IS BIBLICAL COMMUNION THE REAL BODY AND BLOOD OF JESUS, OR IS THE SACRAMENT ONLY SYMBOLIC? Catholic leadership’s version claims Jesus constantly gives out His real blood and body all over the world each day as people take communion, constantly sacrificing himself on tables and in cups all around the planet. So, it would not be just the one sacrifice Christ made for all time: Catholicism is putting Jesus in the position of having to climb back up on the cross each day, and supposedly keep sacrificing His body for each person whenever he or she decides to take communion. Along those lines, it’s interesting to note how Catholicism developed this idea in the early centuries AD, when Roman Emperor Constantine combined Christian and pagan beliefs into a new religion that could be acceptable to those in both camps; thus, bringing all of society under Roman religious rule, creating a union of people groups that later became Roman Catholicism. As far as evidence of pagan beliefs being incorporated into biblical Christianity—to make a new religion that was to be based on occult practices—the Catholic Eucharist is the same practice as the earlier pagan Mithraism: "Mithraism was another religion at that time of the Roman Empire, which was very popular... One of the key features of Mithraism was a sacrificial meal, which involved eating of the flesh and the drinking of the blood of a bull. Mithras, the god of Mithraism, was [supposedly] ‘present' in the flesh and blood of the bull, and when consumed, granted salvation to those who partook of the sacrificial meal.” Likewise, Catholicism teaches that Communion’s bread and wine become Christ’s actual body and blood that we eat and drink. However, when Jesus said, "this is my body" and "this is my blood," it was symbolic; just as it is when the Bible also says Jesus is a rock and a door; He is not—literally—either of those, just like he is not baked bread or grapes that have been made into wine. And how would a still-living Jesus (with a fully intact body as he sat with the disciples at the Last Supper), pass around His literal blood and body tissue to the disciples?