When we pray for a change of heart or for forgiveness, we are also praying for an actual change, although it may not be primarily physical. No one who is out of work asks God for a symbolic job. No one worried about her daughter's marrying the right person asks for a good metaphorical husband, and no one asks for only symbolic forgiveness. Any interpretation of Scripture that obscures these facts misrepresents both God and reality. Because the incarnation is such an amazing, unlikely, and, frankly, divine gift, it is easy to see why the mind of man reels and, in some cases, founders before it.
Transubstantiation poses the same kind of stumbling block for many.
It seems too mysterious, too miraculous, too divine, and, consequently, some people cannot accept that Christ is really present in the Eucharist. An exclusively symbolic interpretation of the Eucharist grows out of the Gnostics' and Docetists' mistaken view of the incarnation. Just as Christ was true man and true God and really present in both flesh and spirit, so He is really present in Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist. To interpret Christ's incarnation or the transubstantiation effected in the Eucharist as merely symbolic is, ironically, to believe in and celebrate Real Absence instead of Real Presence. This was the best that the ancients, worshipping an ever elusive deus absconditus, could do.