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 EUCHARIST

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EUCHARIST

Presence, which means that Christ in His entirety is present in the whole of the Host and in each smallest part thereof, as the spiritual soul is present in the human body [see above, (2)]. The difficulty reaches its climax when we consider that there is no question here of the Soid or the Divinity of Christ, but of His Body, which, with its head, trunk, and members, has assumed a mode of existence spiritual and independ- ent of space, a mode of existence, indeed, concerning which neither experience nor any system of philosophy can have the least inkling. That the idea of conver- sion of corporeal matter mto a spirit can in no way be entertained, is clear from the material substance of the Eucharistic Body itself. Even the above-mentioned separability of quantity from substance gives us no clue to the solution, since according to the best- founded opinions not only the substance of Christ's Body, but by His own wise arrangement, its corporeal quantity, i. e. its full size, with its complete organiza- tion of integral members and limbs, is present within tlie diminutive limits of the Host and in each portion thereof. Later theologians (as Rossignol, Legrand) resorted to the unseemly explanation, according to which Christ is present in diminished form and stature, a sort of miniature body; while others (as Oswald, Fernandez, Casajoana) assimied with no better sense of fitness the mutual compenetration of the members of Christ's Body to within the narrow compass of the point of a pin. The vagaries of the Cartesians, how- ever, went beyond all bounds. Descartes had already, in a letter to P. Mesland (ed. Emery, Paris, ISll), ex- pressed the opinion, that the identity of Christ's Eu- charistic with His Heavenly Body was preserved by the identity of His Soul, w-hich animated all the Eu- charistic Bodies. On this basis, the geometrician Varignon suggested a true multiplication of the Eu- charistic Bodies upon earth, which were supposed to be most faithful, though greatly reduced, miniature copies of the prototype, the Heavenly Body of Christ. Nor does the modern theory of n-dimensions throw any light upon the subject; for the Body of Christ is not invisible or impalpable to us because it occupies the fourth dimension, but because it transcends and is wholly independent of space. Such a mode of exist- ence, it is clear, does not come within the scope of physics and mechanics, but belongs to a higher, super- natural order, even as does the Resurrection from the sealed tomb, the passing in and out through closed doors, the Transfiguration of the future glorified risen Body. What explanation may, then, be given of the fact?

The simplest treatment of the subject was that offered by the Schoolmen, especially St. Thomas (III, Q. Ixxvi, a. 4). They reduced the mode of being to the mode of becoming, i. e. they traced back the mode of existence peculiar to the Eucharistic Body to the Transubstantiation; for a thing has to so "be" as it was in "becoming". Since ex vi verhorum the imme- diate result is the presence of the Body of Christ, its quantity, present merely per concnmilanliam, must fol- low the mode of existence peculiar to its substance, and, like the latter, must exist without division ami extension, i. e. entirely in the whole Host and entirely in each part thereof. In other words, the Body of Christ is present in the sacrament, not after tlie man- ner of "quantity" (per modum quimtitatis), but of "substance" (per modum suhslanluv). Later Scho- lasticism (Bellarmine, Suarez, Billuart, and others) tried to improve upon this explanation along other lines by distinguishing between internal and external quantity. By internal quantity (quantiias interna seu in aclu primo) is understood that entity, by virtue of w-hich a corporeal substance merely posse.s.ses "ap- titudinal extension", i. e. the "capability" of being extended in tri-dimensional space. External quan- tity, on the other hand (quuniitas externa seu in aclu securulo), is the same entity, but in so far as it follows

its natural tendency to occupy space and actually ex- tends itself in the three dimensions. While aptitu- dinal extension or internal quantity is so bound up with the essences of bodies that its separability from them involves a metaphj'sical contradiction, external quantity is, on the other hand, only a natural conse- quence and effect, which can be so suspended and withheld by the First Cause, that the corporeal sub- stance, retainmg its internal quantity, does not extend itself into space. At all events, however plausibly reason may seem to explain the matter, it is neverthe- less face to face with a great mystery.

(c) The third and last question has to do with the multilocation of Christ in heaven and upon thousands of altars throughout the w-orld. Since in the natural order of events each body is restricted to one position in space (unilocatio), so that before the law proof of an alibi immediately frees a person from the suspicion of crime, multilocation without further question belongs to the supernatural order. First of all, no intrinsic repugnance can be .shown in the concept of multiloca- tion. For if the objection be raised, that no being can exist separated from itself or show forth local dis- tances between its various selves, the sophism is read- ily detected; for multilocation does not multiply the individual object, but only its external relation to and presence in space. Philosophy distinguishes two modes of presence in creatures: (1) the circumscrip- tive and (2) the definitive. The first, the only mode of presence proper to bodies, is that by virtue of which an object is confined to a determinate portion of space in such wise that its various parts (atoms, mole- cules, electrons) also occupy their corresponding posi- tions in that space. The second mode of presence, that properly belonging to a spiritual being, requires the substance of a thing to exist in its entirety in the whole of the space, as well as whole and entire in each part of that space. The latter is the soul's mode of presence in the human body. The distinction made between these two modes of presence is important, in- asmuch as in the Eucharist both kinds are found in combination. For, in the first place, there is verified a continuous definitive multilocation, called also replica- tion, which consists in this, that the Body of Christ is totally present in each part of the continuous and as yet unbroken Host and also totally present throughout the whole Host, just as the hiunan soul is present in the body. And precisely this latter analogy from nature gives us an insight into the possibility of the Eucharistic miracle. For if, as has been seen above, Divine omnipotence can in a supernatural manner impart to a body such a spiritual, unextended, spa- tially uncircumscribed mode of presence, which is natural to the soul as regards the hiunan body, one may well surmise the po.ssibility of Christ's Eucharis- tic Body being present in its entirety in the whole Host, and whole and entire in each part thereof.

There is, moreover, the discontinuous multilocation, whereby Christ is present not only in one Host, l>ut in numberless separate Hosts, whether in the cil)orium or upon all the altars throughout the world. The intrin- sic possibility of discontinuous multilocation seems to be based upon the non-repugnance of continuous multilocation. For the chief difficulty of the latter appears to be that the same Christ is present in two diftcrent parts, A and B, of the continuous Host, it being immaterial whether we consider the distant parts .\ ami B joined by the continuous line AB or not. The marvel does not sulistantially increase, if by rea- son of the breaking of the Host, the two parts A and B are now completely separated from each other. Nor does it matter how gi-eat the distance between the parts may be. Whether or not the fragments of a Host are distant one inch or a t housaml miles from one another is altogether immaterial in this consideration; we need not wonder, then, if Catholics adore their Eucharistic Lord at one and the same time in New