The first Mass, the only Mass with Jesus as the in person celebrant, rather than a priest standing in persona Christi, was the Last Supper. And it was the only consecration of the Eucharist before His death and resurrection. Therefore, the question is asked whether the Real Presence for that Eucharist was His glorified body, or his unglorified body?

It must have been his glorified body, otherwise, that Eucharist and Mass would not be the same as all the Masses and Eucharists of the Church, causing a separation between Christ’s establishment of the Sacrament and the Church’s different version of it. Such a difference would destroy the basis for the Mass as not merely a reenactment of the first Mass, but the very same event, except for time and place. Such a difference would give us two Eucharists, the one consecrated by Christ at the first Mass, and a different Eucharist for the Church — which is not possible. Therefore, the Eucharist of the first Mass was Christ’s glorified body.

How is this possible? Christ is God, and God is not restricted by the timing or order of events.

When the Apostles and disciples baptized before the death and resurrection of Christ, was it not the very same baptism as after the resurrection? Yet the power of baptism is that we die and rise with Christ. How can this be? The answer is the same as the answer for the Eucharist, God is not limited by time and place.

[Romans]
{6:3} Do you not know that those of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?
{6:4} For through baptism we have been buried with him into death, so that, in the manner that Christ rose from the dead, by the glory of the Father, so may we also walk in the newness of life.

The Immaculate Conception occurred by the merits of Christ’s death and resurrection. We sometimes say by the “foreseen merits”. But to be accurate, those merits were actually present and applied, in all their fullness, just as if the Immaculate Conception occurred at some point after His death and resurrection. The death and resurrection of Christ was truly present at the Immaculate Conception. It was not merely anticipated. The Immaculate Conception occurred, not the power of a promise of future payment, but by the reality of that future event, made present in all its fullness because God is beyond time and place.

by
Ronald L. Conte Jr.
Roman Catholic theologian
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