Posted on 04/04/2015 1:59:27 PM PDT by Steelfish
The Resurrection & The Eucharist by Fr. Rodney Kissinger S.J. (Former Missouri Synod Lutheran) http://www.frksj.org/homily_ressurection_and_the_eucharist.htm There is an important connection between the Resurrection and the Eucharist. The Eucharist IS the Risen Jesus.
Therefore, the Eucharist makes the Resurrection present and active in our lives and enables us to experience the joy and the power of the Resurrection. The Resurrection is the reason for the observance of Sunday instead of the Sabbath. According to the Gospel it was early in the morning on the first day of the week that the Risen Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene.
It was also on the evening of that first day of the week that the Risen Jesus appeared to the Apostles when Thomas was not present. Then a week later, on the first day of the week, he appeared again when Thomas was present.
So the Apostles began to celebrate the first day of the week, Sunday, as the beginning of the re-creation of the world just as they had celebrated the Sabbath as the end of the creation of the world. Originally the Liturgical Year was simply fifty-two Sundays, fifty-two celebrations of the Eucharist, fifty-two celebrations of the Resurrection. Today the Eucharist is still the principal way of celebrating the Resurrection and proclaiming the Mystery of Faith: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”
As we have seen the joy and the power of the Resurrection is not found in the empty tomb or in the witness of some one else it is found only in a personal encounter with the Risen Jesus. The Eucharist, the Risen Jesus, gives us an opportunity for this personal encounter. Will all who receive the Eucharist have a personal encounter with the Risen Jesus? Yes they will. Unfortunately, not all will recognize the Risen Jesus. Mary Magdalene had a personal encounter with the Risen Jesus but did not recognize him. She thought it was the gardener. It was not until she recognized Jesus that she experienced the joy and the power of the Resurrection. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus had a personal encounter with the Risen Jesus and thought that it was a stranger. It was not until they recognized him in the “breaking of the bread” that they experienced the joy and the power of the Resurrection.
The Eucharist is also a pledge of our own resurrection. “I am the living bread come down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” The Eucharist tells us that in death life is changed not ended. It is not so much life after death but life through death. Death is the door to life. This takes away the fear of death and gives us consolation at the death of a loved one.
The Eucharist also continues the two fold effect of the Resurrection which is to confirm the faith of the Apostles and to create the Christian Community. These are two sides of the same coin. To believe is to belong. Community was an integral part of the life of the first Christians. They were of one mind and one heart. When the Apostles asked the Lord to teach them how to pray, he taught them the “OUR Father.” In the Creed we say, “WE believe.” It is a personal commitment made in the community of believers.
The Eucharist also confirms the faith of the recipient and is the principle of unity and community. Without the Christian Community we lose our roots and our identity and our ability to survive in our culture which is diametrically opposed to Christ.
Through the Eucharist the Risen Jesus continues his two fold mission of proclaiming the Good News and healing the sick. Every celebration of the Eucharist proclaims the Good News and heals the sick. The Liturgy of the Word proclaims the Good News and the Liturgy of the Eucharist heals the sick. If people were healed simply by touching the hem of His garment how much more healing must come from receiving His Body and Blood?
How ridiculous it is then when people ask, “Do I have an obligation to go to Mass on Sunday?” If obligation is going to determine whether or not you go to Mass forget the obligation. You have a greater problem than that. Your problem is faith, you don’t believe. You don’t believe that the Eucharist IS the Risen Christ.
You just don’t realize the connection between the Resurrection and the Eucharist. In just a few moments we will receive the Eucharist and once again have an opportunity for a personal encounter with the Risen Jesus.
Let us ask for the faith to recognize him in the “breaking of the bread” so that we are able to say with Thomas, “My Lord and my God,” and in so doing experience the joy and the power of the Resurrection.
I posted them in context. My comprehension is spot on. It is the prot comprehension that is off the mark .
We will put that to bed right now:
And Paul clarifies that quite nicely in Galatians. (Pay attention this time I am getting tired of having to repeat myself.)
Gal 5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
Gal 5:17 For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary the one to the other; that ye may not do the things that ye would.
Gal 5:18 But if ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law.
Gal 5:19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
You do realize you confirm what Christians have been saying about John 6:63....?
uhhhh.....yeah.
LoL! So you think He changed the subject? The subject had been eating His flesh yet you want us to believe He all at once changed the subject??? You can just go ahead and get “tired of repeating yourself” because it falls in that “if they repeat it enough times” category.
At one point you said at #278 "Simply not accepting Christ is not one of the meanings [of blasphemy]." I want you to notice that when I answered I AGREED with you at #286.
And the I added, "That [blasphemy against the Holy Spirit] is not identical to "simply not accepting Christ." Say there is a ten year old child in North Korea who has simply not accepted Christ. That child is not guilty of "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit." at #286.
Simply not accepting Christ is not the same as blasphemy: in other words, it is not the same as "insulting, railing against and rejecting the Holy Spirit."
A person who has not accepted Christ may be a person who simply never encountered Christ (like the 10-year-old North Korean child I gave as an example.) There's not necessarily any hostility to God there. It is simple ignorance.
Nevertheless, Christ is the "true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. (John 1:9 KJV) John "came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him." (John 1:7 KJV) So everyone comes into contact with this Light, in some way inexplicable and very mysterious to us, even the 10-year-old in North Korea, and has a chance to believe and give themselves to the Light, to live in the Light and to have the Light living in them.
Still waiting on the clarification of the phrase OMG.
Your example of the child is not pertinent to the conversation. That child didn’t reject Christ. That child never had been introduced per your story. Was that just some sort of diversionary tactic?
Protism: Uber shallow end of the theology pool. Have a good evening.
And this is why I don’t take prot comments seriously.
ROFL! Of course it is verga.
We all depend on the canon of the Bible, and we all can thank the Church, through Sacred Tradition, for providing and preserving it through the centuries. It would have been lost, as the vast majority of ancient manuscripts of all sorts were lost, unless it were handed on (which is what "tradition" means: to hand on, tra - ducere.)
The other very important parts of Sacred Tradition would be
None of these things are hidden, secret or esoteric. Thry are all in writing; they are all in the lived customs, heritage and legacy of living communities of Faith which have been out there "for all to see" since the times of the Apostles.
You could even google it.
Insulting, blaspheming, rejecting the Holy Spirit IS NOT the same as simply not accepting Christ.
We are in blessed agreement. Hallelujah.
Why?
If twisting my words makes you feel better I’m happy for you.
You know guys, while I was away from FR I spent a lot of time listening to and contemplating what was said on Catholic Answers Live (6pm EDT streaming on EWTN radio). It seems to me that 90%, at least, of what is said in these threads is addressed on that show. I know there are some here who dislike the apologists there (Jimmy Aikin, Tim Staples) but they aren’t the only ones, for one, and secondly I think some around here just blithely dismiss them for a few reasons not applicable to most apologetics.
Granted I’ve been away for a while but I’ve never read anyone comment on claims like (for the subject of this thread) the word for “eat” in John 6 has a very literal meaning in the Greek (”trogo”) and or that the expression “eat my body” had, at the time (1st century Palestine) very negative connotations for Jews, so when Jesus said this about himself this is why they “strove amongst themselves”, because they couldn’t understand why he would say this about himself. Either he was denigrating himself, or saying what he said literally. Either of which they couldn’t understand (to take him literaly or take him to mean he was denigrating himself) so this is why they strove amongst each other.
These are just two points raised on that show of this topic and even more on this and others. It seems to me this is a lot of wasted time to argue these same points. Seems listening to the show and considering some of those newer points would be worthwhile.
I’ve also been reading Staples’ “Behold Your Mother”. It seems to blow all of these arguments out of the water (regarding Mary). But that’s another thread I guess.
Just sharing some thoughts from when I’ve been gone. Carry on.
Of course. No surprise there so that can be taken as a *Yes*.
Maybe I will choose to answer after you show me the definition of SS in the Bible.
I highly doubt it, but nice try.
I have only been waiting how long for that.
RC's have been given that definition many times but like their reaction to the rest of non-Catholic comments, what they don't like, they choose to ignore.
Why?
Wondering what you meant by OMG....the street use or something else?
But, as I've come to expect from you a lot of talk but no answers to simple questions.
Have a good evening.
No amount of “elaboration” appears sufficient for you. You either refuse or are unable to comprehend the writings of your very own leading Lutheran theologians and Episcopalians who converted to Catholicism. You ask what the the sacred traditions of the Church? ALL what the Church does as part of its liturgical and ritual practices, and beliefs in communion with Chirst, the saints, and its martyrs.
No one is saying that the “the leading of the Holy Spirit is absurd.” Rather, because of the diverse and often contradictory beliefs of Protestants and Episcopalians, each cannot claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit. That would make the Holy Spirit a contradiction unto itself.
Surely, the congregations of Joel Osteen, Jimmy Swaggart; Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Billy Graham, and hundreds of your neighborhood local Foursquare Churches cannot each claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit.
To deny the Eucharist, you will have to REFUTE:
1. Scripture itself. John 6:53
2. The sacred oral tradition, the very tradition that was used to cross check and cross reference the books in the Bible that were infallibly assembled as authentic by the Catholic Church. So if you doubt the oral tradition, you must doubt the fact-checking sources for the Bible, and consequently the accuracy of the Bible itself. You cannot have it both ways by accepting the Bible as authentic and un-tether its infallibility from the sacred oral tradition.
3. The beliefs and practices of the early disciples of Christ before the Bible was assembled in the early fourth century which the Church continues to this day in the administration of the Sacraments of the Church and its forms of adoration and veneration.
4. The beliefs of saints, martyrs, and stigmatists who believed that the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Holy Eucharist is at the very center of Christian belief and this is why the Tabernacle was at the center of all Catholic Churches and worship and was so for FIFTEEN CENTURIES (AND CONTINUES TO BE) before the curse of Protestantism in 1517 (especially now with their mainline denominations using scriptural warrant to ordain gay, lesbian, and coming soon, transgender pastors) washed ashore spreading, what the great essayist Hillaire Belloc called, a “cluster of heresies.”
5. The explicit writings of the early Church fathers.
This would include St. Irenaeus of Lyons, an early Church Father and Doctor of the Church
In fact, the real presence of the body and blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist (transubstantiation), also known as Mass or the Lord’s Supper, was taken for granted in the early Church.
Written by St. Irenaeus about 185 AD, this excerpt in the link above makes clear the Church’s realistic interpretation of the Eucharist as the risen body of Christ.
6. The brilliant Catholic theologians after whom colleges and universities have been named. (Poor Cynical Bear: he can’t seem to grasp the theology of their writings and it appears he has no interest in scriptural history, so all he can do is show disdain for their intelligence. Of course, Bible Christians known for their shallowness do a lot of that.)
7. The pre-eminent Episcopalian and Lutheran theologians who have converted to Catholicism such as Rev. Richard Neuhaus who wrote he found “the fullest expression of Christ in the Catholic Church.” (However, Bible Christians tell us the “Holy Spirit” rather than having led them to the ONE truth, instead deserted them and the Holy Spirit is somehow, somewhere else, perhaps dwelling among some Protestant sects but we don’t know for sure which sect it is: Joel Osteen’s or Jeremiah Wright’s)
The resurrection is not some simple belief of a dead man coming to life.
Pope Benedict XVI (the theological Einstein of our times) captured this brilliant in the following passage. In the middle volume of his triptych, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI tried to describe those Resurrection-changes in history and nature (which are, of course, ultimately indescribable) like this:
“Christ’s Resurrection . . . is a historical event that nevertheless bursts open the dimensions of history and transcends it. Perhaps we may draw upon analogical language here . . . [and think of] the Resurrection as something akin to a radical “evolutionary leap,” in which a new dimension of life emerges, a new dimension of human existence. Indeed, matter itself is remolded into a new type of reality. “
“The man Jesus, complete with his body, now belongs to the sphere of the divine and eternal. From now on, as Tertullian once said, “spirit and blood” have a place within God. . . . Even if man by his nature is created for immortality, it is only now that the place exists in which his immortal soul can find its “space,” its “bodiliness,” in which immortality takes on its meaning as communion with God and with the whole of reconciled mankind.”
“This is what is meant by those passages in Saint Paul’s prison letters (cf. Colossians 1.12–23 and Ephesians 1. 3–23) that speak of the cosmic body of Christ, indicating thereby that Christ’s transformed body is also the place where men enter into communion with God and with one another and are therefore able to live definitively in the fullness of indestructible life. . .”
“[Thus] Jesus’s Resurrection was not just about some deceased individual coming back to life at a certain point. . . . [An] ontological leap occurred, one that touches being as such, opening up a dimension that affects us all, creating for all of us a new space of life, a new space of being in union with God.”
You can now see why without the living body and blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, the Resurrection has no meaning.
Indeed, deny this belief, and Protestantism is no different than a Hindu whose reading of the Upanishads and the Bhaghavad Gita tells him of an afterlife, or Buddhist beliefs in Bodhisattvas who as enlightened beings have put off entering paradise in order to help others attain enlightenment. In a word, such beliefs are in the end of matters of “faith” but they are as moribund as the reality of only the dead.
In the Eucharist, Catholics have the Living Body and Blood of Christ as He Himself promised during His time on earth and the Last Supper.
Glad to hear a catholic finally admit this!
So again, I will ask....what is in "sacred tradition" that we don't have in the Bible?
I have no idea where you came up with this nonsense.
If this a sample of catholic reasoning the pool is pretty shallow.
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