"Is it just Jesus in disguise?" or, Eucharistic Docetism

The legend tells us of an encounter between the young St. Francis and a leper on the plains outside Assisi. As Francis was riding along, he saw the man, disfigured by such hideous sores that Francis almost turned to flee from him. But the love of God overcame his revulsion. This dignified young man—the son of a wealthy merchant—got down from his horse and embraced the man, and kissed his open sores.

Sometimes the story is told with a postscript. When Francis remounted his horse and turned to say good-bye to the leper, the man had vanished. The leper had been Christ in disguise.

The addition to the story gets something right, but at a deeper level it is very wrong. If the leper was Jesus and no one else, then what about the sores? What about the rags? Were they only for show, so that Jesus could teach a lesson in disguise and then pass on? But what if the leper was really a leper—a poor man suffering from a grotesque disease—and Jesus was present in him in the midst of his leprosy?

Here is the problem with the doctrine of transubstantiation, the teaching that the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper are changed by Divine power into the literal body and blood of the Lord Jesus, and so cease to be bread and wine. If this is true, then this food and drink cannot bring us to Christ, because the moment they begin to do so, they are no longer food and drink. But if we eat real bread and drink real wine, and through them really eat the flesh of the Son of God and drink His blood ... then God is really in the world, in things and in people. Then Francis met a man with a real and horrible disease, and in him he really met the Lord. Then the Word has really become Flesh. Then Christ really is the Savior of the world. Not a "savior" who would take us out of the world, but a Savior who sends us into the world (John 17:15-18). He has not come to annihilate the creation and put Himself in its place. No!—He has come to take His place in the creation, and so make it truly become itself, what He created it to be.

Because His brothers were really there craving your help, because they really were needy and weak—because it was for them that you did it, He says, you did it for Him!
“And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me’ ” (Matthew 25:40).

Because it is really bread that you break and eat, therefore you receive the Body of Christ. It must be and remain bread so that you, through it, may receive His real body into yours! If bread had to be absent for Christ to be present, then we could never meet Christ in the material things of God's creation. But it is bread, real bread!—wine, real wine! so that in it we may really meet our Lord!
“Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to wise men; judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.” (1 Corinthians 10:14-17).