In the early Church, the philosophical idea of conversion of matter from one form to another [verses the mere changing of matter, such as ice to water] seemed powerfully linked to the work of Jesus at the wedding feast in Cana when water was converted [conversio] into wine. To deeply understand the full magnitude of what was happening required an understanding that the conversion happening involved a substance which had existed to no longer exist and a new substance which had not existed to now exist. What was critical toward the full formulation of a dogmatically correct explication of all that took place within the Eucharist was the understanding that only the substance of a thing was converted into another-the accidents, or non-essential parts remained the same.
As this pertains to the Eucharist, the external appearance of the bread and the wine were not the substance of these things, the substance being those attributes which really made them bread and wine. In the Eucharist, when the priest stands in for Christ at the words of Institution, the conversion taking place is one of Transubstantiation; the substances of bread and wine cease to exist, the substances of the body and blood of Christ come into existence, and the accidents of the bread and wine remain unchanged.
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