Episcopal Church and the Eucharist

What is the official Episcopal teaching on the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist?

Taken directly from our catechism, which can be found in the Book of Common Prayer, 1979, The Holy Eucharist is the sacrament commanded by Christ for the continual remembrance of his life, death, and resurrection until his coming again. It’s called a sacrifice because the Eucharist, the Church’s sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, is the way by which the sacrifice of Christ is made present and in which he unites us to his one offering of himself. We believe a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace. The outward and visible sign in the Eucharist is bread and wine, given and received according to Christ’s command. The inward and spiritual grace in the Holy Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ given to his people and received by faith. The benefits we receive are the forgiveness of our sins, the strengthening of our union with Christ and one another, and the foretaste of the heavenly banquet, which is our (viaticum – food for the journey) nourishment in eternal life.

What we mean when we say that Jesus is “present” in the Eucharist is because when he gave us the mandate to continue breaking the bread and sharing the cup until his coming again, he said that he would be present with us always, even to the end of the ages. The 1991 statement of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission notes, “The elements are not mere signs; Christ’s body and blood become really present and are really given. But they are “really present” and given so that, receiving them, believers may be united in communion with Christ the Lord.” A classic Anglican statement attributed to John Donne (or to Queen Elizabeth I) and included in The Hymnal 1982 (Hymn 322) is “He was the Word that spake it, he took the bread and brake it, and what that Word did make it, I do believe and take it.” In Eucharistic Prayer A of Rite 2, the celebrant prays that God the Father will sanctify the gifts of bread and wine “by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son, the holy food and drink of new and unending life in him” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 363). The Catechism notes that the inward and spiritual grace in the eucharist is “the Body and Blood of Christ given to his people and received by faith” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 859). Belief in the “real presence” does not imply a claim to know how Christ is present in the eucharistic elements. Belief in the real presence does not imply a belief that the consecrated eucharistic elements cease to be bread and wine. 

Like I've said before, “physical things, like bread, wine, water, oil, etc… become the vehicles God uses to share the power and presence of Jesus Christ, through the workings of the Holy Spirit. The presence of the risen Christ in the Eucharist is ultimately an inexhaustible mystery that the Church can never fully explain in words or philosophical ideologies."