EUCHARIST, iiica-rIst, in the Roman Catholic Church, the sacrament of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and also the Christian covenant sacrifice. Regarding the Eucharist as a sacrament the Roman Catholic Church i teaches that it is the true body and blood of Jesus Christ under the "species' or appear ances or physical properties of bread and wine. The institution of this sacrament by Christ is recorded in the three synoptic gospels and in Saint Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. The name given to the sacrament comes from the expression in the original Greek text of Luke xxii, 19, ivXaPiarliaar (eucharistesas), °having given thanks.° The words of institution, as given by the same evangelist, are: °This is my body which is given for you. . . . This is the chalice, the new testament in my blood, which shall be shed for you.* The perpetuation of this sacrament is commanded in the words, °This do for a comn—Imoration of me.* (1 Cor. xi, 24). A year before the institution of the sacrament Jesus Christ in a discourse at Caper naum, spoke of his flesh being "meat indeed* and his blood °drink indeed"; and it is import ant to note the circumstances in which he em ployed those extraordinary expressions. He had already said: °I am the bread of life,• at which the Jews murmured. Thereupon Jesus, instead of modifying the expression which offended them, re-enforced it, saying: °The bread which I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.' At this the Jews again murmured, but Christ does but emphasize the doctrine in the words already quoted. And not only the Jews were scandalized by these speeches: many of Jesus' disciples even would no longer listen to him; they °went back and walked no more with him.' Would the apostles also desert him? and he elicited from them a profession of implicit faith in his words, how ever °hard* his sayings might be.
And that attitude of the apostles is the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church. Those words of her Founder and the many other an nouncements he made touching this sacramental mystery, the Roman Catholic Church from apostolic times has received in their plain literal interpretation-- the interpretation put upon them by all who heard them, Jews, disciples, apostles, and by Jesus Christ himself : the Ro man Catholic Church teaches that in the Eu charist is contained "truly, really and sub stantially° the body and blood of Jesus Christ, together with his soul and divinity. Here
nothing is added to, nothing taken away from, the words of Christ, and' nothing explained away in those "words of eternal life." And when in the 11th century the Church's reading of those words as denoting a "true, real and sub stantial" change of the bread and wine into Christ's body and blood was challenged by Berengarius, who, more "spiritually-minded° than the apostles of Jesus Christ, would fain see in Christ's words only a figurative, symbolical presence of his body and blood in the sacra ment, the Roman Catholic Church adopted the fittest possible word to express the change wrought in the bread and wine — the word Transubstantiation: in the Eucharist the sub stance of bread and wine remain no longer underlying the outward appearances, "species" of bread and wine: what underlies them now is the body and blood of Christ. Such is the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church with regard to the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.
But the Eucharist is not only a sacrament: i it is also the perpetual New Covenant sacrifice, believed to have been foretold by the prophet Malachi, as rendered in the Vulgate, which differs slightly from the authorized Anglican version: °From the rising of the sun even to the going down thereof, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation° (Mal. i, 10-11). And the Ro man Catholic Church teaches concerning the Eucharistic sacrifice or the Mass that "it is one and the same sacrifice with that of the cross: the victim is one and the same, Jesus Christ, who offered himself, once only, a bloody sacrifice on the altar of the cross. The bloody and unbloody victim is still one and the same, and the offering upon the cross is daily renewed in the Eucharistic sacrifice, in obedience to the command of our Lord, 'Do this in remembrance of Me.' Conc. Trid., cap. de Eucha ristic' Sacr.