Bread and wine…

By Ingrid Fischer, December 6, 2025

What is “valid matter” for the Eucharist?

At his Last Supper, Jesus took bread, blessed, broke, and gave it to his disciples … and likewise the cup, saying, “Take, eat … drink of it, all of you …Do this in remembrance of me” (cf. Mt 22,26-27; Lk 22,19).

As simple as the commandment is, the history of its impact and later practice in the Christian churches is quite complex.

Whether leavened, unleavened, “real” bread or wafers, whether wine or grape juice are forbidden, permitted, or required, is regulated differently in the churches of the East and West. In the Roman Catholic Church, anything that is “different from wheat to such an extent that it would not commonly be considered wheat bread, does not constitute valid matter for confecting the Sacrifice and the Eucharistic Sacrament” (Redemptionis Sacramentum 48).

In addition, a certain gluten content is required for that “bread,” which, according to common perception, is called a “wafer” and which children innocently refer to as “edible paper.” Wine is also subject to quality criteria, even if Catholic believers—scandalously—in European countries rarely get to enjoy it by drinking from the chalice. At most, they are given a host dipped in the blood of Christ. What is this all about?

Liturgical symbols embody what they signify and, by their very properties, make the reality of faith sensually experienceable. For centuries, however, the “sacramental” was sought not within the symbolic elements and actions, but “behind” them (in the now lost Platonic world of ideas). As a result, the sacraments have largely lost “their character as symbolic acts that represent the Christian relationship between man, the world, and God […] and allow the individual to participate in it” (see Reinhard Meßner).

What “character” do bread and wine and the handling of them have for the Eucharistic meal? None other than the great teacher of the “transubstantiation” of the Eucharistic gifts lays the trail: What Thomas Aquinas calls “substance” does not refer to the material composition of the elements presented; rather, their purpose is what is substantial – “essential.” Remaining outwardly bread and wine, the life-giving presence of Christ is realized in their “purpose”: to be shared, eaten, and drunk among one another.

In medieval terms, this line of thought nevertheless touches on Jesus’ words of interpretation at the Last Supper: they apply to the broken bread, which everyone eats, and the cup passed around by Jesus, from which, in contrast to the usual practice, everyone drinks: “Take; this is my body … This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (cf. Mk 14:22, 24).

“This” in which Jesus gives himself – that men “have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10) – is the earthly daily bread to “strengthen man’s heart” and the wine that is indispensable at a feast “to gladden the heart of man” (Ps 104:15) – they are realistic, nourishing, even tasty symbols of everyday life and of celebration, of being satisfied and joy, of sharing and of being connected.

To this day, the gifts for the meal are liturgically presented as “which earth has given and human hands have made”. But as divine nourishment, they remain far too pale in expression—even where bread and wine have a cultural place in life. One is barely recognizable, the other is given to the faithful far too rarely, and they cannot fulfill what the antiphon to Communion promises: “O taste and see that the Lord is good!” (Ps 34:8).

This is especially true where people cultivate and harvest very different fruits from their soils, and from which they derive nourishment, inspiration, and community, be it bread, wine, rice, sake, corn, or pulque.  Regardless of this, in the so-called Rites Controversy of the 16th century, the Jesuits’ efforts to inculturate Christianity into Far Eastern cultures were rejected by the Pope. And although the Constitution on the Liturgy acknowledges that “in some places and circumstances, however, an even more radical adaptation of the liturgy is needed,” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 40) there are no concessions whatsoever when it comes to the Eucharistic meal.

But one may ask: What would actually be lost, what preserved, what gained, if the miracle of the “transubstantiation” of elements alien to life were replaced by the experience of life relevance, if people celebrating all over the world were allowed to offer their gifts and, in doing so, truly bring themselves to “be transubstantiated” before God? By making “this” into heaven on earth for them, what they otherwise share and enjoy in everyday life, what nourishes and refreshes them, and in which their life as the Church of Jesus—the “Body of Christ”—is realized?