"The Person of Jesus, eh? Got that raht h'yar:"
Interesting. Eucharist as denial of the incarnation.
Incarnation means that Jesus has a real body. A real body can't be in two places at once.
So you're denying that Christ's glorified Body can do things His pre-Crucifixion Body can't? How do you explain how He entered the Upper Room?
I'm sure you are going to see this a lot but:
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and giving it to his disciples said, "Take and eat; this is my body."
Is His body in two places?
A human limited body, maybe, but for God, all things are possible. Jesus said, and Paul taught, and the early church fathers believed Jesus was right there in the Eucharist. You may disagree, you may not believe, but this is the historical reality.
And I, as would others here, truly appreciate it if you would quit insulting Jesus here.
St. Padre Pio was known to enjoy the occasional bilocation.
Unless you eat (chew, gnaw on) the Flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His Blood, you have no life within you.
This IS my body ... this IS the cup of my blood ... do THIS in remembrance of me.
If you want to argue with Jesus about it, be my guest. I take Him at His word.
The Holy Eucharist is not denial of the incarnation. It's a worship of God, and a celebration of His resurrection.
I agree with you in some measure about attachment to extravagance. It can be unseemly. Also, your point about Christ being born in a Manger is well taken. Simplicity was never so elegant and never so beautiful.
But, I want to ask you a question about Jesus' body.
When Jesus appeared in the Upper Room, he was Resurrected. He asked not to be touched because he had not yet ascended to the Father, but he ate with the Apostles. His Resurrected body ate, the way his body before he was Resurrected ate. Isn't it possible that this Resurrected body joined all of that that was made Incarnate, and all that the Resurrection was returning to Divine?
As a body? Perhaps, but we don't assert that anyway. "Christ's body is not in this sacrament as in a place. ... in no way is Christ's body locally in this sacrament." (St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae, III q. 76 a. 5); "once the substance or nature of the bread and wine has been changed into the body and blood of Christ, nothing remains of the bread and the wine except for the species—beneath which Christ is present whole and entire in His physical 'reality,' corporeally present, although not in the manner in which bodies are in a place." (Pope Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Mysterium Fidei, Sept. 3, 1965)
The "omnipresence" of the body of Christ was invented by some Lutherans. To speak frankly, it tends towards the Monophysite heresy.
a position that I understand from an intellectual perspective but have trouble finding a theological basis for.
Try these: "And taking bread, he gave thanks, and brake; and gave to them, saying: This is my body, which is given for you. Do this for a commemoration of me. In like manner the chalice also, after he had supped, saying: This is the chalice, the new testament in my blood, which shall be shed for you." (St. Luke 22:19-20) "The chalice of benediction, which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? And the bread, which we break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord?" (1 Cor. 10:16) "Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord." (1 Cor. 11:27)