On the Eucharist

The early Church was already well aware that the bread once changed remains changed. That is why they reserved it for the sick, and that is why they showed it such reverence, as is still the case today in the Eastern Chruch. But now, in the Middle Ages, this awareness is deepened: the gift is changed. The Lord has definitively drawn this piece of matter to himself. It does not contain just a matter-of-fact kind of gift. No,the Lord himself is present, the Indivisible One, the risen Lord, with Flesh and Blood, with Body and Soul, with Divinity and Humanity. The whole Christ is there. In the early days of the Liturgical Movement, people sometimes argued for a distinction btween the "thing-centered" view of the Eucharist in the patristic age and the personalistic view of the post-medieval period. The Eucharistic Presence, they said, was understood, not as the presence of a Person, but as the presence of a gift distinct from the Person. This is nonsense. Anyone reading the texts will find that there is no support anywhere for these ideas. How is the Body of Christ supposed to become a "thing"? The only presence is the presence of the whole Christ. Receiving the Eucharist does not mean eating a "thing-like" gift (Body and Blood?). No, there is a person-to-person exchange, a coming of the one into the other. The living Lord gives himself to me, enters into me, and invites me to surrender myself to him, so that the Apostle's words come true: "[I]t is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). Only thus is the reception of Holy Communion an act that elevates and transforms a man. (From The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger)