What Do Catholics Believe About Communion?

Catholics believe that the Eucharist is actually Jesus’s Body and Blood, not as a symbol, but truly present. To understand Catholic teaching on communion, you actually have to go back to Exodus 12, the Passover. In order to be passed over by the angel of death that was bringing destruction, the Israelites (God’s people) had to kill a lamb, spread its blood on the doorpost, and eat it. Essentially, they had to eat the one who died in their place (the lamb).

Now, in the New Testament, Jesus identifies as the Lamb of God. When He is killed, He does so for the salvation of all and explains that “whoever eats My Body and drinks My Blood” will be saved. In other words, Catholics eat the One who died in their place.

In John 6, when His disciples murmur at His statement that His Flesh is meat indeed, and His Blood is drink indeed, Christ doesn’t back off and explain, ‘no no, I meant symbolically’….He doubles down on the literal meaning, and some of His disciples actually leave Him over the statement, because it’s so shocking!

Christ instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper, and each Catholic Mass re-participates in the sacrifice of Christ’s passion by truly making Jesus present in the Eucharist. (Crucially, Catholics do not “re-sacrifice” Christ at each Mass - think of the Mass as a time machine that allows us to be truly present at the one-time historical event of Christ’s perfect sacrifice on the cross.)

This teaching of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist has been integral to the Faith since the beginning: it is referenced several times in the New Testament (Luke 24, Acts 2, Acts 20, 1 Corinthians 10) and by the Early Church Fathers as early as St. Ignatius of Antioch in 110 AD and St. Justin Martyr in 150 AD.

So why can only Catholics - and specifically, Catholics in good standing with the Church - receive the Eucharist? Because of Paul’s statement: “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.” (1 Corinthians 11:27-29) Receiving communion at a Catholic Church is a public declaration that a person is ‘in communion’ with the Catholic Church, by believing everything the Catholic Church teaches, including the belief that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood of Christ, and by being free of serious sin.