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.
I'm sure Laplace Transforms are "stupid" to those who lack the education or capacity to understand them, but without them you would not have a computer or internet. If you do not possess or understand an elementary knowledge of philosophy you can neither understand nor explain transubstantiation.
When one looks at the bread the priest uses in the Sacrament it is round, white, flat and has a specific texture. The whiteness is not the bread, it is simply a quality the bread has. The roundness is not the bread, nor is the texture or flatness. There is something there that has the qualities, properties, and attributes that philosophers call accidents. Whiteness, roundness, flatness we see. Texture is something we feel. There are other properties like smell and taste. There are many other properties discoverable only by scientific instrumentation. It is possible that other objects share the same whiteness, roundness, flatness that are not bread. No single sense can perceive all the properties. It is important to note that the senses perceive the accidents only the mind can aggregate them to discover the substance.
As was the case with the incarnate Jesus, all of the human properties were present, but only faith could reveal His divine substance. Throughout His ministry He often performed miracles, observable by human senses to give evidence of his Divinity but the human senses of the witnesses could only observe the accidents of the properties. In the case of the Eucharist we see with faith what we cannot experience with our senses. With faith we are given a new power of the intellect. In faith, by the revelation of Christ we know that the substance has changed. Like the miracles and signs offered by Jesus we continue to experience Eucharistic miracles as continued evidence such as the Miracle of Lanciano.
Note also that were we to observe the bread turning into a chunk of flesh the phenomenon would be called transmutation instead of transubstantiation.
Peace be with you
God calls us to unity. Some have another agenda.
Peace be with you
“...the Eucharist found in Catholic Churches at the Holy Mass is, in fact, the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, really and truly present.”
More holy than when we celebrate communion, as in the Eucharist, at home, just my wife and I, without benefit of RC clergy? We celebrate with the body and blood of Jesus...Jesus said very simply, “This is my body...” “This is my blood...”
Now I see there''s a third response:
“More holy than when we celebrate communion, as in the Eucharist, at home, just my wife and I, without benefit of RC clergy? We celebrate with the body and blood of Jesus...Jesus said very simply, “This is my body...” “This is my blood...””
Yours is MUCH holier than theirs. Theirs is to save themselves through ritual. Yours is as Christ intended.
That is indeed holy and commendable, but symbolic. The Real Presence can only instituted by an ordained priest.
Peace be with you
“And what makes you think Jesus ate these consecrated elements? “
It says he won’t drink “no more” of the fruit of the vine (His blood):
Mar 14:24-25 And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many. (25) Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God.
Apparently he intends to drink it in the Kingdom of God too. His own blood!
By the way... is the cup of the fruit of the vine... HIS BLOOD.. or is it “the fruit of the vine?”
Repost. My last one had an unnecessary “won’t” that undid my intended meaning:
It says he’ll drink “no more” of the fruit of the vine (His blood):
Mar 14:24-25 And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many. (25) Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God.
Apparently he intends to drink it in the Kingdom of God too. His own blood!
By the way... is the cup of the fruit of the vine... HIS BLOOD.. or is it “the fruit of the vine?”
Jesus was referring to the fourth cup, the cup of consummation which he drank from a sponge of Calvary.
Peace be with you
Are you an ordained priest?
If not, I don’t believe you have the faculties given to you by a Bishop at an ordination to consecrate the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.
I don't know of any church or religious group which teaches this. This is known as a Straw Man argument: set up some ridiculous statement which the other person didn't say, and then knock it down.
Such an argumentative volley actually misses its target, since nobody who actually believes in Christ's Real Presence thinks it implies what you say. Why do you waste the electrons?
Even if I shared your unbelief, I would hesitate before I published such mockery. The Eucharist is the one sacrament which comes with both a blessing and an explicit curse. St. Paul says that if you receive without discerning the Body, you bring condemnation on yourself. And:
2 Corinthians 11:27
"Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord." (Geneva Bible, 1599)
“The Real Presence can only instituted by an ordained priest.”
Pure hokey...No where in God’s Word does it teach that.
He is with us. We know it. He speaks to us. We know His voice. He has assured us.
And btw, Luke says that in the early church,
“And they persevered in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles, in breaking of bread and prayers.” (Acts 2:42)
I submit that ‘breaking of bread’ is communion, the Eucharist...
“Jesus was referring to the fourth cup, the cup of consummation which he drank from a sponge of Calvary.”
The ‘drink’ during His crucifixion was vinegar mingled with gall, not the “fruit of the vine”:
Mat 27:34 They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.
The cup he was referencing at the Lord’s Supper was the cup filled with wine which He declared was the cup of the covenant and His blood:
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.
Repost, I missed a word:
The ‘drink’ during His crucifixion was vinegar mingled with gall, not the “fruit of the vine” he referenced at the Last Supper, which was wine proper:
Mat 27:34 They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.
The cup he was referencing at the Lord’s Supper was the cup filled with wine which He declared was the cup of the covenant and His blood:
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.
In the early Church the apostles would go to synagogue on Saurday and then have Eucharist on Sunday. They had been ordained to do so by Jesus’ words: “Do this in remembrance of me.” They had also received the grace of the Holy Spirit on Resurrection morning when Jesus breathed on them saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgen them; whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.”
But do what in remembrance of Him? Certainly, considering His insistent and relentlessly explicit words in John 6, He means, eat and drink Communion in His true Body and Blood. (Which makes sense: we can both receive HIM really and, as well, remember Him).
Perhaps you think He means some nostalgic play-acting like the Civil War re-enactors: going through the motions but with no effect. Saying the historic words but shooting blanks.
“In the early Church the apostles would go to synagogue on Saurday and then have Eucharist on Sunday.”
Where did you figure that whopper out? Augustine celebrated the Eucharist everyday.
“I haven’t forgotten my promise. I had promised those of you who have just been baptized a sermon to explain the sacrament of the Lord’s table, which you can see right now, and which you shared in last night. You ought to know what you have received, what you are about to receive, what you ought to receive every day.” (Augustine, Sermon 227)
http://david.heitzman.net/sermons227-229a.html
Who says we’re only supposed to do it on Sunday? And where does it say that?
“But do what in remembrance of Him? Certainly, considering His insistent and relentlessly explicit words in John 6,”
This has already been refuted by several posts. See post #35 for my particular example. The Roman Catholic view contradicts the scripture.
We have been empowered by our Lord Jesus Christ to do that. God is no respector of persons, nor of man made religions. All religion is man made.
It was not vinegar, it was "oxos", a cheap and sour old wine mixed with water that was drunk by Roman soldiers.
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