Pope Francis holding the monstrance on Corpus Christi (May 30 in Rome)
Posted on 06/02/2013 11:49:33 AM PDT by NYer
On this Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, it’s good to remember the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas:
Almighty and Eternal God, behold I come to the sacrament of Your only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. As one sick I come to the Physician of life; unclean, to the Fountain of mercy; blind, to the Light of eternal splendor; poor and needy to the Lord of heaven and earth. Therefore, I beg of You, through Your infinite mercy and generosity, heal my weakness, wash my uncleanness, give light to my blindness, enrich my poverty, and clothe my nakedness. May I thus receive the Bread of Angels, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, with such reverence and humility, contrition and devotion, purity and faith, purpose and intention, as shall aid my soul’s salvation.
This is the humble attitude with which we should both enter the church building (because the Blessed Sacrament is reserved there) and approach the Blessed Sacrament at Holy Communion.
The reason for our humility is that the glorified and risen Lord is present here in the Bread of Angels. The Eucharist is not a manmade symbol for an absent reality, a mere reminder of times past.
Rather, as Saint Thomas prayed in his Prayer after Communion: “I thank You, Lord, Almighty Father, Everlasting God, for having been pleased, through no merit of mine, but of Your great mercy alone, to feed me, a sinner, and Your unworthy servant, with the precious Body and Blood of Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Blessed Eucharist is the Body and Blood of the Son of God. It is the only thing worthy of the worship that is given to God alone for that very reason.
How different would the attitude be in our churches if Christ’s Real Presence were taken seriously? Rather than trying to make our churches like movie houses or secular meeting spaces or – worse – copying other religions, perhaps we could make them houses of the Blessed Sacrament, oases of the guaranteed presence of Christ in a secular world.
Pope Francis holding the monstrance on Corpus Christi (May 30 in Rome)
The celebration of the Eucharist is not a closed, feel-good moment, private to our parish or even to our family. Eucharistic Prayer I says very clearly: “by the hands of your holy angel this offering may be born to your altar in heaven in the sight of your divine majesty so as we receive communion at this altar. . .we may be filled with every grace and blessing.” We join the liturgy of Heaven that showers its grace upon earth.
We need to be personally close to Christ for our spiritual survival, but this is not at all an individualistic concept. As John Paul II exhorted us: “The Church and the world have a great need for Eucharistic worship. Jesus awaits us in this sacrament of love. Let us not refuse the time to go to meet him in adoration, in contemplation full of faith and open to make amends for the serious offenses and crimes of the world.”
So alongside our reaching for an ever deeper appreciation and awe for the Body and Blood of Christ – which is already countercultural in our confused time – we have to learn something about the effects of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.
One of them is that “our unity is the fruit of Calvary, and results from the Mass’s application to us of the fruits of the Passion, with a view to our final redemption.”(Henri de Lubac) So being Christian depends on our actually being open to the mystery at the heart of our redemption, the life, death and resurrection of Christ. In fact, our whole approach to the Body and Blood of Christ will be a good indicator of whether we even grasp the central mystery of our faith in love.
Relearning our faith so that it is not individualized (the Protestant position), but rather something that, as Christ’s own Church, joins us more deeply to Christ and each other is predicated on our approaching the Blessed Sacrament as Thomas Aquinas did. The individualism that we have been schooled in for years – and that comes to us in TV shows, in the speeches of politicians, in how we conceive of school and work – will take serious effort to overcome.
It represents a grave distortion of the social way of life for which we were created. Vatican II taught the simple truth that: “God, Who has fatherly concern for everyone, has willed that all men should constitute one family and treat one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
We cannot expect to steep ourselves in the individualism of the culture and then regard our subsequent attitudes as Catholic. These are two irreconcilable realities. And to think otherwise is to imagine that there is no particular truth in Catholicism.
To deny the Church as the Body of Christ is to deny who Jesus Christ is, the one who is God incarnate and present among us in a special way, as we celebrate today.
In 1 Cor. 11:26, Paul refers to the bread as ... “bread.”
If calling it “bread” is good enough for the Apostle Paul, it’s good enough for me. Bread.
This is that verse from the Douay-Rheims 1899 version:
“For as often as you shall eat this bread, and drink the chalice, you shall shew the death of the Lord, until he come.”
Do you deny that Paul used the phrase “eat this BREAD”?
Bread expresses the properties and accidents of the Eucharist, not the substance of it.
Peace be to you
Gordon is the man that discovered where all the Hebrew manuscripts are. You are right that he is a Jew and an expert on Torah, but he has become quite interested in the real Yeshua, and has even written a book “The Greek Jesus Vs. the Hebrew Yeshua” or somethi8ng close to that, that unravels all of the contradictions in the Greek translation, such as in Matthew 23 where the Greek has Yeshua saying both to do and not to do as the pharisees.
“St. Augustine speaks (or appears to speak) of the Eucharist as merely symbolic, he is actually teaching that it is not meant to be thought of as actual, human flesh or blood. That is, he is actually teaching a primitive form of transubstaintiation himself.”
Notice that of all the claims you made in your post, you didn’t actually try to demonstrate them. It is merely a religious belief on your part that the scripture teaches Romanism, or that Augustine must secretly be kidding, and that everyone in history believed in what Rome invented roughly a thousand years later. This is why no Catholic will actually take the time to analyze the scripture, or in this case, make a logical argument from any material at all.
It is simply a circular belief system that starts off with the assumption that they are correct because some musty old men said so, and makes arguments that consist of saying “we are correct because we say so.” And, when challenged say, “despite that, we are correct.” And when disproved say, “We’ll pray for you.”
It’s a sad thing to be a member of the RCC.
“Scripture also says the Eucharist is His flesh. He said it Himself: This is my body.
See how that works?”
Technically, if transubstantiation is true, then it can either be bread or flesh, or blood or wine. It cannot be all of the above, since the Roman position is that it merely has the “form” of these things, but is actually, in “substance,” the body and blood of Christ. So when Christ says, after stating “this is my blood,” that He won’t drink again of the “fruit of the vine” until He is together again with all of the Apostles in His Father’s Kingdom, this is incompatible with the Roman view. First, the idea that Christ is drinking His own blood. And, second, that there was any wine at all, since all of it was supposed to have already been transformed into blood.
You’re right I didn’t try to “demonstrate” what I claimed to you because when others have before (by my reckoning at least) you have rejected the proof. So why waste the time?
Which is why I said what I did in my last post (#172). I’m curious, did you read it in its entirety and contemplate what I meant?
The Karaite Jews are essentially "Sola Scripture" claiming only the Torah is Scripture. Gordon has never claimed that he has examined or heard of a 2000 year old version of the Gospels or any of the Letters, he only makes an opinion that the Hebrew versions he has observed were via a series of "transmissions', not translations. It makes no more sense than the other Sola stuff we see posted here daily.
Peace be with you
“You’re right I didn’t try to “demonstrate” what I claimed to you because when others have before (by my reckoning at least)”
Other people only did exactly what you did. Which was assert that they were correct, and then huff and puff and still failed to blow the house down.
“he was referring to the Septuagint with the deuterocanonicals.”
Actually, only the Books of Moses were translated by the Jews and made up the LXX originally (hence the name, LXX, “the seventy”). At least, so goes the legend, and that’s all it really is. No one knows when the rest of the Old Testament was translated into Greek, or by who, or by whose authority. The same goes for the Apocrypha, some of which was originally written in Greek in the first place, and some of which were translated, and retranslated, multiple times. So, there’s no actual evidence that he actually believed the apocrypha were inspired, since the Jews never considered them inspired in the first place due to the failure in the succession of the Prophets.
Plus, your own religion doesn’t believe the Apocrypha are real anyway. Here are RCC sources on the faux history of Judith:
From the Vatican website introduction to Judith:
“Any attempt to read the book directly against the backdrop of Jewish history in relation to the empires of the ancient world is bound to fail. The story was written as a pious reflection on the meaning of the yearly Passover observance. It draws its inspiration from the Exodus narrative (especially Exodus 14:31) and from the texts of Isaiah and the Psalms portraying the special intervention of God for the preservation of Jerusalem. The theme of God’s hand as the agent of this providential activity, reflected of old in the hand of Moses and now in the hand of Judith, is again exemplified at a later time in Jewish synagogue art. God’s hand reaching down from heaven appears as part of the scene at Dura-Europos (before A.D. 256) in paintings of the Exodus, of the sacrifice of Isaac (Gen 22), and of Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones (Eze 37).”
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PCP.HTM
And another, also official Catholic source:
“Judith is a dramatic fictional narrative...” “Because Judith is fiction replete with historical and geographical inaccuracies, it is difficult to date its composition.” (New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Nihil Obstat: Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm., Imprimatur: Reverend William J. Kane, Vicar General, Diocese of Washington)
So you basically want us to believe that Paul considered Judith “inspired scripture,” even when your religion denies that it is even true.
This was very well written. Thanks for sharing.
I don't know why you are referring to yourself in the plural, but I've already explained that what you choose to believe has absolutely no relevance and is completely inconsequential. I've read and studied the subject and your Fractured Fairy Tales versions of it doesn't even make for a good parody.
Thanks!
Christ was not referring to vinegar and gall, otherwise He contradicts Himself. He said that the blood of the covenant, the wine which He held in his hand, He would not drink it again until He was gathered again with the Apostles in His Father’s Kingdom, not on the cross.
Mat 26:27-29 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; (28) For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. (29) But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.
“I’ve read and studied the subject”
If you would have studied it, you would not continue to assert things that have been refuted dozens of times. I’m quite positive you don’t know anything about anything, since you always implode like this after half of everything you say, at least when I’m around.
Incorrect. For example, when NYer posted quotes from St. Augustine showing he believed in the same Catholic teaching as today, you claimed they were out of context and then posted quotes from the Saint you claimed proved your claim.
The thing is, they didn't. So if anyone is huffing and puffing, to me its you. Af any rate, I will rest on the objectivity and intellectual honesty of any lurker to decide for themselves who made the better case. I'm sure enough in my faith to do that.
“Incorrect. For example, when NYer posted quotes from St. Augustine showing he believed in the same Catholic teaching as today, you claimed they were out of context and then posted quotes from the Saint you claimed proved your claim.”
They did prove my claim. That’s why, even after 3 or 4 challenges of me saying that you don’t want to prove it, you still are refusing to address any of the specifics of the quotes and my analysis of them.
This is the RCC’s MO. Yet another lesson, after proving my previous arguments, to establish for the lurker the false and empty confidence of Catholic believers.
Again you err. "Tetelestai" means it is consummated and is referring to the fourth cup, the cup of consummation from the Passover meal and forever linking the Passover meal to the Mass.
Peace be with you
Your arguments have been proven wrong by others. The only thing you have proven is how maleducated some anti-Catholics can be.
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