Cicero is right. Before, the Bible there was the Catholic Church. The books in the Bible did not fall down from the skies and automatically readjust themselves into the form and structure in which we find them. This was the painstaking work of the early Church fathers who for nearly three centuries sifted through hundreds and hundreds of manuscripts and confirmed to us the true Word of God. The belief in the Eucharist predates the appearance of the written Word which in turn confirms the sacred oral Tradition.
Without belief in the Eucharist, everything else is pure vapidity.
A teaching of the Catholic Church which is absolutely fundamental and central to the life of the individual and the Christian community is that of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. And as with many of the things which are defined formally by Tradition, there is also Scriptural support, such as we have in the Gospel of St. John: 6:47
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. 6:48 I am the bread of life. 6:49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 6:50 This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die.”
6:51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
6:52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
Jesus now doubles-down and does not try to correct his literal meaning.
6:53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; 6:54 he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 6:55 For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
Now these words of Jesus which were spoken in the course of his ministry anticipate the institution of the Eucharist in the context of the final Passover Supper which Jesus shared with His apostles. And the Church, from the very beginning, has continued to repeat the words of consecration spoken by our Lord at that supper with the firm conviction that Christ is truly present in some manner in the consecrated Bread and Wine, now Body and Blood.
A sign of the reality of Presence of Christ in the Eucharist may be seen in what St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, in which he not only repeated the words and actions of the Last Supper but notes the punishment upon those who unworthily receive the Holy Eucharist:
11:23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 11:24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 11:25 In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 11:26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. 11:27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. 11:28 Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 11:29 For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.
LOL ... ever heard of the Septuagint?
Apparently, you remain clueless as to what Paul was referring to when he said ‘would be guilty of the body and blood of The Lord’. You see, the Levitical laws forbade eating human flesh and drinking the blood, so if the person taking the Lord’s Table unworthily they (not discerning the spiritual significance, so they came to the Table without reconciling to God by confessing their sins FIRST) they were committing cannibalism and violating the drinking of blood because the bread and wine would not count for them REMEMBRANCE of His crucifixion sacrifice. Baal worship got all that food sacrificed to idols thingy started. Your religion has revived it, apparently.
History however, shows a different position than that of the catholic.
There was no sifting through of hundreds of documents.
The majority of the NT canon was considered Scripture by 100 AD. Paul's letters were considered Scripture by the church as noted in 2 Peter 3:16. The OT canon, from Genesis to Chronicles (excluding the apocrypha), was already in place.
By 170 AD the Gospels were well into circulation along with Paul's letters. Acts, Jude, 2 Epistles of John and Revelation were accepted.
By 200 AD all the NT books were accepted by the church.
The official roman catholic canon was only determined at Trent. I always find it ironic that when they had the chance to include such writings as the Didache, The Protoevangelium of James which would have greatly supported their false teaching on Mary, they did not.
Now, to the Mass.
If you do a word study on believe you will see that in John alone the word was utilized 50+ times in relation to faith in Christ.
Now which is more credible?
John as moved by the Holy Spirit noted Jesus saying you have to believe on more than one occasion to have eternal life or
Jesus speaking to a group of unbelieving Jews who refused to understand His message of belief...that He was the bread of life and that by believing in Him one would have eternal life.
It was the unbelieving Jews who raised the issue of how could Jesus give them His flesh and blood to eat and drink. Jesus understood their hardheadedness and told them something so improbable it could not happen. They had to physically eat and drink His flesh and blood.
If cathoicism wants to take this as a literal understanding then right then and there they should have killed Him and began to consume His flesh and blood.
Further, if catholicism wants to take this as a literal understanding, then every catholic needs to go sell everything they have to obtain eternal life as Jesus told the rich young ruler.
That consuming His flesh and blood was not what He meant was clearly understood by the disciples as evidenced in John 6:67-69 when Peter replied to His question....We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.
They knew it was about faith in Him. This message of faith is clearly in line with the rest of the NT. The catholic position of consuming the flesh and blood is the outlyer.
A question for catholicism....if the disciples had died at that moment, without benefit of consuming His flesh and blood, would they have gone to Heaven or Hell?
What about Paul? There is no evidence he participated in the Mass as defined by catholicism.
What about the woman at the well and the people who believed as a result of her testimony? Heaven or Hell for them?
They had no benefit of the Mass as defined by catholicism. All they had was belief.....which is what Jesus, and the NT tells us repeatedly, is the way to obtain Heaven.
What about the words of Christ Himself in John 5:24 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life."
Recall, He was talking again to the unbelieving Jews at this point.
To accept the catholic position of the Mass we have to accept there was more than one way to appropriate Heaven. Faith for some and the Mass for others.
That is an inconsistent position.
The careful reader of the Bible will note it has always been about faith going back to Abraham. This is evidenced through both Old and New Testaments. The difference being the means of forgiving sins.
The NT clearly teaches Jesus died on the cross for our sins and that it was a one-time sacrifice.
Further the concept of the roman catholic Mass where the priest tells Jesus to come down from Heaven to be re-sacrificed again and again is in stark contradiction to Hebrews 10.
Hebrews 10 speaks of one sacrifice for sin. Catholicism, in spite of denails, tells us Jesus is re-sacrficed over and over and over again.
It's why catholicism continues to depict Christ on the cross where the NT clearly teaches He is no longer on the cross.
That this is catholic belief is evidenced by John O'Brien's writings in The Faith of Millions, The Credentials of the Catholic Religion
“No act is greater,” says St. Thomas,” than the consecration of the body of Christ.”23 In this essential phase of the sacred ministry, the power of the priest is not surpassed by that of the bishop, the archbishop, the cardinal or the pope. Indeed it is equal to that of Jesus Christ. For in this role the priest speaks with the voice and the authority of God Himself.
When the priest pronounces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into the heavens, brings Christ down from His throne, and places Him upon our alter to be offered up again as the Victim for the sins of man. It is a power greater than that of monarchs and emperor: it is greater than that of saints and angels, greater than that of Seraphim and Cherubim.
Indeed it is greater even than the power of the Virgin Mary. While the Blessed Virgin was the human agency by which Christ became incarnate a single time, the priest brings Christ down from heaven, and renders Him present on our altar as the eternal Victim for the sins of man – not once but a thousand times! The priest speaks and lo! Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest’s command.
The Faith of Millions: The Credentials of the Catholic Religion, O’Brien, John Anthony Rev, Our Sunday Visitor, Inc, Huntington, Indiana, Nihil obstat: Rev. Lawrence Gollner, Censor Librorum, Imprimatur: Leo A Pursley, Bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend, pages 255-256 The Faith of Millions: The Credentials of the Catholic Religion