The Effects Of The Accidents

A reader writes:

I have a question about the Atkins Diet.  I sincerely am not trying to be sacrilegious when I ask this.  I believe in my heart and soul that what I receive in Communion is the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but do the accidents affect my blood sugar?  If I am on Atkins and am a daily communicant (which I am not, because we don’t have daily Mass here in the sticks), would there be a problem?  I can’t imagine a problem because Jesus is all Good and cannot hurt us.  I guess I am just asking about the accidents or maybe you could explain it better.

There is no sacrilege involved. You’re simply asking for knowledge.

It’s true that Jesus won’t hurt us, but that doesn’t mean that our bodies will respond the right way to the accidents of bread and wine.

When we receive Communion, our metabolism looks at the elements and responds the same way that our eyes do, saying, "That’s bread and wine!"

This is not a problem as long as you can handle bread and wine, but some folks can’t.

People with celiac disease, for example, may have a toxic reaction to the accidents of bread if they contain too much gluten (if I may put it that way).

People with alcoholism can be subjected to temptation from receiving the accidents of wine from the cup.

If a single minister is consuming what remains of the Precious Blood after Communion and he drinks enough then he will get tipsy.

This is because the physical properties (accidents) of the bread and wine remain. If I may put it this way, the change in the elements is metaphysical (a change of their inner substance), not physical (a change of their outward properties).

This means that your metabolism will treat them as if they contain carbohydrates. If your metabolism is such that you can handle the amount of carbohydrates that the unconsecrated elements contain then you’ll be able to handle the accidents of the consecrated elements.

On the other hand, your metabolism is sensitive enough that you’ll stop losing weight from receiving a certain quantity of the unconsecrated elements then the same thing will happen when receiving the accidents of an equivalent quantity.

So it really depends on your own metabolism and how many grams of carbohydrates you can ingest per day and still continuing to lose weight.

 

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

11 thoughts on “The Effects Of The Accidents”

  1. Remember, too, that what you eat and drink is Jesus, but what ultimately gets assimilated in your digestive tract is carbs and alcohol and whatever else is in bread and wine — not just the appearances of carbs and alcohol, but the real thing.
    That’s because the sacred species remain the body and blood of Christ only as long as the appearances of bread and wine remain. Once those appearances have broken down in your system, what remains to be digested is really, truly, substantially exactly the same as what would have been there had you ingested the unconsecrated elements.
    Thus, the negative consequences of a person with celiac disease consuming a consecrated regular-gluten host are the result of a reaction, not just to “accidents,” but to gluten itself (or whatever gluten breaks down into).

  3. Rob,
    There are low-gluton hosts available, I believe, as well as very low-alcohol content wine for priests who might be alocholic.
    Breier

  4. I have to say, when I was 20 and serving as an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist, we had a mass in the middle of cold and flu season. Because a lot of the people there were sniffling and coughing, almost nobody came to partake of the Precious Blood.
    So there I was, the non-drinker, consuming the precious blood of Christ. After Mass, I was feeling a bit tipsy. Some time later, I was discussing how… unsettling that experience was. Several of the smaller women who also served as extraordinary ministers agreed that it was unsettling. After that, I always made sure that at the daily mass where this happened to sit where I would be one of the last people up, and if there was still quite a bit of the Precious Blood remaining I would make sure to consume enough so that the minister wouldn’t have to wait an hour after Mass before driving home! Having become of age and gaining a bit more tolerance than earlier helped a bit too.

  6. Interestingly enough, I am deathly allergic to ethanol and yet I have never refrained nor suffered ill effects from receiving the precious blood.
    During a rehearsal for my first communion, just the presence of the wine in the chalice gave me a terrible headache. But I had no problems receiving the next week.

  7. Are people with celiac disease then limited to only spiritual communion?

    In addition to low-gluten hosts, the usual expedient for individuals with celiac disease is to receive the Lord under the species of wine (we have a mother and daughter in our parish with celiac, and they are the only ones who drink from the chalice).

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