What is "transubstantiation"? I've heard the word and I know it has something to do with the Catholic Faith.

Catholics believe that communion wafers and wine literally turn into the body and blood of Christ during the sacrament of the Eucharist. This process is called transubstatiation.

TRANSUBSTANTIATION

The complete change of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of Christ's body and blood by a validly ordained priest during the consecration at Mass, so that only the accidents of bread and wine remain. While the faith behind the term itself was already believed in apostolic times, the term itself was a later development. With the Eastern Fathers before the sixth century, the favored expression was meta-ousiosis, "change of being"; the Latin tradition coined the word transubstantiatio, "change of substance," which was incorporated into the creed of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The Council of Trent, in defining the "wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the wine into the blood" of Christ, added "which conversion the Catholic Church calls transubstantiation" (Denzinger 1652). after transubstantiation, the accidents of bread and wine do not inhere in any subject or substance whatever. Yet they are not make-believe they are sustained in existence by divine power. (Etym. Latin trans-, so as to change + substantia, substance: transubstantio, change of substance.)

Transubstantiation is a Catholic term that describes the communion of the body and blood of Christ that is literally turned into just that as the priest prays over it. While Protestants believe that the communion is symbolic only of the body and blood of Christ.

e. Para. 1413: By the consecration the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is brought about. Under the consecrated species of bread and wine Christ himself, living and glorious, is present in a true, real, and substantial manner: his Body and his Blood, with his soul and his divinity (cf. Council of Trent: DS 1640; 1651).

Para. 1376: The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: "Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change 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. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation" (Council of Trent [1551]: DS 1642; cf. Mt 26:26 ff.; Mk 14:22 ff.; Lk 22:19ff; 1 Cor 11:24 ff.).

Transubstantiation is what happens during the consecration of the bread and wine. It becomes, the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ. It is also referred to as the "real presence." It only happens in the Catholic Mass.

Christ instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper. He gave us this sacrament so that we might be able to receive him as he commanded in John 6. Jesus says: We must eat his flesh and drink his blood or we cannot have life within us.

http://www.ewtn.com/faith/teachings/eucha4.htm

http://www.catholic.com/library/Christ_in_the_Euch...

It's the "changing" of something. Like bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

its one of the stranger Catholic traditions where the wine and wafer are supposed to actually become the blood and body of christ . Seems pretty creepy to me.