When you believe in God, you believe in the metaphysical. That is, you believe in a realm beyond the physical realm. Communion is a metaphysical reality. Something is going on there - we don’t really know what - but we believe we are consuming Christ.
In saying that, I like to think of it this way:
All matter is corrupt and dying due to sin. So the normal, everyday material of this world is in fact really something more. Something greater. When Christ comes again, all material will be made new. Made truely itself. As it should be. Just like we will be made truely ourselves. During the liturgy, the priest asks God to sanctify and make the bread and wine - a humble human meal - into His body and blood. When bread and wine become truely themselves, when a meal truely becomes itself - what does it become? It becomes Christ himself. For that is what really sustains us. And if we aren’t sustained by Christ, there is no life in us; for Christ is the Life. When we ask God to “sanctify the gifts” during the liturgy, we are asking him to make them holy. And what is holy? Holy is something restored, uncorrupt, full of life. The bread and wine become holy. Truely themselves. Restored. Sanctified. Therefore, they become Christ. And we consume Christ.
Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”
So it is not some magic trick. The priest doesn’t wave his hands and make an incantation and abracadabra we have physical skin and blood. That was never the point. Communion is a metaphysical, mystical, spiritual reality.
When the priest “blesses” anything, whether it be oil, water, bread - whatever - he is asking God to make it holy. Make it as it should be. Make it WHOLE again. Restore it. Make it REAL. Not shape shift it by some magic trick.
That’s how I think of it.