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I can’t help thinking that having all of the lay people as extraordinary ministers contributes to the misunderstanding of the Eucharist.
I understand the need to have lay people to take the Eucharist to those who cannot come to Mass, but I really get sick of seeing a slew of people up on the altar, and, whenever possible, I get into the line for the priest.
Because the article mentions Protestant beliefs, the “Cath/Ortho Caucus” label will be removed.
I guess not! ;-)
Not to worry. The extraneous text has now been removed.
It will take me a second or third reading to fully digest this author’s statements but one thing that jumped out at me was the following:
“Catholics gather on weekends to celebrate the remembering.”
That is, in my humble opinion, altogether incorrect. This “error” is widely prevalent and it is altogether wrong.
The celebration of the Mass is not a remembrance and the Eucharist isn’t about a “replay” of the Last Supper.
In a sense, the Mass, at the beginning is a ritual set-up designed as a vehicle to actualize the Eucharistic ceremony. The beginnings of the mass, the prayers, the recitation of solemn scripture is to set the stage, as it were, but more importantly, it is to convey the participants, i.e., both the clergy and laity in attendance to a spiritual place where they are made receptive to the miracle of the Eucharistic presence.
The actual exercise of the Eucharistic ceremony is a process of actualization wherein the “celebrant” the Priest, actively invokes the “presence” of Christ in the specie of the Host and Wine through the process of Transfiguration wherein the “substance” of the wafer and wine are infused with the substance of Christ’s flesh and blood.................IN PRESENT TIME!
In this manner, participants are made one with the Passover sacrifice of the Lamb of God at the SAME INSTANT IN TIME that the original Sacrifice was made!
That Sacrifice is not a “was”; its not a past event. It’s brought forward into the participants time such that the participants in the Eucharist are made one with the Sacrifice through the eons of time.
Put another way...........Christ isn’t a “was”. He is an “IS”. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end; except that through the Eucharist.......there isn’t any “end” until His Second Coming. He is the Omega only in the sense that he is the “ultimate” Person hood of the Trinity.
As our Catechism teaches us, through the process of the Eucharist we are, spiritually, (which means “really”) made present at the Last Supper, the Agony in the Garden, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection! In essence, what this means is that Eucharist is Jesus on-going, everlasting triumph over the lord of this world, Satan. He brings his act of Redemption forward through the ages as marked by “temporal” time, (which is really Satan’s invention), to our extant existence as children of God, created in his Image.....not our arms and legs, etc., but rather.......our “Soul Stuff” which doesn’t experience time as marked by our clocks, watches, calendars.
I literally weep at the fact that I don’t have the intellectual prowess nor the vocabulary to properly explain this phenomenon. Jesus came to save our Souls. In a very real sense, we are of a dual nature. Our bodies are subject to the inexorable forces of entropy. Our bodies age and die. Our Souls are eternal....if we elect to participate in the eternal. Jesus was a genuine “Fisherman”. He came to fish our Souls out of this corruptible world existence into the Eternal.
In a strange but miraculous way, this plays into and when experienced, explains Jesus emphasis on Love. Love of God, Love of our neighbors (or “others”), Love of Jesus. Love is a “FORCE” which transcends time and space just as Jesus transcended time and space and just as the Eucharist operates to carry participants backward/forward through time and space.
Maybe a better mechanism to understand this is to read Benedict’s book, “God is Near Us”. That can be found at:
http://www.amazon.com/God-Near-Us-Eucharist-Heart/dp/0898709628/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395364420&sr=1-1&keywords=God+is+Near+Us
Love in Jesus, Joseph and Mary,
Rich