I certainly do not believe that the Eucharist is the actual flesh of Christ. It is more symbolic than that. Can't imagine Jesus giving His disciples literal flesh and blood to eat and drink.
You are confusing "literal" with "actual."
The bread does not turn into literal meat and the wine does not turn into literal blood.
But, according to Jesus, Paul and all of the early church writers, it actually is His body and blood.
If you read Jesus' teaching in John chapter 6, He is very clear that we have to "eat His flesh" and "Drink His blood" in order to have eternal life. No where in that passage does He suggest that he is speaking symbolically. And if "eat my flesh" and "drink my blood" are merely symbols, is "eternal life" also just a symbol?
Jhn 6:51 “
I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”
Jhn 6:53-58
Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.
This is the bread which came down from heaven—not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.”
In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus says that the bread is His body and the wine is His blood.
He does not say that they are
symbols of or that they
represent His body and blood and the earliest writings of the Church after the apostles confirmed that they were taught by the apostles that the bread was His body and the wine was His blood.
Neither Jesus nor any of the writers of the NT explain how that comes about or why it still tastes like bread and wine. They simply accept it as what Jesus said and as what they were taught by the apostles.
Beyond that, it is a mystery.
Justin Martyr, the church’s first apologist, wrote in the first half of the 2nd century in his “The First Apology of Justin”, in Chapter LXVI.—Of the Eucharist. In it he reports what he was taught as a new Christian by the church. That would mean that the teaching he received was already established in the church. It is part of the teaching of the apostles who taught what they learned from Jesus. It is God’s inspired teaching to the church by His Son, through the apostles to the church.
“And this food is called among us Eucaristiva [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.
For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, “This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body; ”and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, “This is My blood; ”and gave it to them alone.”
Unfortunately, in our modern, western, technical /information age, we tend to want to some kind of scientific, experimental proof of things that are to be taken by faith. We demand that we be shown how that is done. But God does not show man how He does what He does because we wouldn't understand if we were shown.
If we can accept that "
All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made."(John 1:3) why do we have difficulty believing that He who made all things in heaven and earth also can make the bread to be His actual body and the wine to be His actual blood?
We don't know how God made the heavens and the earth and we don't know how the bread and wine become the body and blood. By faith, we receive these things as being true.
