Understand the difference: Trans-substantiation; Trans-signification; trans-finalization; Catholic belief in Real Presence and transubstantiation (Term from St. Thomas Aquinas).
Why bread and wine:
- Creator God is also the provider God, provide food and sustenance to the creation (also protector and the facilitator): in the desert: manna and water. Parents who bring up children have also similar responsibility.
- Food; sacraments from bread, water, oil, wine; daily necessities; grace is built on nature
- We never forget to eat: Nothing becomes so biologically part of us. We become what we eat. Junk food, not caring for God's creation. Bodies neglected. Abortion, old people, children abandoned. Our younger years are spent losing health to make wealth and our older years are spent losing wealth to get health.
- Food is nourishment (energy), life, growth and gives joy and is eaten in fellowship, Companion = the one who breaks bread with me (Latin meaning) Food is best taken in fellowship: companion; sharing
- Food should be eaten as a family. Unity
- It takes sacrifice to prepare it
- Many ingredients to make it; complementing
- Food has to be broken down to assimilate or digest – process of breaking
- How can we each become Eucharistic people? Don’t adore and worship hours bodies – naked, vulgar - on the screens of computer and TVs, but a little time with the Lord in the Eucharist. What do we hunger for? What tables do we sit to fulfil that hunger?
- Each sacrifice is an expression of becoming body & blood. We live by what we get, but we give life by what we give.
- Social Dimension: Aren't we surprised on Holy Thursday to note that the reading was not the institution of the Eucharist, but washing of the feet. Again today, the context was the multiplication of the loaves. We become what we eat. We become part of the mission of Jesus. It's all about mercy and justice.