Pope Francis holding the monstrance on Corpus Christi (May 30 in Rome)
Posted on 06/02/2013 11:49:33 AM PDT by NYer
On this Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, it’s good to remember the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas:
Almighty and Eternal God, behold I come to the sacrament of Your only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. As one sick I come to the Physician of life; unclean, to the Fountain of mercy; blind, to the Light of eternal splendor; poor and needy to the Lord of heaven and earth. Therefore, I beg of You, through Your infinite mercy and generosity, heal my weakness, wash my uncleanness, give light to my blindness, enrich my poverty, and clothe my nakedness. May I thus receive the Bread of Angels, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, with such reverence and humility, contrition and devotion, purity and faith, purpose and intention, as shall aid my soul’s salvation.
This is the humble attitude with which we should both enter the church building (because the Blessed Sacrament is reserved there) and approach the Blessed Sacrament at Holy Communion.
The reason for our humility is that the glorified and risen Lord is present here in the Bread of Angels. The Eucharist is not a manmade symbol for an absent reality, a mere reminder of times past.
Rather, as Saint Thomas prayed in his Prayer after Communion: “I thank You, Lord, Almighty Father, Everlasting God, for having been pleased, through no merit of mine, but of Your great mercy alone, to feed me, a sinner, and Your unworthy servant, with the precious Body and Blood of Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Blessed Eucharist is the Body and Blood of the Son of God. It is the only thing worthy of the worship that is given to God alone for that very reason.
How different would the attitude be in our churches if Christ’s Real Presence were taken seriously? Rather than trying to make our churches like movie houses or secular meeting spaces or – worse – copying other religions, perhaps we could make them houses of the Blessed Sacrament, oases of the guaranteed presence of Christ in a secular world.
Pope Francis holding the monstrance on Corpus Christi (May 30 in Rome)
The celebration of the Eucharist is not a closed, feel-good moment, private to our parish or even to our family. Eucharistic Prayer I says very clearly: “by the hands of your holy angel this offering may be born to your altar in heaven in the sight of your divine majesty so as we receive communion at this altar. . .we may be filled with every grace and blessing.” We join the liturgy of Heaven that showers its grace upon earth.
We need to be personally close to Christ for our spiritual survival, but this is not at all an individualistic concept. As John Paul II exhorted us: “The Church and the world have a great need for Eucharistic worship. Jesus awaits us in this sacrament of love. Let us not refuse the time to go to meet him in adoration, in contemplation full of faith and open to make amends for the serious offenses and crimes of the world.”
So alongside our reaching for an ever deeper appreciation and awe for the Body and Blood of Christ – which is already countercultural in our confused time – we have to learn something about the effects of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.
One of them is that “our unity is the fruit of Calvary, and results from the Mass’s application to us of the fruits of the Passion, with a view to our final redemption.”(Henri de Lubac) So being Christian depends on our actually being open to the mystery at the heart of our redemption, the life, death and resurrection of Christ. In fact, our whole approach to the Body and Blood of Christ will be a good indicator of whether we even grasp the central mystery of our faith in love.
Relearning our faith so that it is not individualized (the Protestant position), but rather something that, as Christ’s own Church, joins us more deeply to Christ and each other is predicated on our approaching the Blessed Sacrament as Thomas Aquinas did. The individualism that we have been schooled in for years – and that comes to us in TV shows, in the speeches of politicians, in how we conceive of school and work – will take serious effort to overcome.
It represents a grave distortion of the social way of life for which we were created. Vatican II taught the simple truth that: “God, Who has fatherly concern for everyone, has willed that all men should constitute one family and treat one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
We cannot expect to steep ourselves in the individualism of the culture and then regard our subsequent attitudes as Catholic. These are two irreconcilable realities. And to think otherwise is to imagine that there is no particular truth in Catholicism.
To deny the Church as the Body of Christ is to deny who Jesus Christ is, the one who is God incarnate and present among us in a special way, as we celebrate today.
Ping!
My Jesus isn’t a cracker.
The curse of the Reformation sprung tens of thousands of wild mushrooms around the great mustard tree. Many of them have withered and died. Others have no real doctrine to speak of of like the now defunct Episcopalian Church. Lutherans have now gay bishops fornicating with one another before the service. Still others are the hucksters like Rev. Jeremiah Wright; Rev. Jesse Jackson; Rev. Al Sharpton (well you get the picture) and then we have connivers like the Joel Osteens and Schullers of this world where religion become a “clappy-happy-foot-thumpin’ event with dollars pouring into their personal bank accounts. Add to this list, the Mormons, The Church of Scientology; Jehovah’s Witnesses and we have a “Christian Tower of Babel.”
Again this turbulent rage, there stands like the Rock of Gibraltar, the Church founded by Christ where His Real Presence: Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity is present in the Holy Eucharist. The focal point of every Catholic Church, and as Cardinal (Blessed) Henry Newman would say the perfect prayer, the Catholic Mass.
St. Thomas Aquinas, the great evangelical doctor calls the consecrated Host, the Bread of Angels: Pange Angelicus, and rightly so.
Neither is the Jesus that Catholics believe in. But the Eucharist found in Catholic Churches at the Holy Mass is, in fact, the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, really and truly present. We have it from Jesus' own lips in the Gospels, and from St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 11--not to mention 2000 years of unanimous Church teaching. That's good enough for me.
Hey, that monstrance looks just like the one Jesus used!
So Jesus ate Himself at The Last Supper. See how heresies sound really dumb when you really think about them?
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
LOL!!!!! And the RCC is as pure as the wind-driven snow.
Give thinking people a break!
Jesus also said he was a “vine,” a “door,” a “stone,” and a “lamb,” among many other things. Please elaborate.
Refresh my memory: which Scripture passage states that Jesus himself consumed the bread after he blessed it and gave it to his disciples?
Perhaps you should become more familiar with the Scriptures and Catholic teaching before you make such childishly embarrassing statements as if nobody in 2000 years ever thought about it before.
The curse of the Reformation . . . . Hmmmm.
///////////////////////////
Sola Scriptura.
Sola Deo Gloria.
Solo Christo.
Sola Gratia.
Sola Fide.
If this is a curse, then I thank God that this curse rescued me from the thrall of sin and, also, opened my eyes to a soteriology far superior to that of the Catholic faith in which I was reared.
By the way: Now a Protestant, I still have a fairly “high” view of the Eucharist, though I can no longer give assent to the Romanist view of Transubstantiation.
Also, let’s be honest, I actually agree with your characterization of the what you not-so-inaccurately term the “mushrooms” that sprang up around the base of the Reformation tree proper — from the Episcopalians to Osteen, et al.
Now, can you not be equally honest and admit publicly in this forum that a Roman Catholic priest or two here and there (or Pope, even!) during the past 1600 years has engaged in adultery, fornication, incest, and/or sodomy at one point or another — perhaps even in the hours immediately preceding the celebrating of the “sacrifice” of the Mass? Or, engaged in the sale of indulgences? Or, temporized with evil in the form of Adolph Hitler? Or, .... the list goes on. In sum, Rock of Gibraltar, Schmock of Gibraltar!
Finally, I greatly admire Aquinas, but his “Pange Angelicus” though very eloquent, seems a bit over the top. My suspicion is that the angels are not permitted to partake of the Eucharist. (And, perhaps, brilliant as he was, he knew that, but was simply trying to make a point.)
Let's think about this. If the "Eucharist" (the cracker) in the Catholic mass is the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ, it must have all the properties of Jesus Christ, who is God. It must have ALWAYS been Jesus Christ, not just after a priest says the magic words over it, as the RCC teaches. And it must NEVER CEASE to be Jesus Christ after we eat it, and even as it passes through our digestive systems and out of our alimentary canal. God is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore.
That the priest can somehow "produce God" where God wasn't at some prior period is absurd. This is nowhere taught in Scripture.
Fundamentalist writers who comment on John 6 also assert that one can show Christ was speaking only metaphorically by comparing verses like John 10:9 ("I am the door") and John 15:1 ("I am the true vine"). The problem is that there is not a connection to John 6:35, "I am the bread of life." "I am the door" and "I am the vine" make sense as metaphors because Christ is like a door—we go to heaven through him—and he is also like a vine—we get our spiritual sap through him. But Christ takes John 6:35 far beyond symbolism by saying, "For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed" (John 6:55).
He continues: "As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me" (John 6:57). The Greek word used for "eats" (trogon) is very blunt and has the sense of "chewing" or "gnawing." This is not the language of metaphor.
I’m under no obligation to answer your question until you answer mine. Changing the subject is for people who have no answer or cannot admit they are wrong.
I'm not asking you to answer a question I haven't asked. I'm just putting the truth out there for you to accept or reject.
Correction: you are putting out your OPINION of what the truth is based on YOUR personal interpretation of the Bible for me to accept or reject. And I reject your personal opinion.
That was easy. Been nice chatting with you.
Perhaps a bad analogy on your part - The Tower of Babylon was built by those who were 'unified and universal', and who followed one man, with one language, to the point of rebellion against the Most High...
When the tower fell, the language was confused and distributed to keep them from rebellion and doing evil. Are you suggesting that the evil is in that distribution, or that the evil tower should not have been destroyed?
Well, the OPINIONS of the Roman Catholic Church change all the time, a characteristic of OPINIONS.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.