CCC 1373 “Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us,” is present in many ways to his Church:¹ in his word, in his Church’s prayer, “where two or three are gathered in my name,”² in the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned,³ in the sacraments of which he is the author, in the sacrifice of the Mass, and in the person of the minister. But “he is present. .. most especially in the Eucharistic species.”⁴

CCC 1374 The mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as “the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend.”⁵ In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist “the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.”⁶ “This presence is called ‘real’ – by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be ‘real’ too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present.”⁷

1 Rom 8:34; cf. LG 48.
2 Mt 18:20.
3 Cf. Mt 25:31-46.
4 SC 7.
5 St. Thomas Aquinas, STh III, 73, 3c.
6 Council of Trent (1551): DS 1651.
7 Paul VI, MF 39.