Quote Of The Week: Bulgakov On The Eucharist

The power of the mysterious transmutation permeates the nature of the bread and wine and changes it. They become other than themselves, other than what they are as things of the physical world. But the bread and wine do not lose their thingness within the limits of this world; their breadness and wineness — their smell, taste, weight, color, physical and chemical properties — remain unchanged. The change in their nature that has occurred is not manifested in their physical being. The miracle of the transmutation of the eucharist elements is therefore not a physical but a metaphysical event. This miracle is not expressed in the replacement of one kind of matter by another within the realm of the physical world — a replacement of the sort that occurred, for example, in the miracle of Cana of Galilee, where the matter of the water was transformed into the matter of the wine, or in the miracle of the loaves and fishes, where the quantity of bread was multiplied. There is — and even can be — no such matter in the world into which the bread and wine could be transformed during their transmutation into the body and blood of Christ. Such a transmutation does not correspond to any transformation within the limits of this world, for the matter of Christ’s body and blood is, in general, absent among the things of this world. Such a transformation would signify a wholly new creation accomplished by the annihilation of the former creation. But in this case this would not be a transmutation, a metabole, which presupposes a certain identity— as well as a complete distinction — between the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem. A new creation in place of the former one annuls this connection, annihilates both the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem in their relation.