Jesus seems to be giving some party advice in today’s Gospel. Given the emptiness of the front pews, it seems that we have taken to heart His advice to sit in the back until invited forward. I should say, that Jesus has already invited all of us to come forward. As for His advice to the host, I do not think I have ever invited total strangers to a party – I guess I need to start working on that.

Of course the real wedding banquet that Jesus is talking about is the heavenly one; where we will be one with God forever. The Mass is a participation in that heavenly banquet here and now. The Church teaches that “the Eucharist is the ‘source and summit of the Christian life.’” That means that everything that we are and have flows from the Eucharist, and all our actions and thoughts should be directed to the Eucharist. How can the Church teach such a thing? It is because of what the Church teaches about what the Eucharist is, for it is the ancient, firm teaching of the Church that the Eucharist is the very Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. So the Church teaches that the Eucharist, that is Jesus Christ, is the source and summit of the Christian life.

Yet a recent survey by the Pew Research Center suggests that most Catholics in the United States do not believe in this most important and fundamental of Catholic teaching. The survey found that 69% of Catholics in the US believe that the Eucharist is only a symbol of Jesus’ Body and Blood, but not really His Body and Blood. Only 31% of Catholics believe what the Church teaches, that after the words of consecration the bread and wine becomes the actual Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ.

There is only one way to describe these results – sad; tragically sad. To say that the Eucharist is merely a symbol means that the “source and summit” of our lives as Christian is nothing more than bread and wine. But bread and wine cannot create new life; they cannot grant us grace and blessing. OK, things are better among Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week – 63% of them believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist – but still, we need to do a better job at getting the Good News out.

Jesus Himself gave us this teaching. In the 6^thChapter of St. John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me” (Jn 6:53–57). The reaction of the crowd to whom Jesus addressed those words indicate that they knew He was not talking about a symbol; we are told that many of them followed Him no longer.

The reason why Jesus had to give us His actual Body and Blood to consume was so that we could participate in the benefits of His sacrifice on the Cross. Looking at the Old Testament, we see that God revealed to the Israelites that in order to participate in the benefits of the sacrifices they made to God, they had to eat parts of the animal sacrificed. We see this clearly in Exodus, in the account of the Passover: the lambs were sacrificed, and then its roasted flesh was eaten in the household, with the blood of the lamb on the lintel and doorposts, so the Angel of Death passed over them.

Jesus is the perfect Paschal sacrifice, the true Lamb of God. His sacrificial death on the Cross frees us from our true slavery, the slavery of sin and death, so that we can have new life in God. As Jesus said, if we do not eat His flesh and drink His blood, we will not have this new life through the forgiveness of our sins.

The Church’s teaching on how the bread and wine becomes the Body and Blood of Jesus is called transubstantiation, so let me give you an explanation of this teaching. It comes down to “substances” and “accidents.” I remember as a child asking my mother why, after the consecration, the hosts still looked the same. She said it was an accident. I thought she meant that the priest did something wrong – or maybe he wasn’t holy enough – otherwise the Eucharist would look like flesh and blood. That wasn’t the kind of accident that Mom meant.

The Church uses the philosophy of Aristotle for this theological understanding. Aristotle realized that there is a real distinction between what a thing is and what a thing is like. Just look at old photographs – see how different we and other people look now compared to then, yet we are all the same people. This week I shaved off my beard and mustache, but I am still the same Fr. JC.

Just looking at human beings, we see we have all kinds of characteristics – weight, height, hair style – and for each of us, these characteristic can change over time. We lose weight, or gain it. We are taller now than when we were 3 years old, and some people get shorter when they reach old age. I used to be able to put my hair in a pony tail; now I have to worry about blinding people with the glare off my bald spot.

All these changeable characteristics are what Aristotle called “accidents” (which comes from the Latin word for “attached”) and they describe what a thing is like. Yet Aristotle recognized that there is something that stands under all those changeable characteristics, that makes a thing what it is. The word “substance” comes from the Latin words for “stands under.” So “accidents” attach to substances.

Now we can look at how this applies to the mystery of the Eucharist. If it is possible for the attributes of a thing to change while the thing itself remains the same, then logically it is also possible for the thing itself to change while the attributes remain the same. This is precisely what happens in the Eucharist: the substances of the bread and wine change, but the accidents remain the same. What they ARE is now different, but what they are LIKE is not. Before Mass, the bread is small, round and white, and the wine is wet, aromatic, and intoxicating. After the words of consecration, all of these attributes remain, but what is on the altar is no longer bread and wine, but the very substance and presence of Jesus Christ Himself. Transubstantiation comes from the Latin words, “to change the substance.”

The doctrine of transubstantiation cannot exhaust the mystery of the Eucharist, but it can help us to understand how the eyes of faith can see what the eyes of the body cannot.