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To: editor-surveyor

I’m not sure what your position regarding the Eucharist is, but I detect hostility to the constant Tradition of Christ’s Church. If you will not listen to the Church...

From St. Paul through to the early Church Fathers to today, Catholics have seen the Eucharist the same way.

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Paul Confirms This

Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Cor. 10:16). So when we receive Communion, we actually participate in the body and blood of Christ, not just eat symbols of them. Paul also said, “Therefore whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. . . . For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself” (1 Cor. 11:27, 29). “To answer for the body and blood” of someone meant to be guilty of a crime as serious as homicide. How could eating mere bread and wine “unworthily” be so serious? Paul’s comment makes sense only if the bread and wine became the real body and blood of Christ. 
 
What Did the First Christians Say?

Anti-Catholics also claim the early Church took this chapter symbolically. Is that so? Let’s see what some early Christians thought, keeping in mind that we can learn much about how Scripture should be interpreted by examining the writings of early Christians. 

Ignatius of Antioch, who had been a disciple of the apostle John and who wrote a letter to the Smyrnaeans about A.D. 110, said, referring to “those who hold heterodox opinions,” that “they abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in his goodness, raised up again” (6:2, 7:1). 

Forty years later, Justin Martyr, wrote, “Not as common bread or common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nourished, . . . is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus” (First Apology 66:1–20). 

Origen, in a homily written about A.D. 244, attested to belief in the Real Presence. “I wish to admonish you with examples from your religion. You are accustomed to take part in the divine mysteries, so you know how, when you have received the Body of the Lord, you reverently exercise every care lest a particle of it fall and lest anything of the consecrated gift perish. You account yourselves guilty, and rightly do you so believe, if any of it be lost through negligence” (Homilies on Exodus 13:3). 

Cyril of Jerusalem, in a catechetical lecture presented in the mid-300s, said, “Do not, therefore, regard the bread and wine as simply that, for they are, according to the Master’s declaration, the body and blood of Christ. Even though the senses suggest to you the other, let faith make you firm. Do not judge in this matter by taste, but be fully assured by faith, not doubting that you have been deemed worthy 
of the body and blood of Christ” (Catechetical Discourses: Mystagogic 4:22:9). 

http://www.catholic.com/tracts/christ-in-the-eucharist


188 posted on 03/29/2012 4:29:29 AM PDT by St_Thomas_Aquinas (Viva Christo Rey)
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To: St_Thomas_Aquinas

What you insist on calling “the church” is a herd of very lost men that have absolutely no knowledge, nor relationship with Jesus Christ.

Your “church” was created in the 4th century by the pharisees that had been displaced from Israel by the Roman army in 70 AD. That is why said “church” defies God’s word, and follows man made “traditions” as the pharisees always have.

The worship of Ishtar in the guise of Mary is another characteristic of the pharisees of Judea.
.


195 posted on 03/29/2012 10:15:57 AM PDT by editor-surveyor (No Federal Sales Tax - No Way!)
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