What is transubstantiation?

According to Christian scriptures, Jesus Christ gathered his disciples for the last meal shortly before his imprisonment and execution. During this meal, traditionally known as the last dinner, Jesus commanded the group to eat bread and drink wine in memory of his physical meat and blood. This symbolic act continues today in a religious ceremony called Eucharist or Holy Communion. However, several Christian denominations believe that bread and wine presented in these services in fact turn into the literal meat and blood of Christ through a mystical event known as transubstantiation . Primarily the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church believes in a literal trangubstance-in a certain point of the Eucharist, bread and wine are fundamentally transformed into Christ's real meat and blood. Other Christian denominationBď Consider acceptance ceremony as symbolic or perhaps consumed , which means that the essence of Christ's blood and meat is mystically present together with literal breadM and wine, but not consume those who accept it.

Transubstantiation has become one of the more controversial questions faced by the modern Catholic Church. Some critics of the faith suggest that Catholic doctrines governing transubstancy are not based on the biblical teachings of Jesus Christ or the later epistles of St. Pavla. The act of consuming human meat or drinking human blood would be considered barbaric at the time of Christ, even as an act of memories. Although several passages in the New Testament indicate to eat and drink Christ's body and blood as a demonstration of faith, the act is usually considered symbolic.

The first use of the term transubstantiation in Christian literature does not appear until at least 1,000 years after Christ's death and resurrection. The importance of the Eucharist or Holy Communion was emphasized from the earliest days of the Christian Church, but the belief in Transubstantiac was not widespread much later.

Those who believe in transubstancy do not necessarily believe the elements of Eucharist, bread and wine, in fact it is physically changing. The conversion into the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ occurs at a spiritual level that people cannot measure or define. Bread and wine still have all the sensory elements of common bread and wine. After these elements were dedicated to the priest, they are also manifestations of Christ's body and blood. Transubstantiation is not considered to be church cannibalism, because the elements retain their secular qualities during the ceremony.

Protestant denomination generally does not believe in doctrine transubstantiation, although they retain many of the same elements as the Catholic Eucharistic ceremony. Bread and wine represent the meat and blood of Jesus Christ at a symbolic level, but the ceremony is to be a memory of his victims on the cross, as well as time for private community between believers and God.