Replies

I am descended from the Jews.

What - you're not a Kerry man?!!:)

What would have happened to your ancestors in Egypt if instead of sacrificing and eating the Paschal lamb, as God had told them to, they simply ate lamb-shaped waifers as a symbol or "mere memorial" of a lamb? Would they not have woken up the next day to find all the First Born slaughtered? The priests of Israel would have been wiped out like the priests of Egypt.

As this lamb was only a type and foreshadowing of the True Lamb of God, His only-begotten First Born, then how much more in the New Covenant should you be renewing your covenant with God by attending the sacrifice and eating the Lamb?

The rabbi's who wrote the targums new that in the age to come only the toda sacrifice would remain - you need this - its all in your family history - if you've already accepted the baptismal fulfilment of crossing the Red Sea, you also need to accept the Eucharistic fulfilment of the Passover lamb.

If you look to your own roots you will find that no covenant is sealed or renewed without oath (sacramentum/shebah) or sacrifice. The Jewish prophets were anticipating the time when it would be here:

Mal 1:11 "For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts."

The Old Covenant sacrifices are not just worthless they are taken up and fulfilled in the New Covenant sacrifice of Christ that is the heart of the Mass:

Heb 10:25 "Not forsaking our assembly (ecclesia), as some are accustomed; but comforting one another, and so much the more as you see the day approaching.
26 For if we sin wilfully after having the knowledge of the truth, there is now left no SACRIFICE for sins,"

The Catholic Church was founded by and on Jews who understood both the difference and the continuity of the seven covenants and the role of sacrifice in our relationship with God:

Heb 13:9 "Be not led away with various and strange doctrines. For it is best that the heart be established with grace, not with meats; which have not profited those that walk in them.
10 We have an ALTAR, whereof they have no power to eat who serve the tabernacle."

It was for the Jews that Christ came first - your rightful place as God's first born is at the top of the table at the Wedding Banquet of the Lamb - you won't find it even understood never mind going on in any protestant church.

Is a Kerry man an Irishman? I guess I'm not then. I liked your post T and I will try to answer but I am quite tired at the moment.

As aChristian, I know that the lamb symbolizes Jesus. Also what a lot of you perhaps do not know, is that the lamb itself was the Egyptian symbol for their God. For the Jews to kill it and eat it in the midst of them was a great insult to them. They bought it on the tenth of the month and they kept it until the 14th of the month. It was an elevation offering. By doing this, God showed His power over their idol.

If you are not a Protestant, but a Catholic, how can you possibly know what goes on in the churches? You have preconceived ideas which really are akin to bigotry and hatred, even xenophobia. (Calvinists here are not openminded either, but mostly they suffer from xzinsphobia.)

Anytime you read a chapter like John 6, good biblical exergesis is to read the whole and try to understand the lesson being taught. John 6:53 is after all that came before it.

There was the feeding of the 5000, and in Mark he makes it plain that the feeding was intended to teach the disciples a lesson which they failed to learn. "Their hearts were hardened" refers to their closed minds, they couldn't understand it.(Mark 6:51-52)The lesson evidently had to do with the person of their Master.

But the further meaning which lies beneath the synoptic record is brought to the surface by John and spelled out in detail. He talks about the bread of life and the manna (John 6:27-34)But Jesus not only gives this bread of life, He is the bread. The bread which He gives is his flesh. (6:51) Now to believe in Christ is not only to give credence to what he says, but it is to be united to him by faith, to participate in his life. It is John's practice when recording Jesus's words or discourses to quote words which have a spiritual meaning and then make the hearers show by their resonse that they failed to grasp that meaning. Jesus answered their protest by pointing out that the words were to be understood spiritually(6:63) Augustine said "Believe, and thou hast eaten". You will notice that the Holy Communion is absent in John but this discourse represents the counterpart to the accounts of what Jesus did and said to the disciples in the upper room. John 6 is not making a direct reference to it but the discourse conveys the same truth in words as the Holy Comunion conveys in action. We take and eat it in remembrance that Christ died for us. And He died once only. We do not want Him humiliated any more, and what you see as Real Presence, we see as Real Presence, for for where a few are gathered together, in His Name, He is there. Now I really must go. Shalom!