Posted on 01/18/2012 3:19:15 PM PST by NYer
.- Pope Benedict XVI said today that achieving Christian unity requires more than “cordiality and cooperation” and that it must be accompanied by interior conversion.
“Faith in Christ and interior conversion, both individual and communal, must constantly accompany our prayer for Christian unity,” said the Pope to over 8,000 pilgrims gathered in the Vatican’s Paul VI Audience Hall on Jan. 18.
The Pope’s comments mark the start of the 2012 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity that runs until Jan. 25. It will be observed by over 300 Christian churches and ecclesial communities around the globe.
The Pope asked for “the Lord in a particular way to strengthen the faith of all Christians, to change our hearts and to enable us to bear united witness to the Gospel.”
In this way, he said, they “will contribute to the new evangelization and respond ever more fully to the spiritual hunger of the men and women of our time.”
The Pope explained that the concept of a week of prayer for Christian unity was initiated in 1908 by Paul Wattson, an Episcopalian minister from Maryland. One year later, he became a Catholic and was subsequently ordained to the priesthood.
Pope Benedict recalled how the initiative was supported by his predecessors Pope St. Pius X and Pope Benedict XV. It was then “developed and perfected” in the 1930s by the Frenchman Abbé Paul Couturier, who promoted prayer “for the unity of the Church as Christ wishes and according to the means he wills.”
The mandate for the week of prayer, the Pope underscored, comes from the wish of Christ himself at the Last Supper “that they may all be one.” He observed that this mission was given a particular impetus by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) but added that “the unity we strive for cannot result merely from our own efforts.” Rather, “it is a gift we receive and must constantly invoke from on high.”
The theme for 2012 Week of Prayer – “All shall be changed by the victory of Jesus Christ our Lord” – was crafted by the Polish Ecumenical Council. Pope Benedict said it reflects “their own experience as a nation,” which stayed faithful to Christ “in the midst of trials and upheavals,” including years of occupation by the Nazis and later the Communists.
The Pope tied the victory the Polish people experienced over their oppressors to overcoming the disunity that marks Christians.
He said that the “unity for which we pray requires inner conversion, both shared and individual,” and it cannot be “limited to cordiality and cooperation.” Instead, Christians must accept “all the elements of unity which God has conserved for us.”
Ecumenism, the Pope stated, is not an optional extra for Catholics but is “the responsibility of the entire Church and of all the baptized.” Christians, he said, must make praying for unity an “integral part” of their prayer life, “especially when people from different traditions come together to work for victory in Christ over sin, evil, injustice and the violation of human dignity.”
Pope Benedict then touched on the lack of unity in the Christian community, which he said “hinders the effective announcement of the Gospel and endangers our credibility.” Evangelizing formerly Christian countries and spreading the Gospel to new places will be “more fruitful if all Christians together announce the truth of the Gospel and Jesus Christ, and give a joint response to the spiritual thirst of our times,” he explained.
The Pope concluded his comments with the hope that this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity will lead to “increased shared witness, solidarity and collaboration among Christians, in expectation of that glorious day when together we will all be able to celebrate the Sacraments and profess the faith transmitted by the Apostles.”
The general audience finished with Pope Benedict addressing pilgrims in various languages, including greeting a group of men and women from the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, before leading the crowd in the Our Father and imparting his apostolic blessing.
Jesus Christ said His flesh and His blood are present in our remembrance of Him. Anyone who denies that His flesh and His blood are present in the Eucharist is calling Christ a liar. By not accepting what Christ said as they truth, they deny the deity of Jesus Christ by calling Jesus Christ a liar<.b>
Sharing the Word of God with folks who deny the deity of Jesus Christ by calling Jesus Christ a lair is like throwing pearls before swine as is illustrated by the fact that such heretics cannot understand even a simple thing like, “ ... not by faith only”.
Reinterpretation to suit what someone prefers, claims to infallible interpretation of Scripture, and anything else someone may chose to say frees them from believing what Jesus Christ Himself said doesn't change a thing. Anyone who denies that His flesh and His blood are present in the Eucharist is calling Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God from God, our Holy Savior, a liar. Anyone who calls Jesus Christ a liar does not believe that Christ is God.
ALL OF THEM. And add: They claim there is no salvation outside their religion. That they are the only way to God.
They meet most every definition of a cult that I could find from those who put those lists out warning people for what to look for.
Ah, a little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing.
I suggest a little more research into Tertullian that isn’t misquotes and misunderstandings posted by an anti Catholic agenda.
Here is good place to start, if you want that is...
http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/num29.htm
Your passages from Ezekial and Jeremiah, do not contradict the Eucharist. In fact they foreshadow and confirm it.
As for Augustine...Did you even read where that passage was piecemealed together from? Or do you just accept without further investigation that what you posted is all that was said by Augustine? I don’t know where you got that quote, but it has been put together by someone wishing to make it seem to say exactly the opposite of what Augustine wrote.
Augustine here is speaking about people like YOU! People who ask the stupid question over and over again about feeling hunger after eating His body and Blood.
If you are going to try to use early fathers to support your unbelief, at the very least you should read them first to be sure they are saying what you so desperately need to think they say.
Ditto for Origen.
Well, of course you would, that way you get to decide what is true and what is not.
Unfortunately for you, history proves you wrong.
****I would suggest you go study some of the reasonings and proofs of authorship.****
Wouldn’t that be using extra Biblical writings to verify what the Bible does not say itself?
Yes, apparently it is vain repetition to meditate on the life of Jesus in the Gospels.
To say the prayer Jesus gave us.
And to offer glory to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
whoever said we couldn’t use extra Biblical writings?
Stupid question? Catholics take one portion and take it literally and then the next portion they claim isn’t and we ask a question, which by the way Catholics never answer, and it’s a stupid question? Catholics use what they want literelly and what doesn’t fit their meme they try to explain away allegorically. It’s disingenuous at best and a dishonest attempt at control.
Time after time scripture has been shown to Catholics that Christ was not talking about physical flesh during the last supper but Catholics deny it.
****whoever said we couldn’t use extra Biblical writings?****
So, just to be clear here, it is okay with you if one uses extra Biblical writings to verify something the Bible does not actually say?
Verify something the Bible doesn’t say? NO. Anything has to agree with scripture and not contradict scripture. If you are thinking of something like the bodily assumption of Mary it contradicts scripture. We can use anything we want to help understand scripture but it cannot contradict scripture.
Where do you think the statement of Paul came from and what it meant when he said “they searched the scriptures daily to see if these things be true”?
What Augustine is saying here is that those who merely understood Jesus in the temporal/carnal rather than understanding the spiritual are those who left Him after He said that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood.
It is the spirit that causes the bread to be the Body and the wine to be the Blood of Jesus.
That is what is meant by man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
The carnal is not of any avail, it is the Spirit enlivening the carnal that is of avail.
So, when one asks why if the Jesus said that those who ate the bread would never be hungry, that is a stupid question, because Jesus did not mean that the body would not feel hunger, rather that the soul would not.
He says after the feeding of the five thousand that those who follow Him are thinking of their bellies and not their souls, but that what He would give was food for their souls.
That is what Augustine was saying in this essay, that and about those who eat of the Body of Christ while not believing the Eucharist is indeed just that.
We are supposed to accept, without laughing, that St. Augustine did not believe in the real presence in the Holy Eucharist?
Where do they get this garbage?
CB, did you get this all on your own?
****If you are thinking of something like the bodily assumption of Mary it contradicts scripture.****
Well, see that’s where you are wrong, because the Bible certainly says that at least two people were taken up to heaven.
The point is that, even though the Bible doesn’t say who its human authors are, we can gain insights from what we know in the Bible and what others who have studied it say to come to a reasonable, if unverifiable conclusion.
I said that one must take the Bible on faith and tradition.
Though we may all assert that the Holy Spirit has moved us to accept the Bible as writings inspired by God, He hasn’t opened the heavens and declared it so for us.
Therefore, we take that it is inspired and of God, on faith.
And, since the Bible does not give a list of what it should contain, we accept through tradition which books are divinely inspired.
***Where do they get this garbage?***
Anti Catholic websites where the writings of Augustine and others are chopped and formed into bizarro versions of what they actually wrote.
In a contest for “new ideas” I think the 19th Century invention of Dispensationalism is closer to the lead.
Perhaps even newer is the idea that each Christian is tasked with determining his own canon, interpretation, doctrine, etc. etc.
The general rules of FR engagement are that the person making the assertion is the one who is obligated to provide the evidence to back up the assertion.
If no evidence is forthcoming, then it is reasonable to conclude that the assertion is has no validity or veracity and can be discarded as the waste it is.
Refusing to provide the quotes and links is concession of defeat.
And both were well documented but I suppose even though the Catholic Church claims all apostles knew about the death and assumption of Mary none even mentioned it. If Mary had been important to the apostles they would have written about it. As it is not one mention is made of her after Jesus ascension. The assumption of Mary also contradicts the scripture of the first and second resurrection accounts.
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