Trent on the Eucharist
Here are the first four Chapters of the Decree of the Council of Trent on the Eucharist:
THE COUNCIL OF TRENT
Session XIII - The third under the Supreme Pontiff, Julius III, celebrated on the eleventh day of October, 1551
Index
Decree Concerning the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist
Canons on the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist
Decree Concerning the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist
The holy, ecumenical and general Council of Trent, lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost, the same legate and nuncios of the holy Apostolic See presiding, though convened, not without the special guidance and direction of the Holy Ghost, for the purpose of setting forth the true and ancient doctrine concerning faith and the sacraments, and of applying a remedy to all the heresies and the other most grievous troubles by which the Church of God is now miserably disturbed and rent into many and various parts, yet, even from the outset, has especially desired that it might pull up by the roots the cockles[1] of execrable errors and schisms which the enemy has in these our troubled times disseminated regarding the doctrine, use and worship of the Sacred Eucharist, which our Savior left in His Church as a symbol of that unity and charity with which He wished all Christians to be mutually bound and united. Wherefore, this holy council, stating that sound and genuine doctrine of the venerable and divine sacrament of the Eucharist, which the Catholic Church, instructed by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and by His Apostles, and taught by the Holy Ghost who always brings to her mind all truth,[2] has held and will preserve even to the end of the world, forbids all the faithful of Christ to presume henceforth to believe, teach or preach with regard to the most Holy Eucharist otherwise than is explained and defined in this present decree.
CHAPTER I
THE REAL PRESENCE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST IN THE MOST HOLY SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST
First of all, the holy council teaches and openly and plainly professes that after the consecration of bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is truly, really and substantially contained in the august sacrament of the Holy Eucharist under the appearance of those sensible things. For there is no repugnance in this that our Savior sits always at the right hand of the Father in heaven[3] according to the natural mode of existing, and yet is in many other places sacramentally present to us in His own substance by a manner of existence which, though we can scarcely express in words, yet with our understanding illumined by faith, we can conceive and ought most firmly to believe is possible to God.[4] For thus all our forefathers, as many as were in the true Church of Christ and who treated of this most holy sacrament, have most openly professed that our Redeemer instituted this wonderful sacrament at the last supper, when, after blessing the bread and wine, He testified in clear and definite words that He gives them His own body and His own blood. Since these words, recorded by the holy Evangelists[5] and afterwards repeated by St. Paul,[6] embody that proper and clearest meaning in which they were understood by the Fathers, it is a most contemptible action on the part of some contentious and wicked men to twist them into fictitious and imaginary tropes by which the truth of the flesh and blood of Christ is denied, contrary to the universal sense of the Church, which, as the pillar and ground of truth,[7] recognizing with a mind ever grateful and unforgetting this most excellent favor of Christ, has detested as satanical these untruths devised by impious men.
CHAPTER II
THE REASON FOR THE INSTITUTION OF THIS MOST HOLY SACRAMENT
Therefore, our Savior, when about to depart from this world to the Father, instituted this sacrament, in which He poured forth, as it were, the riches of His divine love towards men, making a remembrance of his wonderful works,[8] and commanded us in the participation of it to reverence His memory and to show forth his death until he comes[9] to judge the world. But He wished that this sacrament should be received as the spiritual food of souls,[10] whereby they may be nourished and strengthened, living by the life of Him who said: He that eateth me, the same also shall live by me,[11] and as an antidote whereby we may be freed from daily faults and be preserved from mortal sins.
He wished it furthermore to be a pledge of our future glory and everlasting happiness, and thus be a symbol of that one body of which He is the head[12] and to which He wished us to be united as members by the closest bond of faith, hope and charity, that we might all speak the same thing and there might be no schisms among us.[13]
CHAPTER III
THE EXCELLENCE OF THE MOST HOLY EUCHARIST OVER THE OTHER SACRAMENTS
The most Holy Eucharist has indeed this in common with the other sacraments, that it is a symbol of a sacred thing and a visible form of an invisible grace;[14] but there is found in it this excellent and peculiar characteristic, that the other sacraments then first have the power of sanctifying when one uses them, while in the Eucharist there is the Author Himself of sanctity before it is used. For the Apostles had not yet received the Eucharist from the hands of the Lord, when He Himself told them that what He was giving them is His own body.[15] This has always been the belief of the Church of God, that immediately after the consecration the true body and the true blood of our Lord, together with His soul and divinity exist under the form of bread and wine, the body under the form of bread and the blood under the form of wine <ex vi verborum;>[16] but the same body also under the form of wine and the same blood under the form of bread and the soul under both, in virtue of that natural connection and concomitance whereby the parts of Christ the Lord, who hath now risen from the dead, to die <no more>,[17] are mutually united;[18] also the divinity on account of its admirable hypostatic union with His body and soul. Wherefore, it is very true that as much is contained under either form as under both.[19] For Christ is whole and entire under the form of bread and under any part of that form; likewise the whole Christ is present under the form of wine and under all its parts.
CHAPTER IV
TRANSUBSTANTIATION
But since Christ our Redeemer declared that to be truly His own body which He offered under the form of bread,[20] it has, therefore, always been a firm belief in the Church of God, and this holy council now declares it anew, that by the consecration of the bread and wine a change is brought about of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood.[21] This change the holy Catholic Church properly and appropriately calls transubstantiation.
Notes
1 Matt. 13:30.
2 Luke 12:12; John 14:26; 16:13.
3 Cf. Sess. III, the Symbol.
4 Matt. 19:26; Luke 18:27.
5 Matt. 26:26-28; Mark 14: 22-24; Luke 22:19 f.
6 See I Cor. 11:24f.
7 See I Tim. 3:15.
8 Ps. 110:4.
9 Luke 22:19; I Cor. 11:24-26.
10 Matt. 26: 26 f.
11 John 6: 58
12 See 1 Cor. 11:3; Eph. 5:23.
13 See I Cor. 1:10.
14 C. 32, D.II de cons.
15 Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22.
16 Cf. <infra>, can T.
17 Rom. 6:9.
18 Cc. 58, 71, 78, D. II de cons.
19 Cf. <infra>, can. 3 and Sess. XXI, chap. 3.
20 Luke 22: 19; John 6:48 ff.; 1 Cor. 11: 24.
21 Cf. c. 55, D. II de cons.; <infra>, can. 3.