Replies

John 10:9
I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.

Which Catholic dogma comes from this verse? Or how about this one:

John 15:5
I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

The fact is, we are told how the local church is to observe the Lord’s Supper in I Corinthians 11 and Luke 22.

Luk 22:19
And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.

1Co 11:24-26
(24) And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
(25) After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.
(26) For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.

Very clearly, the Lord’s Supper is to bring us into remembrance. That is what the very scriptures say. Like it says in verse 26, “ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.” It is a picture of his death, and also to bring us into remembrance that He is coming back for his own.

The Catholics have this completely wrong and in fact break scripture by believing they are constantly sacrificing Christ in the Eucharist. Please compare these verses to Catholic tradition.

Heb 10:12-14
(12) But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;
(13) From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.
(14) For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.

I am very sorry to tell you so, but I’ll easily take what the scriptures have clearly put forth over the quotes of the commentators of that same scripture.

Y’all are simply not bring Christ down every eucharist to eat his body and blood. He is sitting on the right hand of the Father, waiting for the time of his return as the conquering Christ.

Nonsense. Look at those verses you cited and compare them to John 6 again. If you have a Greek NT even better. In John 6, Christ says “my flesh is true (Gr. alethes) food, my blood is true (Gr. alethes) drink.”

That’s a very specific Greek word there. Alethes means “true, genuine, real” as it refers to the substance of a thing. Does Christ say anything similar in John 10 about the door? No He does not. Does He say anything similar in John 15 about the vine? Well, that passage is interesting, because He does say “I am the true vine”. BUT note that it’s a slightly different Greek adjective there. Not alethes but alethine....not true according to substance but rather true according to analogy.

Plus of course, the contexts of the passages are totally different. Do you see people reacting in shock and horror to the specific sayings “I am the door” or “I am the vine”? No evidence of that in the Bible. His audience apparently took those figuratively. But they most certainly did NOT take John 6 figuratively—because He didn’t give them that option. He hammered the point over and over and refused to back down even when they questioned Him on it.

Very clearly, the Lord’s Supper is to bring us into remembrance.

This is the standard Protestant response, if I may -- not to take anything away from it.

The problem is that Protestants typically do not appreciate--per Scripture--that the bread and wine is a sacrifice. The sacrificial nature of the Mass is what seems to be missed. But that is the whole point! That is the whole meaning of salvation history!

David Currie, in Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic points out a passage that has stumped the Evangelicals:

Zech. 14:20, 21:
On that day...all who come to sacrifice will take some of the pots and cook in them..

The problem is this: If Jesus' sacrifice is final and complete, no sacrifices should be needed in Jerusalem after the death and Resurrection of Jesus. Right? Yet there is the verse, plain as day, for which there is "no plausible Evangelical explanation," says Curie (p. 45).

If priesthood is no longer needed here on earth, because the need for sacrifices have ended, as Evangelicals argue, then Zechariah would not contain that verse. And yet there it is. The Evangelical perspective does not have an answer. But the Catholic Church does have a Scripture-based answer to that problem.

The answer is simple: Zechariah is referring to the Eucharist! Yes, the Eucharist is foretold in the Old Testament.

Karl Keating, in Catholicism and Fundamentalism, pulls out another problematic verse for Protestants:

Psalm 110:4:
The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: 'You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.

The very meaning of "priest" is one who offers a sacrifice. And who is this Melchizedek character? He is from Genesis 14:18 -- a priest encountered by Abraham. And what does he offer Abraham? Bread and wine!

Now when did Jesus offer bread and wine as a sacrifice? Obviously, the Last Supper. The logical conclusion: the Last Supper is instituted by Christ as a sacrifice. This is what the Catholics celebrate during the Mass, which is why it is called "The Sacrifice of the Mass."

Within this sacrificial Biblical context, your question can be addressed.

In 1 Corinthians 11:24-25, indeed, Jesus says during the Last Supper, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." But "remembrance" as it is used here does not have quite the meaning you import into it, when understood in context.

In the Greek, this word for "remembrance" has a special connotation. It is used only one other time in the New Testament, in Hebrews 1:3. In this verse, the remembrance is an act of carrying out a sacrifice. "Those sacrifices are an annual reminder [remembrance] of sins." In the OT, the word is only used twice. Each time the word is used it is in reference to a sacrifice! In Lev. 24:7, "Put some incense as a memorial..to be an offering," and in Nb 10:10, "Sound the trumpets over your burn offerings and fellowship offerings, and they will be a memorial for you."

And so, understood in the context of the entire Scriptures as a whole, we can see that this word for "remembrance" is not just about thinking about the past and bringing it to mind. The term has strong sacrificial overtones, and has to do with remembering an event by participating in a sacrifice.

The same idea of remembrance, by the way, can be found in pagan cultures. In Haitian Voodoo, for example, the priest sacrifices an animal, or plants, to the ancestors, in order to remember them. If the ancestor is not remembered with a sacrifice, they are haunted by the ghost of the ancestor who brings bad luck. This notion of remembering via sacrifice is quite common throughout the world, across cultures, and anticipates but falls short of the one true sacrifice of Christ. Christ's sacrifice replaces the necessity of pagan sacrifices, as much as it replaces the sacrifices of the monotheistic Jews.

At Mass, Christ is remembered through the sacrifice which is the Eucharist in which his real presence resides. In the sacrifice of the Mass, the bread is changed into the substance of Chirst's Body, and this occurs by way of a miracle of God. The appearance of the bread and wine remain with all their usual properties. The substance changes, but not the appearance.

Why this sacrifice? I will refer you, first, to the links to the articles by Scott Hahn, which you can find in a prior post of mine, above. The Lord sacrifices his only Son because no other sacrifice can repair the damage done by original sin in the Garden. And in Revelations, John tells us that Christ continues to persist in the form of the slain lamb, always and forever, a perpetual sacrifice -- a key aspect of Christ's role in the Trinity. And whenever a Mass occurs, that perpetual sacrifice is made manifest again on earth -- which, as in Revelations, is celebrated with joy, for this is the sacrifice that breaks the seal. The only sacrifice that could break the seal.

Of course this is all revealed in Scripture! But the testimony of the early Church Fathers validates it without a shadow of a doubt.

God bless.