The Eucharist is really Jesus!

I came across some good insights on the Eucharist in the San Juan Catholic Seminar's booklet Beginning Apologetics 3: How to explain and defend the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. This booklet is just one in an excellent series of Apologetics materials. Each booklet breaks things down into easy-to-understand pieces, and this one is no exception.

One observation that is made on page 23 of the booklet seems so obvious once you think about it, but I had never thought about it in quite that way. in the section of "Evidence from History", they pose the simple question that, if Jesus was speaking only symbolically at the Last Supper and the Apostles understood him to be speaking as such, "How then can we explain the development of the doctrine of the Real Presence?"

This incredible teaching that Jesus is truly present Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist would surely have seemed incredibly preposterous and heretical if it had not been a teaching from the very beginning. Whenever someone came along and taught something about Jesus that had not been taught before, Saints and Bishops cried out in defense of the true faith. One would expect the same response to the Doctrine of the Real Presence if it were a novel doctrine.

But that is not the case.

Instead, you have no record of anyone denying the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist for the first 1500 years of the Church (except for Berengarius in the eleventh century who later retracted his disbelief). Rather you only find the Church Fathers unanimously teaching the Real Presence.

So, if someone asks you why you believe in the Real Presence, simply ask, "If it has not been a teaching from the very beginning, when did it start and where is your evidence?"