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Just as a reminder, we don't think of the Eucharist as a repetition of anything (except maybe the sermon). I'm not sure where you're going with the mention of one time only.

I know that every Catholic would deny that the Eucharist is a re-sacrifice of Christ, but aside from that I was under the impression (I could be wrong) that it is still considered "a" sacrifice which is repeated. That's why I brought up "one time only".

Plus, you said "What if the physical IS the spiritual? "It is raised a spiritual body ...". When I read that I thought of going back and forth, or of simultaneity. I may have misunderstood.

I think we're at the "ranging" part of the discussion. That is, I think the points you made were offered in opposition to what you think our view is. But I'm not seeing how they serve in opposition, so either you hit me but I'm too dumb to notice, or you missed.

Yes, I was guessing. :) When I see "what if" I think "as opposed to". :) We started with my agreeing with AG that what are most important are spiritual matters as opposed to physical matters. My current understanding of Catholicism is that there is a great emphasis on physical matters, (even for salvation itself) such as baptism, the Eucharist, and other physical sacraments. So in general that's where I was coming from.

The word used a lot is "Re-presentation". The idea is that while the whole life and "work" of the Son is redemptive - from being the Word through Whom the world was made to His coming again as King and Judge — Still the events of what we feelthy Papists call the Triduum Sacrum - from Holy (or "Maundy") Thursday evening until the Easter Resurrection are sort of the focus or apex or concentration or climax or --- you get it.

Then, when Xtians gather in remembrance and Thanksgiving for that redeeming work, and all the other controversial stuff about priests and such happens, we are bringing into the present that great event. Calvin says somewhere that when we say the sursum corda (Lift up your hearts // We lift them to the Lord) at the beginning of the Commemoration Lord's Supper, our hearts are indeed lifted up to heaven, to eternity, where Christ is.

In the old ("Roman") canon (prayer of consecration over the 'gifts') we ask God to take the "sacrifice" to God's altar in heaven. In what I think is a charming expression in one of the newer canons, we ask God to, "Look with favor on your Church's offering
and see the Victim whose death has reconciled us to yourself."

I find it charming because if God "sees" the victim, then the Victim is there since God doesn't see stuff that isn't there.

To provide another "schematic view" to go along with and underlie hearts or gifts lifted to heaven, I dare say our thinking is kind of like "Through the magic of eternity" our current here and now time and place are identified with that time and place there and then.,so> it's not a re-sacrifice or a repetition. It is THAT sacrifice, that one "back there", "remembered up" to the present.

Science fiction is replete with images of folding time and space. But our memory of the first time our child said, "I love you," shows that our psyches also can do a pretty good job of making the past present.

All I mean but he "physical is spiritual" crack was that we have a mystery here. When Paul says "a spiritual body" I feel like that is, from a systematic theology point of view, punting. But the "felsh" of a spiritual body seems to me to be likely to be something that blows a lot of categories wide open.

Yes, I was guessing. :) When I see "what if" I think "as opposed to". :) We started with my agreeing with AG that what are most important are spiritual matters as opposed to physical matters. My current understanding of Catholicism is that there is a great emphasis on physical matters, (even for salvation itself) such as baptism, the Eucharist, and other physical sacraments. So in general that's where I was coming from.

As long as we are understood NOT to be limiting God's salvific actions to those acts but rather, as we would think of it, trusting His promise as regards them, then, yeah.

WE have a very physical religion. That is to say, a religion full of things one can take and eat or drink or touch or feel - oils and chrism (wonderfully scented oil), bread and wine, water for some of the principal sacraments -- even sex for matrimony (in most cases) as the sort of "Crown" or perfection of the sacrament (we view it as a sacrament). Yep, lots o' STUFF! Holy Water, Rosaries, medals, pictures, sculpture, "smells and bells" — Guilty as charged AND reveling in it! This accounts for the ways some old Catholic church buildings have a certain aura of grandmother's attic about them, I'd guess.

Verbum caro factus est; και ο λογοσ σαρξ εγενετο, and the Word became flesh and pitched His tents among us, and we beheld His glory, gory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

The Golry was truly, even "factually" there, even though it was only beheld as what it truly was by those to whom the Spirit, by the grace of God, gave the seeing of it.

But even then, when He walked among us, a woman was healed by the touching of only His garment - a garment which was just a garment in itself, but which by contact or proximity with God the Son of God, became something the touching of which could heal a chronic and distressing (and ritually polluting) infirmity.

So, yep. Stuff. Common stuff made uncommon by the grace and action of God. We're all over stuff and its very stuff-ness. And just as you, FK, are more you than ever since you have offered yourself to God and have died and risen (and will die and rise, and are dying and rising) in Him, so water is especially watery once blessed, and when Fr. Dominic blessed my new motorcycle, the hiss of the water as it hit the hot muffler was especially glorious.

But then, I'm easily amused.