When Christ said "This is my body," did he mean it truly, so that the bread and wine become his body and blood, or was he speaking a symbol?
21 verses are cited on this page. Each one links to its chapter in the Greek text.
Take ye, and eat. This is my body... this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many.Matthew 26:26-28
Christ says "this is", not "this represents", and ties the cup to his blood shed for the remission of sins.
This is my body... This is my blood of the new testament.Mark 14:22-24
Mark records the same plain words, without softening them to a figure.
This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me.Luke 22:19-20
The commemoration is of a body "given for you"; the memorial does not empty the reality, it re-presents it.
This is my body, which shall be delivered for you.1 Corinthians 11:23-25
Paul hands on the same words he received, as a fixed tradition of the Church, decades after the Supper.
...and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world.John 6:51
Christ names the bread he gives as his own flesh, given for the world's life.
Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you... my flesh is meat indeed.John 6:53-55
When the hearers object, Christ does not soften the words but intensifies them, using a stronger verb for eating and calling his flesh true food.
This saying is hard, and who can hear it?John 6:60
The disciples take him literally and find it hard; he lets them.
It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life.John 6:63
He says this after they have already taken him literally and begun to leave, and he does not call them back to correct a misunderstanding. The flesh here is the way of judging that Paul contrasts with the spirit throughout his letters, not the flesh he had just called true food five times over.
After this many of his disciples went back.John 6:66
Many leave over this teaching, and Christ does not call them back with "I only meant a symbol." He would not lose disciples over a misunderstood metaphor.
I am the door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved.John 10:9
The figure is announced and then explained in the same breath, and no one asks how a man can be a door. At Capernaum the crowd asks how, he answers by insisting, and they leave.
I am the true vine; and my Father is the husbandman.John 15:1
Nobody is asked to eat the vine. The comparison holds only until the moment a figure of speech is asked to bear a command to eat and drink, which is where John 6 goes and these do not.
The chalice of benediction, which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread, which we break, is it not the partaking of the body of Christ? For we, being many, are one bread, one body, all that partake of one bread.1 Corinthians 10:16-17
Koinonia, a sharing, of the body and the blood, and then the reason it matters: one bread makes one body. Paul's argument for the unity of the Church rests on the bread being what he says it is. A shared symbol does not make those who share it one thing. The Douay reads body of the Lord here, following the Latin; the Greek on the page reads Christ, matching the blood of Christ in the same sentence.
...shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord.1 Corinthians 11:27
To eat unworthily is to sin against the body and blood themselves, which is unintelligible if the elements are bare symbols.
...not discerning the body of the Lord.1 Corinthians 11:29
The one who fails to discern the body eats judgment on himself; there is a body there to discern.
He took bread, and blessed, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him: and he vanished out of their sight.Luke 24:30-31
Took, blessed, broke, gave. The same four actions as at the Last Supper, and the blessing verb here, eulogeo, is the one Matthew and Mark use there, where Luke had written eucharisteo. They recognize him in the act itself, and he goes from sight at the moment the bread is given.
And they were persevering in the doctrine of the apostles, and in the communication of the breaking of bread, and in prayers.Acts 2:42
Four marks of the first community, and the breaking of bread stands as one of them rather than as a word for eating. Klasis tou artou occurs twice in the New Testament, here and of the risen Christ at Emmaus, and the same act returns in the Sunday assembly at Troas. The Greek has four datives where the Douay reads three, since it makes the breaking of bread depend on the fellowship rather than standing beside it.
Christ's words are plain, "This is my body" (Matthew 26:26), and when his hearers took his flesh literally he confirmed it rather than correct it, even as many left (John 6:53-66). Paul treats the cup as a true communion in the blood of Christ and warns that unworthy reception profanes the body and blood themselves (1 Corinthians 10:16; 11:27), which no symbol could be. From the earliest years the Church confessed the same: Ignatius and Justin call the Eucharist the very flesh of Christ. The Council of Trent (Session 13) defined this as transubstantiation, the whole substance of the bread and wine becoming the body and blood of Christ, his true presence under the appearances that remain.