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Donna,
The Body and Blood of Christ are always both present in both species (under the form of bread and under the form of wine), a doctrine known as concomitance.
When it enters your body, it imparts the sanctifying or deifying grace it contains, and, being integrated into your body, it deifies you and your body, that is, divinizes you. The priest, in the Roman Rite, prays during the Offertory,
| "May we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled Himself to share in our humanity." |
In Scripture, 2 Peter 1:4 says that we are made "partakers of the divine nature". God wants to save, not just our souls, but our bodies as well. St. Augustine said,
"Be what you can see and receive what you are." (Sermon 272).
The Holy Trinity comes to dwell in us and makes us like Him. The Prayer after Communion in the Roman Rite for last week, the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, reads:
| "Grant us, almighty God, that we may be refreshed and nourished by the Sacrament which we have received, so as to be transformed into what we consume." |
By nourishing us with sanctifying grace and charity, worthy reception of the Eucharist builds up, day by day, the life of the Trinity in the faithful. Thus its proper effect is to enable those who receive Communion worthily to say with St. Paul in Galatians 2:20:
| “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20) |
Or as Jesus says in John 6:56–57:
| “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me.” (John 6:56–57) |
In other words, the proper effect of the Eucharist is the intensifying of the Indwelling of Christ in the soul and of the soul in Christ, and where Christ indwells, there also are the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Feingold, Lawrence, The Eucharist: Mystery of Presence, Sacrifice, and Communion (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2018), p. 512 |
The Eucharist is the fruit of the Tree of Life portrayed in the Garden of Eden. The Tree of Life is the Cross of Jesus Christ, and its fruits are His life-giving sacrifice on it.
So, in receiving those fruits, our venial sins are forgiven and effaced from our souls, and we are strengthened. Jesus compared the Eucharist to the manna in the desert God miraculously provided for the Jews (John 6:31-34, 49); as that sustained their physical life, so the Eucharist sustains our spiritual life.
It is Supernatural Life Itself (cf. John 6:50-51).
- Does this address your question?
Eric
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