Posted on 02/13/2021 8:18:22 AM PST by HypatiaTaught
Good morning my conservative FRiends.
I am reaching out to hopefully get an answer to my lifelong question of a central belief in the Christian faith, especially the Roman Catholic faith.
Background: I grew up in a very Roman Catholic family. I am number 10 of 13 children, 8 boys, 5 girls. Mom also had 2 miscarriages which in truth, she became pregnant with 10 boys rather than the 8. Mom had 15 pregnancies in 17 years.
We went to Mass every Sunday and all the holy days. Mom actually taught Catechism to the community and was a very loving soul.
My question since the age of eight and remains 50 years later, why do we have the belief of actually having to eat the body of Jesus Christ?
I am a very logical person, but this concept of consuming the flesh of God's son to obtain salvation simply doesn't make sense. I get that he died for our sins and was sacrificed. I know the history of sacrifices 2000 years ago. Tribes sacrificed lambs, goats and other livestock. But why the eating of his body or any human body? We don't eat humans. I don't even eat animals any more, for digestive purposes. Maybe I am the only one who finds this tenant extremely disturbing.
Wrong. It is not merely symbolic. The transformation of literal bread and literal wine into the body and blood of Christ, or transubstantiation, is a miraculous occurrence. For the Roman Catholic, to deny the transformation is to deny the miraculous, and to place limitations on the power of God. To “consume” the body of Christ is to become a part of the body of Christ spiritually.
You comment: “But, no communion service at protestant churches I’ve engaged in had implied that the congregation is eating Jesus’ body. It is simply a way of remembering the suffering Jesus went through on the cross.”
This is one of the heresies that protestants believe that rejects some of the teachings of Jesus and instead accepts man made protestant beliefs.
It becomes part of the believer
The Sacrament is a mystery. “Lord I believe, help Thou my unbelief.”
Of course you can.
Sorry, NO you can not.
If logic could be applied to God, Eve wouldn't have gotten Adam kicked out of the Garden of Eden.
If you don't believe in the Bible, then you don't believe in The God as taught by the Catholic Church.
That's your choice, but you cannot use logic and reason to prove the existence of God, otherwise it would have been done over a thousand years ago.
Read John 6. Then read it again. And again. And again. And ...
Until you comprehend the words from the Word Incarnate.
tenant
[ˈtenənt]
NOUN
a person who occupies land or property rented from a landlord.
synonyms:
occupant · resident · inhabitant · leaseholder · lessee · renter · holder · addressee · lodger · boarder · occupier · sitting tenant · roomer · dweller · feodary
tenet
[ˈtenət]
NOUN
a principle or belief, especially one of the main principles of a religion or philosophy.
“the tenets of classical liberalism”
synonyms:
principle · belief · doctrine · precept · creed · credo · article of faith · dogma · canon · rule · theory · component of a theory · thesis · conviction · persuasion · idea · view · opinion · position · hypothesis · postulation · presumption · ideology · code of belief · teaching(s)
Words mean things.
As for the Eucharist, if you cannot understand the plain explanation in John 6, I don’t know how much simpler an explanation can get.
That's some strange logic. How do you figure? Do you have a link to a scripture which verifies this? Or, is it something you've either heard, or concluded on your own?
If you don't believe in the Bible, then you don't believe in The God as taught by the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church adds just as much leaven into their teaching/beliefs as other Christian and Jewish religions. You don't need to be affiliated with either to believe in God, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. Everything you need is in the unleavened Word of God. IMO, the leavened teachings of organized religions often confuse the truth of God's word.
You do touch on something in your statement, whether you realized it or not:
"- believe in the Bible -".
But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Isaiah 46:10 "I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come."
We've seen this fulfilled throughout the ages, and we're seeing it being fulfilled today. One must logically conclude God is real. Only a Divine being can make known our future.
There is much more most don't know about. Including prophecies fulfilled exactly, in timing and detail, that's almost impossible to believe. And as you delve into these, learning more about them, it becomes very obvious a Divine hand is as work.
CCC 35 Man's faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith. The proofs of God's existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.
CCC 159 Faith and science: "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth." "Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are."
Ah... There is the rub, is it not... “Someone is asking a legitimate spiritual question”
No, No they are not asking a ‘legitimate spiritual question’.
It is not a question of whether we believe or not, Jesus does this and He Taught this as well as the Holy Spirit sent to the First Apostle/Bishops ‘to consecrate the Church in Truth and to lead Her into All Truth’ - it is as a Divine Aspect of the “all the Truth’ which is to be Taught to the nations until Jesus returns - cf. Saint John’s Gospel chps. 15-18 on why the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit and the last lines of the final paragraph of Saint Matthew’s Gospel... Remember as the Bible witnesses in Acts, the disciples ‘devoted themselves to the Teaching of the Apostles and the Transubstantiation of the Breaking of the Bread who is Christ Jesus the Passsover-Paschal Lamb Who is Truly eaten and drank’ so ‘that His little ones may have Eternal Life and have it to the Full’....
...recall satan proffers the forbidden fruit that we can discover the Truth for our self, but no, God is the Truth and Giver/Revealer of Truth and man is measure by God and His Truth, for His Ways and Thoughts are not ours, but ours must be His; therefore we rejoice in this mystery of Changing water to wine at Cana and even more so Changing wine into Himself at the New Cana-Calvary Wedding Feast! Alleluia!!!
His Truth at the center or middle of our heart as His New Garden Paradise is our Matrimonial Feast or Banquet!! - ‘is it really TRUE that the Lord says if you eat you will die’, satan proffers; setting aside the Divine Feast of Truth, man, male and female, dies. In the New Adam and New Eve, Christ and Mary, the Truth of the Father’s Will is eaten and drank in the Loving Obedience of Man’s being Redeemed and Reconciled into the New Paschal Covenant Matrimonial Life and Feast.
His Paschal Saving Life, Death and Resurrection has in Truth become the Tree of Life and of the Knowledge of Good and evil - this is what the Transubstantiation Is: the Paschal-Passover Covenant of Jesus and His Passion and Death, Resurrection and Ascension, this is what we eat and drink sacramentally. To not have this Transubstantiation Pasch is to not “do this in Memorial of Me” - which, as for the Jews in their Passover Lamb Covenant and the redemption and salvation it brought, makes that saving act and mystery present when it is celebrate - the same happens in the New Passover Lamb Covenant Mass - the Memorial or Christ in His Saving Life, Death and Resurrection is made Present. The “Memorial” is in the Old and New Paschal Liturgical Covenant not something done and over, dead, history, it is by God’s merciful love made present each time we ‘Do this [Transubstantiation Covenant] Memorial of Him’.
He sent us the Holy Spirit that His Truth will always be ours; He has not hidden the Truth, His Truth is ours to receive or reject when the Holy Spirit Teaches IT in and through the Apostles and those they impose Hands on/Ordain in and with the Holy Spirit (Lk 10:16), but our free will then shows whether we are His disciples or the adversary’s goats - the first goats were part of His 72 disciples who had been with Him from the beginning as they walked away from the Gift and Mystery of the Paschal-Passover Transubstantiation Lamb of God as the Truth to Hard to be true, loved and believed....blessings and graces and mercies!!
When the majority of your post is correcting an error in my word selection, it is a 100% proof you have nothing to add to the discussion.
When an entire post merely contradicts rather than debates another there is no conversation, only talking past one another.
Words still mean things. As many others have tried to explain, re-read John 6 until you understand the reasons and meaning of the Eucharist.
This very morning I quite coincidentally spent time considering the amount of meaning which can be found in a single sentence of scripture. Sometimes more even than in a pamphlet inspired by man.
Says who? You? When did you become the sole arbiter of what is and what isn’t legitimate? Are you claiming to be God?
That the Catholic church named a communist as its Pope is all one needs to need about it.
It becomes perverted when if you don't put what Jesus said in the proper context and make it out to be the equivalent of cannibalism. It's turns unbelievers off.
Jesus said He is the bread of life. So, "eating" his body is reference to that, not cannibalism.
How do you labor for the food that endures to eternal life? Believe in me! (John 6:27, 29) “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me [in faith] shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35)
Certainly, and which is confirmed in the rest of Scripture, in which nowhere is spiritual life obtained by literally consuming anything physical.
And instead, spiritual life is obtained by believing the gospel message, by believing in the person of Christ - as is esp. affirmed by John - while believers "live by" Christ the same way Christ lived by the Father. For His words they "are spirit and are life." (Jn. 6:63)
As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. (John 6:57) Which was by every word that come from God (Mt. 4:4) and thus doing His will was the Lord's "meat." (Jn. 4:34)
For it is by believing the gospel that souls are regenerated, (Acts 15:7-9; Eph. 1:13) and it is the word of God that is described as spiritual food, by which believers are nourished (1Tim. 4:6) and built up (Acts 20:32) by the hearing of it. Thus the preaching of the word, which is called "milk" (1Cor. 3:2; 1Pt. 1:22) and "meat" (Heb. 5:12,14) to feed the flock (Acts 20:28) is the primary active function of pastors. (2Tim. 4:2)
Nowhere in Acts through Revelation, which best shows how the NT church understood the gospels, is the Lord's supper set forth as means of obtaining spiritual life, nor is conducting it shown or taught as being a unique function of pastors, let alone a separate class of sacerdotal Catholic priests, offering up the "Mass" as a sacrifice for sins.
Read my page here The Lord's Supper: metaphorical commemoration or the consumption of the metaphysical "real" body and blood of the Lord Jesus? which, by the grace of God, deals extensively with what the Catholic church teaches versus what the NT church believed.
How do you labor for the food that endures to eternal life? Believe in me! (John 6:27, 29) “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me [in faith] shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35) “
“But why can’t we remember him without EATING him.”
That has been answered several times. When Communion is held, just decline to join in.
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