Posted on 04/27/2008 3:36:18 AM PDT by markomalley
The Catholic Church teaches that in the Eucharist, the communion wafer and the altar wine are transformed and really become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Have you ever met anyone who has found this Catholic doctrine to be a bit hard to take?
If so, you shouldn't be surprised. When Jesus spoke about eating his flesh and drinking his blood in John 6, his words met with less than an enthusiastic reception. "How can this man give us his flesh to eat? (V 52). "This is a hard saying who can listen to it?" (V60). In fact so many of his disciples abandoned him over this that Jesus had to ask the twelve if they also planned to quit. It is interesting that Jesus did not run after his disciples saying, "Don't go — I was just speaking metaphorically!" How did the early Church interpret these challenging words of Jesus? Interesting fact. One charge the pagan Romans lodged against the Christians was cannibalism. Why? You guessed it. They heard that this sect regularly met to eat human flesh and drink human blood. Did the early Christians say: "wait a minute, it's only a symbol!"? Not at all. When trying to explain the Eucharist to the Roman Emperor around 155AD, St. Justin did not mince his words: "For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate by God's word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the word of prayer which comes from him . . . is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus."
Not many Christians questioned the real presence of Christ's body and blood in the Eucharist till the Middle Ages. In trying to explain how bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ, several theologians went astray and needed to be corrected by Church authority. Then St. Thomas Aquinas came along and offered an explanation that became classic. In all change that we observe in this life, he teaches, appearances change, but deep down, the essence of a thing stays the same. Example: if, in a fit of mid-life crisis, I traded my mini-van for a Ferrari, abandoned my wife and 5 kids to be beach bum, got tanned, bleached my hair blonde, spiked it, buffed up at the gym, and took a trip to the plastic surgeon, I'd look a lot different on the surface. But for all my trouble, deep down I'd still substantially be the same ole guy as when I started.
St. Thomas said the Eucharist is the one instance of change we encounter in this world that is exactly the opposite. The appearances of bread and wine stay the same, but the very essence or substance of these realities, which can't be viewed by a microscope, is totally transformed. What was once bread and wine are now Christ's body and blood. A handy word was coined to describe this unique change. Transformation of the "sub-stance", what "stands-under" the surface, came to be called "transubstantiation."
What makes this happen? The power of God's Spirit and Word. After praying for the Spirit to come (epiklesis), the priest, who stands in the place of Christ, repeats the words of the God-man: "This is my Body, This is my Blood." Sounds to me like Genesis 1: the mighty wind (read "Spirit") whips over the surface of the water and God's Word resounds. "Let there be light" and there was light. It is no harder to believe in the Eucharist than to believe in Creation. But why did Jesus arrange for this transformation of bread and wine? Because he intended another kind of transformation. The bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ which are, in turn, meant to transform us. Ever hear the phrase: "you are what you eat?" The Lord desires us to be transformed from a motley crew of imperfect individuals into the Body of Christ, come to full stature.
Our evangelical brethren speak often of an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus. But I ask you, how much more personal and intimate can you get? We receive the Lord's body into our physical body that we may become Him whom we receive! Such an awesome gift deserves its own feast. And that's why, back in the days of Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis of Assisi, the Pope decided to institute the Feast of Corpus Christi.
Amen. The Body of Christ IS Jesus’ only true church.
The Bride is the Body of Christ, not any church.
And after Jesus went back to the Father, all authority was given to the believer. Greater things than He did, we will do, if only we believe that.
It’s okay. I’ve been visiting my son for a couple of days and just got on anyway. Thanks.
“Oh the RCC in it’s loving kindness has provided an out for you. If you are too dumb to understand the “truth” you will be saved. Have no fear.”
Now, if, by the above statement, you are expressing a general attitude of the RCC, you are helping us to express our positions very aptly. Thank you.
A church that can just change it’s doctrines and positions at any time it wants, to try to convince us dummies of some kind of “loving-kindness” and “outs” that it provides for us (how generous/s); in reality, trying to suck us into the fold of the RCC, or at least make us believe that it is some kind of reformed movement — we just don’t buy it.
A church that can adapt paganism into its system when it benfits the church and thus sucks pagans in — we just don’t buy it.
We were never a part of the RCC fold to begin with, and see no value either spiritually or temporarily in being a part. We do know the Lord Jesus Christ personally, and have a personal daily walk with Him. We experience His presence, and see the unquestionable answers to our prayers. We see the power of God upon His word as it is preached and sinners repent and turn to Christ. The Bible and its Divine Author have proven to us the lack of necessity of engaging with anything like a Roman Catholic Church. It is just as God has proven to millions upon millions of others throughout the Church dispensation.
And I’m still waiting for a common member of the RCC to approach me some day in a common setting, demonstrate an interest in my eternal soul, and tell me what he believes will deliver me from sin and make me a child of God. For 31 years (the length of time I have been a Christian by faith in the Person and merits of Christ), no common RCC member has ever demonstrated in my presence a love for the souls of men and a willingness to use their “Christian” witness in any personal evangelistic effort.
You're asking ME what's going on? MOI? Like, I SO do not know what's going on!
(I think, though that you suggested that I was surgically brain damaged. Maybe that was it. It is of course, an intolerable slight. I come by my brain damage naturally and through my own efforts, thank you.)
Instead of being even aggressive enough to ask a question, let me make my case a little.
YES, it certainly seems bizarre that a group of highly unlikely people clustered around a man in a white dress (and pradas, or so I hear) would be The Church.
But then it's pretty bizarre that God would chose a wandering Aramean, or the descendants of 12 brothers, some of whom sold one of them into slavery because they found him obnoxious, all of whom were sons of someone more wily than virtuous to be his chosen.
And then he gives them a thin strip of land upon which the powerful and rich wiped their feet on their ways from their own rich countries to those of their peers. And He calls this the land of Promise!
Once a maiden of Nazareth (a hole in the wall distinguished for, uh, well, nothing) hears a message from an angel, when there were great peoples in India, China, Persia, and Rome ...
Then, to me, the highly unlikely See of Rome seems not more unlikely than the whole shebang.
Mad dawg isn’t really so mad...
Does Free Republic count? And what is a “common” Catholic?
I work for a computer design and manufacturing firm. We design some of the fastest, most highly capable computers ever known to man. I am fearful that our computer that deciphered the human genome is not up to this challenge. It’s too dynamic. I, sadly, must pass up this opportunity.
sigh
No computer system can handle the distortions of Catholic beliefs seen on these threads?
I can believe that.
The Lord made Simon alone, whom he named Peter, the “rock” of his Church.”
Jesus is the rock of His church. He was talking about Peter’s faith, on which He would build His church.
LOL
That's good. :-)
Christ grants that authority in Matthew 18:18; no presumption necessary.”
Please explain to me how MATT.18:18 gives anyone authority to send someone to hell when, IN CONTEXT, Matt. 18:18 is saying if you treat someone from your church as a “heathen man and a publican”, it better be for something that is already forbidden in heaven.
Why would I explain that? Who says it does?
To: Alamo-Girl
An assembly which claims the authority to send one of God’s children to hell or the second death has presumed authority it does not have.
Christ grants that authority in Matthew 18:18; no presumption necessary.
Meanwhile, Jean Cauvin claims God creates countless souls predestined for damnation.
Sick.
1,584 posted on Thu 01 May 2008 02:16:15 PM PDT by Petronski
Matthew 18:18 gives the Apostles and their successors the authority to bind or loose, but it is the offense itself that condemns the sinner to hell.
Matthew 18:18 gives the Apostles and their successors the authority to bind or loose”
The only successor to the apostles I can think of is Billy Graham.
Some one that baptizes babies that thinks something actually happened..
“And what is a ‘common’ Catholic?”
Regarding Fre Republic. On these pages several times, I have asked defenders of Catholicism to be very precise and tell me exactly what I must do to be saved, delivered from my sins, and have an inheritance in heaven. Point-by-point — tell me.
What I have received as answers were not instructive as to how to be saved; merely statements about how the RCC no longer curses people, or that being outside of the RCC doesn’t necessarily mean one will be lost, etc.
If a member of the Roman Catholic Church were to sense some concern for me as a sinner in need of a Savior, what precisely would he instruct me as to how to know Christ?
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