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Apologetics · Sacraments and Worship

Isn't Communion Just a Symbol?

The Short Answer

Catholics believe that at the consecration of the Mass, the bread and wine truly become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, even though they still look, feel and taste like bread and wine. This is not a medieval invention. It rests on Jesus’ own words, it was the belief of the earliest Christians, and the Church has taught it without a break ever since.

Many Christians, especially in evangelical and Baptist churches, understand Communion differently: as a meal of remembrance, in which the bread and wine are signs that remind us of Christ’s death. That view is sincerely held. Here is why Catholics believe something much stronger.

What the Church Does and Does Not Claim

Much of the disagreement comes from misunderstanding, so it helps to be clear first.

The Church does not claim:

The Church does claim that in the Eucharist “the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained” (CCC 1374, quoting the Council of Trent).

Why Catholics Believe It

1. Jesus’ own words at the Last Supper

At the Last Supper, Jesus took bread and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” Of the cup He said, “this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (Matthew 26:26–28). The same words are recorded by Mark, Luke and St Paul (Mark 14:22–24; Luke 22:19–20; 1 Corinthians 11:23–25).

He did not say “this stands for” or “this reminds you of” my body. The plain sense of His words is that what He holds is His body.

2. The discourse in John 6

A year before the Last Supper, Jesus prepared His followers for this gift. After feeding the five thousand, He told the crowd: “the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:51).

His hearers took Him literally and were shocked: “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (6:52). Jesus did not soften the point. He strengthened it: “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (6:53), and “my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed” (6:55).

From verse 54 onwards, the Greek verb for “eat” changes from the ordinary word to trōgō, a word for chewing or munching. If Jesus had meant only a figure of speech, His language moves in exactly the wrong direction.

Many disciples said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (6:60), and “many of his disciples drew back and no longer walked with him” (6:66). Jesus let them go. He turned to the Twelve and asked, “Will you also go away?” Peter replied: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (6:67–68).

Elsewhere, when His hearers misunderstood a figure of speech, Jesus explained it (Matthew 16:6–12). Here He let disciples leave rather than say “I only meant it symbolically.”

3. St Paul

St Paul writes to the Corinthians: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16).

He also warns that whoever “eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord,” because they eat “without discerning the body” (1 Corinthians 11:27, 29). It is hard to see how misusing a mere symbol could make someone guilty of the Lord’s body and blood.

4. The earliest Christians

The first generations of Christians, some of whom learned the faith from the Apostles’ own disciples, took Jesus at His word.

St Ignatius of Antioch (died c. 107), writing on his way to martyrdom, said of a group of heretics: “They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again” (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 7).

St Justin Martyr (c. 155), explaining Christian worship to the Roman emperor, wrote: “For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but … we have been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word … is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh” (First Apology 66).

St Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 350), teaching the newly baptised, asked: “Since then He Himself declared and said of the Bread, This is My Body, who shall dare to doubt any longer?” Christ once turned water into wine at Cana, he reasoned, so it should not seem incredible that He turns wine into His blood. And he told them: “Judge not the matter from the taste, but from faith” (Catechetical Lecture 22, 1–2, 6).

5. The Church’s teaching

The Council of Trent (1551) summed up this constant belief. Because Christ said that what He offered under the appearance of bread was truly His body, the consecration brings about a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of His Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His Blood. The Church calls this change transubstantiation (CCC 1376).

6. What reason can say

Faith tells us that the change happens. Reason can show that it is not a contradiction.

The Catholic tradition distinguishes between what a thing is (its substance) and how it appears (its size, colour, taste and chemical make-up, which older writers called its “accidents”). Normally the two go together. In the Eucharist, God changes what the bread and wine are, while leaving how they appear. Nothing the senses detect has changed, so the senses report nothing new. As St Thomas Aquinas puts it, Christ’s presence here “cannot be apprehended by the senses … but only by faith” (Summa Theologiae III, q. 75, a. 1, quoted in CCC 1381).

The God who made bread out of nothing can certainly change what it is.

Common Objections

”Jesus also said ‘I am the door’ and ‘I am the vine’. He was speaking figuratively.”

Jesus often used figures of speech, but the context shows when He is doing so. Nobody heard “I am the door” and walked away in disgust; nobody asked, “How can this man be a door?” In John 6 His hearers took Him literally, and instead of correcting them He repeated the point more strongly. He let disciples leave over it. That is not how one treats a misunderstood metaphor.

”But Jesus said ‘the flesh is of no avail’ (John 6:63). Doesn’t that show He meant it spiritually?”

Jesus does not say “my flesh is of no avail.” He had just said that His flesh gives eternal life (6:54). If His flesh were of no avail, the Incarnation and the Cross would be pointless.

In the New Testament, “the flesh” set against “the spirit” usually means merely human understanding as opposed to the understanding of faith. Jesus uses it this way elsewhere: “You judge according to the flesh” (John 8:15). He is telling His hearers that this teaching can only be received by faith, not by natural reasoning. That is exactly the Catholic position.

”It still looks and tastes like bread. I can see that nothing has changed.”

The Church agrees that nothing has changed in what the senses can detect. She has never claimed otherwise. The senses perceive appearances, not what a thing fundamentally is.

The Apostles faced something similar. Looking at Jesus, they saw a man; faith told them He was also God. The Eucharist asks for the same trust in His word. As St Cyril put it: “Judge not the matter from the taste, but from faith."

"Doesn’t this make Communion a kind of cannibalism?”

No. Cannibalism means killing and eating the dead flesh of a human being. In the Eucharist, Christ is present living, risen and whole, under the appearance of bread and wine. He is not cut up, harmed or diminished (CCC 1377). Receiving Him unites the communicant to Him; it does not consume Him like ordinary food.

”The early Fathers sometimes call the Eucharist a ‘figure’ or ‘symbol’. Doesn’t that prove they didn’t believe in the Real Presence?”

Some Fathers do use such language. St Cyril, for example, speaks of receiving Christ’s Body “in the figure of Bread.” But the same Cyril, in the same lecture, says that “the seeming bread is not bread, though sensible to taste, but the Body of Christ” (Catechetical Lecture 22, 3, 9).

For the Fathers, “figure” and “reality” were not opposites. The Eucharist is a sign, as all sacraments are, and it is also what it signifies. The Catholic Church still teaches both today.

In Summary

Jesus said “This is my body,” pressed the point when His hearers were scandalised, and let them walk away rather than take it back. St Paul and the earliest Christians took Him at His word, and the Church has never wavered. For Catholics, the Eucharist is not a reminder of an absent Christ, but His real presence among us.

See also What Did the Early Church Fathers Believe?, What Actually Happens at Mass? and Why Is the Mass a Sacrifice?

This article follows the method St Robert Bellarmine used in his Controversies*: state the question fairly, clear away misunderstandings, make the case, then answer each objection. Bellarmine’s own treatise on this subject,* De Sacramento Eucharistiae (1589), argues from the same passages of John 6 and 1 Corinthians. See How We Answer Objections.

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