Posted on 07/21/2002 2:01:09 PM PDT by JMJ333
We do, said John.
Your Church teaches that he is really present there, yes? That what's there is the man who was God?
Yes. The formula is 'Body and blood, soul and divinity.'
And you believe that?
Yes.
Isa made as if to say something, but stifled it. John assured him he would not be offended.
Finally, reluctantly, Isa said, I don't understand.
"I understand how you feel. It sounds very shocking.
No, you don't understand. That's not what I mean. You will take it as an insult, but I don't mean it to be.
I promise I won't take it as an insult. But I really want to know what's on your mind.
Well then. . . . I don't think you really do believe that. I don't mean to say you're dishonest, but . . . .
I think I know what you mean. You can't empathize with anyone who believes something so shocking. You don't see how you could ever get down on your knees before that altar.
No, I don't see how I could ever get up. If I believed that thing that looks like a little round piece of bread was really Allah Himself, I think I would just faint. I would fall at His feet like a dead man.
John looked carefully at my reaction as he reported Isa's words. My eyes opened, and he smiled. What did you say to him? I asked.
Nothing. Then, after a while, just 'Yes.'
John is a wise man.
CULTURE CLASH
This story got me thinking about the ills of our culture both outside and inside the Church. Every American knows our culture is in crisis. And every Catholic knows that the crisis has infected the Church as well as the world. But what is the root of the disease Liberalism vs. Conservatism, Newchurch vs. Oldchurch? Yes, but that is only the formal structure of every conflict new vs. old.
Is it infidelity vs. fidelity, then? Fidelity to the deposit of faith adds both a personal dimension of moral responsibility and a theological dimension of content to conservatism. But this is not enough; we must ask what part of the deposit of faith is in peril. It seems to be the supernatural. Modernism, the master heresy of the modern era (as Gnosticism was to the ancient era), is essentially the denial of the supernatural: It means reducing God to goodness, Christ to a good man, the Holy Spirit to something like school spirit, scripture to man's word about God instead of God's word about man, and divine institutions to human ones. Is that the deepest source of the crisis, then?
No, it goes even deeper. Even the destruction of Modernism would still only be a victory of doctrine. As St. Thomas Aquinas says, the primary object of faith is a reality, not a proposition (though propositions are indispensable). Not the proposition God exists but God; not the doctrine of the Resurrection but the reality of the Resurrection; not the creeds about Christ but the real presence of Christ, is the crux and crisis. It is a crisis of Christlessness.
Real presence is impossible to conceptualize, for it is not a what at all, but the thereness, or hereness, of the what; not essence but existence. It must be shown, not defined. Whenever God shows up in scripture, it is His real presence that makes all the difference. Job's three friends talked about God as if He were absent, but Job talked to Him, however confusedly, for his faith was in God's presence. That faith was rewarded when God appeared to Job but not to his friends and approved Job's speeches, not theirs.
Throughout the Gospels we find Jesus constantly doing just that: showing the difference between mere concepts and real presence. He did it when He proved the Resurrection to the skeptical Sadducees on the basis of the first five books of Moses alone (which was all that they accepted as divine authority), by connecting three names for Himself that God had revealed to Moses: I AM WHO AM, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God not of the dead but of the living. For all live to Him, He concluded (Luke 21:38).
He did it when He berated the Pharisees, with ironic humor, for keeping their noses in their books instead of looking to Him the book was wholly about Him! (John 5:39-40)
He did it in His parting words to His apostles, when He left them with the only thing powerful enough to transform the world: not comforting words about Him but His real presence: Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age. (Matthew 28:20)
This is what transformed them from confused cowards into saints and martyrs. Instead of being shaken by the world, they would now shake the world. How? What converted the world's longest-lived, successful, and hard-nosed dictatorship the Roman Empire into Christendom? Not just Christ's theology or teaching, not just Christ's morality or example, but Christ's real presence, in His Body the Church and in His Spirit. And it was meant to continue.
A LONG RETREAT
Why has it stopped? Why are the Christian soldiers no longer marching onward but retreating?
Because we no longer understand this real presence, this difference between Christ abstract and Christ concrete; because we no longer understand St. Paul's startling one-word definition of wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption given in I Corinthians: Christ. That is why his decision to know nothing but Christ Jesus to those sophisticated Corinthians was not a know-nothing anti-intellectualism or a minimalism, but a maximalism.
The crisis of faith in the Church is a crisis of faith in Christ's real presence. The deepest root of the dullness and ineffectiveness of most parishes, laity, clergy, homilies, liturgies, music, catechesis, programs, and all the extra Martha-like activities, is not outright heresy or apostasy but simply remoteness not, as the liberals say, the Church's remoteness from the people, but from The Person.
Let's ask ourselves honestly: Why have Evangelical, Fundamentalist, and Pentecostal Protestant sects and denominations been so much more successful throughout the Americas during the past generation? Why would a Catholic, who is in possession of the fullness of the faith, the full gospel, exchange it for a faith that is only partial? It is not primarily because of a disaffection for the things Catholics have and Protestants don'thistory, tradition, popes, saints, sacraments, etc. Rather, it is due to an affection for the one thing Catholics have but don't know they havein fact, the main thing Catholics have: Christ. These Catholics never knew Jesus Christ in the Church, but they did find Christ present in the souls and lives of Protestants.
Do you think I exaggerate? I teach philosophy at Boston College one of the top Catholic universities in America. Eighty percent of my students are Catholics who have had twelve years of catechism. Yet when I ask them what they would say to God if they died tonight and were asked why they should go to Heaven, only one in 20 even mentions Jesus Christ. (Only one in 20 Evangelicals, Pentecostals, or Fundamentalists would not know that answer.) This is worse than a problem; this is an inexcusable scandal, an unmitigated disaster.
Ironically, the Church has a presence these Protestants do not even claim to have: an objective and perfect real presence in the Eucharist, worthy of worship, not just a subjective and imperfect presence in souls. Christ is really, truly, objectively, fully present in the Eucharist hidden under the appearances of bread and wine as He was in the streets of Nazareth or on the Cross.
And that's what we're neglecting!
The central problem of the Church today is that most of the generation now becoming adults the generation educated by CCD texts full of deadly platitudes simply do not know Jesus Christ. They are not merely unaware of right doctrine about Him (though that's tragically missing too) but of Christ Himself, His real presence. Nothing less than Christ could have Christianized the world, nothing less than Christlessness has de-Christianized it, and nothing less than Christ can re-Christianize it. What happens when Christ's real presence is known? Read the Gospels and find out. The Gospels are not mere historical records; they continue, they happen, for the One they present is not dead and gone and past but alive and here and now.
Where is He present now? In His Church. This means essentially two things. First, He is present in the Church's sacraments, primarily in the Eucharist. Second, He is also present in the Church's members, in the souls and lives of those who have believed in Him. What a tragedy that so many Protestants do not know that first presence! And what an equal tragedy that so many Catholics do not know the second!
What will happen if we also neglect the first? What sound will we hear to replace the great silence of eucharistic adoration? The same sound we hear from the National Council of Churches: the sound of coffins being built, the sound of dead logs falling.
And what will we hear if we rediscover His presence and adore Him? The same sound we hear in the Gospels: the sound of a blazing fire, the rattle of dry bones coming to life, the shouts of joy that ring through scripture and through the great old Protestant hymns.
RETURN TO JOY
How do we get this joy back? Not by any gimmicks or human contrivance, but by recognizing the real presence and responding with adoration. And the primary place of the real presence is the Eucharist.
The primary reason for eucharistic adoration, however, is not the one we have been exploring so far: that it will bring passion and power and joy and life to us, our Church, and our world. Those are only incidentals! The primary reason must be to obey the primary moral rule, which I shall call Right Reality Response (the 3 R's), or (in a single word) Realism. Adore Him because He is adorable, and present. Even if it didn't save the world, the Church, or the soul, it would be the right thing to do, not just because of who we are, but because of who He is.
Right Reality Response is the ultimate basis for all morality. We must be moral because God commands it, of course; but also because it is good, or right; and it is good, or right, because it is true. And it works both ways: Not only do understanding and loving the truth lead to moral obedience, but obedience also leads to understanding the truth. Adoration trains us in the habit of seeing the Absolute as absolute and the relative as relative, instead of vice versa.
For in adoration we focus on Christ the center, and everything else then appears as it truly is: as a ray of light from that sun, the Son of God. We see the world in terms of Christ's coordinates instead of looking at Christ in terms of the world's coordinates. It is the great exercise in realism, since reality is Christocentric. Even this great mental benefit, or payoff, must not be our primary motive, however. If we adored the Adorable One for the sake of something else, we would really be worshipping the something else as the end and using God as the means. This would reverse the order of reality, treating the End as a means and the means as the end. God has left us clear instructions forbidding this: Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and then all these other things will be added unto you. He commands us to adore Him for His sake, not for our sake; but He does this for our sake, not for His sake. His glory is to be our concern; our glory is His concern. That is what love is: exchange.
A CONVERSATION
What holds us back, then? What is the objection to eucharistic adoration?
It's not that it's hard or requires any special gifts or education. The only requirements are faith and love.
Perhaps it would be a good exercise for us to get our objections out in front of us by inventing an imaginary objector.
Our objector protests,
Although it is not hard in itself, it is hard for us, because our faith is weak. It is our nature to live by sight, not by faith.
True. Our faith is smaller than a mustard seed. But faith is like a muscle. And this is a compelling reason for strengthening our faith by exercising it through adoration.
How can we exercise a faith we don't already have?
That's like the question: How can I read a book entitled How To Read A Book? If I can read already, I don't need to read that book, and if I can't read already, I won't be able to read that book. We can read a little already, and reading that book will help us to read a lot better. So we have a little faith already, and we can adore a little bit; doing that will help us to have more faith and to adore better.
Well, it's still hard. It doesn't look or feel like there's anything there but bread. Why couldn't God have come out with some visible miracle to make it easier for us?
Because He wants to strengthen our faith, and wean us from relying on our senses and our own minds.
Then why doesn't He give us more interior highs, mystical experiences?
Because He doesn't want us to rely on our feelings either, but on faith. If we relied on what the saints call sensible consolations, we'd get a spiritual sweet tooth.
Why is that so bad? It would make us happier.
Because we are happiest when we are most like Him, when our happiness is the most like His and the least like the happiness of animals or addicts.
But there's such a distance! He is a simple, pure spirit. We are complex and material.
That is why He gave us a world, and an Incarnation, and a Eucharist. But even in this complex world He trains us to be simple. Our faith grows by getting simpler, not more complex. The saints' faith was simple. Remember St. Thomas's Eucharistic hymn:
Sight, taste, and touch in Thee are each deceived; The ear alone most safely is believed. I believe all the Son of God has spoken; Than Truth's own word there is no truer token. A modern equivalent is: God said it, I believe it, that settles it!
But how can sitting alone in an empty church address the urgent needs of a life and a society in chaos? It's like fiddling while Rome burns.
Your objection is very common, and very important. And my answer is not very commonly known or believed. Your objection assumes a whole world-view that is erroneous. We habitually see reality inside-out and upside-down. We see reality inside-out because we see matter as containing spirit instead of spirit as containing matter. We think of the material universe as the basic containing reality, and spirit as a tiny bit of light surrounded by an enormous quantity of matter, time, and space. But the whole universe is only a little hazelnut in God's hand. That's the vision God showed Lady Julian of Norwich: He's got the whole world in His hands. That's the true vision. Saints are not fools; they're realists. We also habitually think of the soul as in the body instead of the body in the soulas if a play were in its stage setting instead of the setting being in the play, as one of its dimensions.
We see reality upside-down because we think of earth as the foundation and Heaven as far away, up there somewhere, so religion becomes a kind of Tower of Babel reaching up. That's upside-down, because the Church has its foundation in Heaven, and the New Jerusalem comes down out of Heaven as a Bride adorned for her Husband, according to Revelation. Heaven isn't insubstantial; it's far more substantial than earth. And God is not watching us from a distance. Heaven came to earth in Christ.
But Christ ascended back to Heaven. He is in Heaven now.
That does not mean He is not here. Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.
Is Christ in Heaven or not?
Christ is not relative to Heaven, Heaven is relative to Christ. So Christ is not in Heaven, Heaven is in Christ, Heaven is wherever Christ is. And Christ is still here, in the Church and especially in the Eucharist. If you want to understand the Church, you have to see her as primarily a Heavenly reality.
But the Church is a visible, earthly institution.
It is primarily invisible, primarily Heavenly.
That sounds Protestant.
It is Catholic. It is the mystical Body of Christ.
But how does that mean you can help the Church and the world by sitting in a dark building doing nothing?
You can't. But you can mightily help both by doing something: adoring Christ, who is really present there in the Eucharist.
But what do you do when you adore?
You let God do things. He forms our minds and hearts if we give them to Him.
That sounds Quietist, or Buddhist.
Buddhists often understand the superior power of silence over speech, and of contemplation over action, better than Catholics do today. By serving a cup of green tea, I stopped the war I'll bet you don't understand that saying, do you?
No. It's silly. How can drinking tea stop war?
By changing souls, which are the sources of war. By touching the root, not the branches.
What does that have to do with eucharistic adoration?
There too we touch the root the root of everything, Christ the Pantocrator. And when we touch this root the root of all life with our own root, our heart, we touch our candle to His fire. We touch a power infinitely greater than nuclear power, the sun, or the Big Bang.
What power is that?
The Blood and Body of Christ.
Oh.
Your responses are getting wiser.
But we can't just sit around adoring all day.
Can you do it for one hour?
There's so much else to do. . . .
Yes there is, and that's why you can't afford not to give God five loaves and two fishes of your time so that He can multiply it. He really does, you know. Because it's His time is His gift to us, and it's precious to Him when we give it back to Him. Try it; you'll like it. Everything will fall into place once you acknowledge the Center.
You said earlier that we shouldn't do it for the sake of its payoffs.
No, but they will happen anyway, if we do it because it's right.
Suppose I don't feel a great desire for this form of prayer.
Then pray for the desire.
You've got an answer for everything, don't you?
No, but He does. Unless Philippians 4:19 is a lie. Do you believe it is?
No. . . .
Then you believe it's true.
Yes.
Then go. Do it.
I have no more excuses.
Then I'll see you in church.
patent
Have any of you ever been to a shrine or seen remains of a saint preserved, like Saint Clare or the many other saints? You are in awe of the sight; it is so amazing to see a saint right before your eyes. But you would agree that if you saw Christ walk into your room, it would be a more amazing sight. Did you know that you could see him every day of the year, and you would actually be able to touch him every day of the year expect Good Friday? It is that real.
Have you ever thought of the suffering of Christ and his crucifixion? I am sure you have a cross or a picture of it. That is the same body blood soul and divinity you receive every time you go to mass. That is his Sacred Heart, that is his hand or foot which was driven with a nail, or that is his blessed head which was pierced with thorns you receive.
If you are having trouble with realizing the real presence, and you are not alone, I would suggest spiritual reading before you go to mass that talks about the presence of Christ in Communion. I know it helped me a lot too.
Dominus Vobiscum.
The crisis of faith in the Church is a crisis of faith in Christ's real presence.
Hmmm, where have I seen this idea before? ;-)
Disclaimer: I do NOT want to stir up the dust storm from the other thread. Can we meet in the middle somewhere?
Sure, you sit between sitetest and I.
patent
Can we meet in the middle somewhere?
I don't want to be taken as being too flippant, though if that attitude ever fit a night on FR it would seem good for tonight, so I should provide a better answer to a fair question than my last answer.
The crisis of faith in the Church is a crisis of faith in Christ's real presence.I would agree that we do not appreciate what we have, and that far too many Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence. We live in a secularized age, one that refuses miracles, relies on skepticism, and will not believe that which it cannot touch or see. Belief in the Real Presence in this age is hard, and this has been brewing for some time in the West. By this, I mean decades, well prior to V2 and the Novus Ordo.
We discussed yesterday the issue of whether the Novus Ordo or V2 or something like that had caused a decline in faith in the Real Presence. I would expect there has been a decline in faith in the Real Presence. Just how much, I dont know, nor can I ever find anyone to answer that question.
I attribute the decline (that I expect is there) to many things. The changes in society, and the process by which those changes were allowed into the Church, being the largest factors in my view. You and I might disagree about how they were allowed into the Church. I cant speak for you, but from our discussions of late it seems you might place a fair amount of blame on the Novus Ordo and changes like that. I put some blame on that, but I can trace many of the problems back farther. We had Bishops who were dissenting long before the Weaklands and Mahoneys took office. They had their champions who moved them up the ecclesiastical ladder and made it possible for them to do the damage they did.
One was the ArchBishop (several archbishops ago by now) up here in my neck of the woods, he was a powerful kingmaker in the Church, and he put a lot of the people in place that put the dissenters we currently deal with in place. These people created an atmosphere of dissent in the American Church, theologically and morally. This all goes way back, nearly to the 1920s from what I can tell (though this is all sketchy). IMHO the only think that can be laid at the feet of the Novus Ordo is that given its four canons it is more open to disobedient innovations. I think many of the same things were going to happen to the Tridentine, and I think the dissenters would have corrupted our seminaries, our schools, and the like, regardless of what Rite of Mass was being said.
In fact, pointing to Bostons seminary (as just one example, I can point to ours here as well) it is clear that they did in fact do that, before the Rite changed.
Things are swinging back the other direction. Regarding the Bishops, we are getting better bishops these days, more or less. Im not happy with mine up here, but he is a clear step up from his immediate predecessor. Regarding faith in the Real Presence, I think it will get a little worse before it gets better, but I also think it is near the bottom of the pendulum, and all the parishes doing perpetual adoration are already pushing that upswing hard.
Dominus Vobiscum
patent +AMDG
Boston College is not a top Catholic university, your personal opinion notwithstanding.
You're a bit touchy. This is just a website, Smedley. We're not doing brain surgery here, of which you provide ample proof.
You're a fool Sinkspur, as anyone who has read your writings here well knows. Thank God your request for laicization was granted. I shudder to think of the tripe you would have been spewing from the pulpit under the guise of a homily every week.
You would be mistaken. I made the observation that Kreeft made a statement that is not true. You don't like it, too bad.
It doesn't meet the criteria of a lot of Catholics as a "top Catholic university" not just mine. Kreeft didn't make a general statement, he wrote that Boston College is one of America's top Catholic universities. In the secular world that may be accepted as a fact but in the world of Catholic academia it isn't and it shouldn't be, whether or not you think it's true. In the distant past, I would have agreed that Boston College was a top Catholic univeristy. That is no longer true.
Accepting Kreefts' claim without question, as some of the people on this thread have, indicates what kind of mediocrity passes as "top" in the world of Catholic education. It also shows how gullible some people are. Institutions claiming to be Catholic should be held to a higher standard, both moral and academic, not "generally accepted standards". A "top Catholic university" doesn't employ people like Mary Daly or Michael Himes, it doesn't bestow honorary doctorates to people like Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot and it doesn't allow people like Paul Cellucci to deliver commencement addresses. BC doesn't live up to his claim and that's a fact and I'm not the only Catholic who knows that.
Sunday´s Meaning Is Lost Without the Eucharist, Says Pope VATICAN CITY, JUNE 2, 2002 (Zenit.org).- Rediscovering the meaning of Sunday and of the Eucharist are urgent priorities for the Church, says John Paul II. On the solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Pope addressed several thousand pilgrims gathered in St. Peter´s Square to pray the midday Angelus. He explained from the window of his study that "the Eucharist is the beating center of the community," and "its most precious treasure: Christ really present under the species of consecrated bread and wine." Because of this John Paul II said, "I again proposed a reappraisal of Sunday and, in it, of the eucharistic celebration." He cited the recommendations in his 2001 apostolic letter "Novo Millennio Ineunte." "From the very beginning, from the early community of Jerusalem, Christians gathered on the day of the Lord to renew in the Holy Mass the memorial of the death and resurrection of Christ. Sunday is the day of rest and praise, but its real meaning is lost without the Eucharist," the Pontiff added. "Faith is necessary, or rather faith vivified by love is necessary, to explore the fascinating depth of this presence of Christ under the ´signs´ of bread and wine," said the Pope, who plans to write an encyclical on the Eucharist. "Only the one who believes and loves can understand something of the ineffable mystery, thanks to which God comes close to our littleness, seeks our infirmity, reveals himself for what he is, infinite saving love," the Holy Father added. Before bidding the pilgrims farewell, the Holy Father, who sounded tired but wished to remain with the faithful, greeted groups from Ukraine, Spain and Italy, and reminded them that the month of June is traditionally dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. "May each one be able to receive constant help from that inexhaustible source of grace to grow in love and in generous service to one´s neighbor," he concluded. |
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John Paul II's Angelus address, Solemnity of Corpus Christi, Sunday, 2 June 2002
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
1. Today in Italy and in some other countries the Solemnity of Corpus Christi is being celebrated. The Christian community gathers round the Eucharist and in it adores its most precious treasure: Christ really present under the appearances of bread and wine.
The whole People of God comes out of the churches and carries the Blessed Sacrament through the streets and squares of the city. The Risen Christ walks the highways of humanity and continues to offer his "flesh" to human beings as the true "Bread of Life" (cf. Jn 6,48.51). Just as was the case 2,000 years ago, "this is a hard saying" (Jn 6,60) for human intelligence which is overwhelmed by the mystery.
To explore the fascinating depths of Christ's presence under the "signs" of the bread and the wine, faith is necessary, or rather faith animated by love. Only those who believe and love can understand something of this ineffable mystery through which God draws close to our littleness, seeks to save our weakness, and reveals himself for what he is: infinite, saving love.
2. For this reason the Eucharist is the beating heart of the community. From the very outset, ever since the primitive community of Jerusalem, Christians have gathered on the Lord's Day to renew at Mass the memorial of Christ's Death and Resurrection. "Sunday" is the day of rest and praise, but without the Eucharist it loses its real meaning. Therefore, in the Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio ineunte, I again proposed as a primary pastoral commitment the recovery of the value of Sunday and, of the Eucharistic celebration on the day: "it is a fundamental duty, to be fulfilled not just in order to observe a precept but as something felt as essential to a truly informed and consistent Christian life" (n. 36).
3. In adoring the Eucharist we can only think with gratitude of the Virgin Mary. The famous Eucharistic hymn that we often sing suggests this: "Ave verum corpus / natum de Maria Virgine" (Hail true Body, born of the Virgin Mary). Today, let us ask the Mother of the Lord to obtain that everyone may taste the sweetness of communion with Jesus and, thanks to the Bread of eternal life, receive a share in his mystery of salvation and holiness.
After leading the prayer of the Angelus, the Holy Father greeted the pilgrims in Italian and Spanish. Here is a translation of his Italian remarks.
I affectionately greet Italians today and express my best wishes to them for today's national holiday. May God grant Italy peace and prosperity!
I also greet with affection the group of Ukrainians of the Greek-Catholic communities of Naples and Rome, whom I cordially bless, together with their family members in Ukraine. Dear friends, may faith always sustain you in every day life.
In greeting the Italian-speaking pilgrims present, I recall that the month of June is traditionally dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. May each one draw from this inexhaustible source of grace constant help to progress in love and in generous service to neighbour.
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From Inside the Vatican, June-July 2002, pg. 66: [emphasis mine - ELS]
One of Rome's busiest thoroughfares became a via sacra on the Feast of Corpus Christi, when Pope John Paul II processed with the Blessed Sacrament from St. John Lateran to St. Mary Major.
Crowds of people stood along the street and hung out of their apartment windows, praying and singing as the Holy Father knelt in adoration before the Eucharist, both moving slowly through the crowd on a canopied vehicle.
An estimated 20,000 people participated in the annual Eucharistic procession through Rome. The tradition, which began in the 15th century, was revived by John Paul II after it had been abandoned for more than 100 years after the papacy's loss of control over the city of Rome.
Let me know when or if you've ever spent any time in a seminary, pal.
Your idea of doing God's Will is insulting other Catholics.
Let me know when or if you've ever spent any time in a seminary, pal.
Your idea of doing God's Will is insulting other Catholics.
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