Replies

53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.

So taking the Eucharist is both necessary and sufficient for salvation, correct?

when and if you have the opportunity, yes. a newly born infant has an excuse, what’s yours?

It think the first thing to get clear on is that this is not a magic pill or a magic potion. Jesus was not a magician,and we don't consider the Church to be a center of magic.

We are talking about a personal encounter with Jesus. And it seems that one is free to walk away from the relationship that of which that encounter is a part.

We've all 'encountered' people who from the very beginning showed little interest in actually knowing us. Assuming that there is some benefit in knowing me, such people may have met me, but they don't receive any benefit from it.

Many of us have also met people and at first the meeting was superficial, but something drew us back to them. And we found, after a while, that knowing them, growing closer to them, meant we knew more about ourselves as well as about them. And yet people walk away even from such deeper relationships. For some, intimacy is just too much work.

It's not a good analogy. But it does stress that to eat the bread as though taking a magic pill is to miss the point. Our gracious Lord may stay with us and draw us to a deeper relationship and appreciation. We should hope he does because I suspect many of us revert to a manipulative and childish state from time to time in our life with God.

I can't delineate all the ins and outs of predestination and election, but I can say with confidence that the way in Him and to Him will sooner or later require the dropping of every thought which resembles, "Hey! I'm a frequent communicant. So where's my eternal life already?"