Is communion really the body and blood of Christ?

First, look at what the scripture says. When Christ tells his followers they need to eat and drink his body and blood, some people are weirded out and stop following him. Christ does not chase after them saying, hold on, I meant that symbolically. He lets them go. Second, St Paul says people are eating and drinking unworthily, and many are getting sick and some are even falling asleep, that is, dying, because they receive the Holy Eucharist unworthily.

Next, the Church Fathers: universal acceptance that the Eucharist really is the body and blood of Christ, without trying to over-explain it. It wasn't until more than 1,500 years after Christ that people started calling it symbolic. Nobody in church history interpreted the Last Supper as a memorial where you drink a plastic shot glass of grape juice and eat a Triscuit.

That is a completely recent innovation. And the understanding was always that the Holy Eucharist is performed by those with apostolic succession, a valid ordination through the laying on of hands. Somebody cannot just buy a service book and call down the Holy Spirit. God is not mechanical or magical in that way. It has to be done within the church.