnant and whose friend’s mom is pregnant and whose mom’s friend is pregnant), the idea that Jesus could be in anybody’s tummy but Mary’s is very strange.  (The other day, I asked him if he knew anybody who had a baby in her tummy.  “Mawwy!” he cried, ignoring his poor morning-sick mom.)

Now, this little boy understands the Eucharist better than most people I know.  “Jesus is in the tabewnacle!  You awe going to weceive the body of Chwist!  The pwiest is ewevating the chawice!!”  He’ssomething else.

But even for him, well-versed as he is in sacramental theology, it’s just a little bizarre to accept that Aunt Sister might actually be eating God.  After all, Jesus is a sweet baby in a manger or a bloody man on a cross.  But he’s not really in that cracker, right?  I mean, not really really?

Really really.

With Corpus Christi coming up on Sunday (or Thursday, if you’re lucky), I figured I had to get eucharistic with y’all.  Then I realized that one post on the Eucharist would be prohibitively long.  So I’m going to split it up.  To start with, I mostly want to define terms.

According to Catholic theology (and the Bible and every single Christian until 1088 and the vast majority since), the Eucharist is actually Jesus.  Not a symbol.  Not a reminder.  It’s not bread, not wine.  Jesus.  Body, blood, soul, and divinity.  So don’t ask me about the wine I drank at Mass.  Unless I tackled the priest and started chugging from the cruet before the consecration, I didn’t drink any wine.

This is the part where intelligent non-Catholics (and, to be honest, many intelligent Catholics as well) start looking at me patronisingly.  “Oh, sweetheart,” their superior eyes seem to say.  “Well, that’s just not reasonable.  I mean, if it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, smells like a duck, feels like a duck, and its well-rendered fat just melts in your mouth, it’s a duck.”

Then I get all defensive about my IQ and start using ridiculous words like Aristotelian so that everyone knows I’m smarter than them.

Really, though, Aristotle is where it’s at.  According to Aquinas, anyway, and that dude actually is a lot smarter than me.

In Aristotle’s understanding of the nature of things, all physical objects have substance and accidents.  Substance is what a thing is, its essence.  Accidents are the characteristics of a thing.  For example:

Accidents: plastic, small, multicolored; substance: Lego confessional (awesome!)

Accidents of the skates: pink, plastic, small, wheeled; substance: accident waiting to happen (apparently the manufacturer agrees–look at all the protective gear she’s wearing!)

Accidents sometimes fake you out, too.  Seeing isn’t always believing, as they say.  For example:

Accidents: green, spiky, delicious; substance: CAKE!!  No kidding, click the picture to check it out.

Now we’re used to the idea of a transformation–where the accidents change but the substance remains the same.  Think pretty much any 90s teen movie.  You know, where the cool guy gets dared to go out with the pretty “nerd” with glasses and frizzy hair and she takes off her glasses and straightens her hair and we’re all supposed to be like “Oh my gosh, she was, like, totally pretty all along but nobody knew it because glasses made her so ugly!”  And then she learns how she can be pretty and still be herself because her substance hasn’t changed, just her accidents.  Aquinas in the guise of Rachael Leigh Cook.

Or how about Bob the Caterpillar:

Accidents: green, spotted, tubular, many-legged; substance: Bob

So Bob’s done the caterpillar thing and he’s starting to feel the urge to move on to bigger and better things.  He spins himself a cocoon, metamorphoses for a while, and comes out a beautiful butterfly:

Accidents: pink, sparkly, amazing, probably able to turn into a unicorn; substance: Bob (poor Bob)

In a transformation, the accidents change, but the substance remains the same.

The Catholic understanding of transubstantiation is exactly the opposite: the substance changes but the accidents remain the same.  Like in Freaky Friday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wKt7z3iWwc

Here they are after the switch:

On the left, we have the accidents of old, tall, short hair, wrinkles.*  But her substance is Anna.  On the right, we have Anna’s accidents: short, slim, stringy hair, purple nail polish.  But her substance is Mom.  Their substances have changed, but their accidents have remained the same.  The woman on the right looks like Anna, sounds like Anna, smells like Anna, feels like Anna (remember the butt grab?), tastes like Anna….  But she’s not Anna–she’s mom.

Now, I use this example and people tend to resume the condescension they were heaping on me before I started talking Aristotle.  Look, I get that the “transubstantiation” in this movie is magic.  I am aware that nothing like this happens in nature.  Absolutely: transubstantiation is a miracle.  When we claim that this takes place at every Mass, we’re not denying that it’s impossible.  We’re just saying that God does the impossible.  Like, you know, creating ex nihilo, impregnating a virgin, becoming man, rising from the dead.  Pretending to be a cracker?  NBD.

Little kids understand this better than anyone.  Most of them won’t understand substance and accidents, so when I explain it to them, I tell them it’s magic.  They nod, wide-eyed, and kneel to worship while adults debate whether a thing’s characteristics are integral to its essence.  In a lot of ways, it seems, “magic” is the best explanation we can give.  It acknowledges that it’s real, that it’s beyond our power to understand, and that it’s a gift.

Here, in this religion that doesn’t claim to be governed solely by natural laws, it’s absolutely reasonable to accept Jesus at his word even when it sounds a little crazy.  That “duck” my imaginary supercilious friends brought up?  What if it’s a really sophisticated robot?  Or some non-anatine** alien life form?  Or a hologram capable of communicating with your brain to convince it that it’s feeling and tasting and smelling?

Okay, fine.  But here’s what I’m saying: we’re not ignoring the fact of the accidents.  The host still looks, smells, tastes, feels, and sounds like a cracker.  It can still trigger a gluten sensitivity.  You can get drunk off the precious blood.  We know this.

We also know that Jesus said, “This is my body.  This is my blood.  My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.”  When the most powerful magician since the dawn of time tells you he’s going to work some magic, you go with it.  In the light of everything else he’s done, it just doesn’t seem that far-fetched.  And when the greatest minds since the dawn of time think it’s logical, you breathe a sigh of relief that you’re not pushing 30 and basing your life around some unfounded belief in magic.

When it comes down to it, I just think I’d rather rejoice in the wonder of it all, like a child in awe of the magic of transubstantiation who kneels before you to worship the God you’ve received, than smile skeptically at the folly of these credulous believers.  I’ve been on both sides–it’s better over here.

 

Up next: The Eucharist in Scripture (or: It Depends on Your Definition of the Word “Is”)

 

 

*I always feel so bad for Jamie Lee Curtis when I do this.  The woman looks better at 60 than I ever have!

**of or related to a duck.  I googled it 🙂