real eucharistic presence were made within a worldview that was basically favorable to sacramentality. At issue was the relationship between symbol and reality. As a sacrament, the Eucharist is, by definition, symbolic. To the contemporary Roman Catholic invested in a theology of real presence, however, this statement is felt to be in immediate need of qualification.2 To moderns, “symbol” is typically seen as opposed to “reality.”3 The Fathers of the Church had no such qualms. In the patristic age,