"Eucharist"

[spedteacherita]

We don’t worship the Eucharist , but we believe Christ is physically present in the elements in with and under the elements .

What SWF2 said. We definitely do not worship the Eucharist but understand that Christ is present in this sacrament. For me, it is a tangible experience of Christ - one that I am prepared for as I confess my sins, am absolved of these sins by my pastor and experience God’s grace as I go forward and am given the bread and wine (body and blood) of Christ. It’s an awesome part of our worship service!

God bless!

Rita

 

[DebChris]

At the Last Supper, Jesus said, “This is my Body which is to be given up for you” and “This is my Blood, the sign of a new and everlasting covenant.”

The disciples on the way to Emmaus recognized Jesus only in the breaking of the bread, at which point they returned to Jerusalem to recount all that He had said. “Were our hearts not burning?” as he opened the Scriptures to them.

St. Paul in his instructions to the Corinthians on how to behave in the assembly reminds them that they are indeed eating at the “Lord’s table.” While the Israelites wandered in the desert, they ate manna yet died. St. Paul reminds the new Christians of the importance of approaching the table worthily, of self-examination, for it is indeed the Lord that provides nourishment for the journey. That nourishment is not temporal, but it is Christ Himself.

The word, “Eucharist,” means thanksgiving. We celebrate the Salvation that we have received through the Loving Sacrifice of Our Lord. Each time that we receive the Eucharist, we do indeed Christ into our own bodies. He is our spiritual food, which unlike manna does not disappear after a day, but continues to nourish us. We adore Christ veiled in the form of Bread when we kneel before the Host exposed. Jesus Christ is the Word Incarnate. As the Gospel of John tells us, In the beginning was the Word…and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

 

[Gorgias]

Starwarsfan2:

We don’t worship the Eucharist

What SWF2 said. We definitely do not worship the Eucharist but understand that Christ is present in this sacrament.

I missed addressing this one in SWF2’s post. Yes, we do ‘worship’ the Eucharist. It’s easy to demonstrate:

(1) Who is it that Catholics worship? (God.)
(2) Is the Real Presence of Christ what Catholics believe regarding the Eucharist? (Yes.)
(3) Is Christ ‘God’? (Yes.)

Therefore, Catholics worship the Eucharist, since the Eucharist ‘is’ Christ and Christ is God.

So, on this count as well, SWF2 & Rita don’t exactly get it right.

However, what is being suggested in this accusation is that some accuse Catholics of idolatry – that is, worshiping something other than God. SWF2 is correct in asserting that we do not commit idolatry – that is, we do not worship ‘bread’ and ‘wine’. Rather, we worship Jesus, truly present in the Eucharist.

 

[Seachange]

Originally Posted by Starwarsfan2
We don’t worship the Eucharist

SWF2 and Rita are Lutherans so they are answering for the Lutheran church, not the Catholic.

Only those priests whose ordination ‘lineage’ can be traced back through the Bishops directly to an Apostle can confect the Eucharist.

For everyone else, the bread and wine remain bread and wine and the communion is symbolic, spiritual, not the Actual Body and Blood of Christ. This is not to denigrate Spiritual Communion which can be very powerful.

Apostolic Succession

Apostolic succession is the line of bishops stretching back to the apostles. All over the world, all Catholic bishops are part of a lineage that goes back to the time of the apostles, something that is impossible in Protestant denominations (most of which do not even claim to have bishops).

We call the process by which the bread and wine are changed Transubstantiation.
Using the philosophical terms, substance and accident, the accidents of bread and wine remain while the substance has been changed to the Body and Blood of Christ.

This basic notion of Aristotle’s logic reflects the basic distinction in the way reality is stuctured and reflects the basic way that we view reality. The fundamental distinction is between substance and accident. Substance is whatever is a natural kind of thing and exists in its own right. Examples are rocks, trees, animals, etc. What an animal is, a dog for example, is basically the same whether it is black or brown, here or there, etc. A dog is a substance since it exists in its own right; it does not exist in something else, the way a color does.
<…>
Accidents are the modifications that substance undergo, but that do not change the kind of thing that each substance is. Accidents only exist when they are the accidents of some substance. Examples are colors, weight, motion. For Aristotle there are 10 categories into which things naturally fall. They are

Substance, and
Nine Accidents:
    Quantity,
    Quality,
    Relation,
    Action,
    Passion,
    Time,
    Place,
    Disposition (the arrangement of parts), and
    Rainment (whether a thing is dressed or armed, etc.)

All these distinctions are basically logical, but in a sense they reflect the structure of reality. One never finds any substance that we experience without some accidents, nor an accident that is not the accident of a substance. Every dog, for instance, has some color, place, size. Nevertheless, it is obvious that what a dog is is not the same as its color, or its size, etc.

Catholic Answers Tract Eucharist

Eucharist (Gr. eucharistia, thanksgiving), the name given to the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar under its twofold aspect of sacrament and Sacrifice of the Mass, and in which, whether as sacrament or sacrifice, Jesus Christ is truly present under the appearances of bread and wine.

(bolding mine)

not just symbolically present or spiritually present as He is with us everywhere, but physically Present in reality.

The Eucharist IS Jesus, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.

 

[KjetilK]

We don’t worship the Eucharist , but we believe Christ is physically present in the elements in with and under the elements .

Well, we DO worship Christ in the Eucharist, at Mass. That has always been Lutheran practice. And though it isn’t the norm for Lutheran congregations to hold special Adoration services, there is nothing principally wrong with it, and there are Lutheran congregations - even within the LCMS - that do so. Many have unfortunately followed the false teachings of Melanchthon on this issue, especially his blasphemous caricature of eucharistic adoration as ‘bread worship,’ but I wouldn’t call them Lutherans.

 

[JonNC]

Well, we DO worship Christ in the Eucharist, at Mass. That has always been Lutheran practice. And though it isn’t the norm for Lutheran congregations to hold special Adoration services, there is nothing principally wrong with it, and there are Lutheran congregations - even within the LCMS - that do so. Many have unfortunately followed the false teachings of Melanchthon on this issue, especially his blasphemous caricature of eucharistic adoration as ‘bread worship,’ but I wouldn’t call them Lutherans.

Agreed.

Jon

 

[KjetilK]

The Eucharist may also be meant by “our daily bread” in the Lord’s Prayer, Matthew 6:11; Luke 11:3.

Well, only in a figurative way. And if this is a reference to Jerome’s supersubstantialis (cf. “give us this day our supersubstantial bread” in the version of Matt 6:11Douay-Rheims Bible), then I thik that you have been misled. This probably rests upon a misunderstanding of the latin wordsupersubstantialis. One assumes, because of the substantialis, that St. Jerome (who produced the Vulgete translation) had the Eucharist in mind. And perhaps he did, in a figurative way. But that is another matter entirely.

I agree that on some level this is a reference to the Eucharist, since it is talking about bread. (This would be a spiritual reading of the text.) But neither the latin supersubstantialis nor the greek ἐπιούσιος (epioúsios) is a reference to transubstantiation. According to BDAG, there is some doubt as to what ἐπιούσιος means, but the three most probable possibilities is these: (1) [bread] that is necessary for existence; (2) [bread] for the current day, for today; or (3) [bread] for the next day.

I think that the first reading is the best one, seeing the Greek adjective ἐπιούσιος as derived from the preposition ἐπί (’at, over, to,’ etc.) + the noun οὐσία (‘being, existence’). This is reflected in the Vulgate’s panis supersubstantialis. That doesn’t, however, have anything to do with transubstantiation. It just means the bread needed for existence; needed to uphold one’s ‘substance.’ In one of the shows at Catholic Answers Live, Jimmy Akin said that supersubstantialis had nothing to do with transubstantiation, and that the best rendition of it in English was ‘life-sustaining.’

So a good translation might go something like this: “Give us this day our life-sustaining bread.”

That doesn’t mean, however, that one cannot interpret ‘give us this day our daily bread’ in a spiritual way, referring to the Eucharist, in addition to a literal reading. But that is a spiritual reading of the text, a reading that should not trump a literal reading.

 

[Gorgias]

SWF2 and Rita are Lutherans so they are answering for the Lutheran church, not the Catholic.

Fair enough… although there are Lutherans on this thread who have already replied to your post that [Christ in] the Eucharist is worshipped in their tradition.

not just symbolically present or spiritually present as He is with us everywhere

I’m not saying Christ is only “symbolically” or “spiritually” present in the Eucharist.

, but physically Present in reality.

But, I am saying that ‘physically’ is the wrong description, at least from the perspective of mode of presence.

Is Christ really present? Yep. Is He truly present? Yep. Is the presence one of body, blood, soul, and divinity? Yep. Is it a physical presence, though? Nope. It’s a sacramental presence. In the Eucharist, the Real Presence of Christ exists sacramentally: the substance of Christ is made present under the appearance of bread and wine. It’s truly Christ, but all those ‘accidents’ that you mentioned in your post are present as accidents of bread and wine. (It’s no longer ‘bread’ or ‘wine’, of course – but those are the physical accidents present.)

Big difference from saying “physically present.” I get it, though: if you use you terms a bit sloppily, hearing “sacramental mode of presence” sounds like you’re hearing “not really and truly present”… but that’s not what’s being said.

 

[paperwight66]

I’m not saying Christ is only “symbolically” or “spiritually” present in the Eucharist.

But, I am saying that ‘physically’ is the wrong description, at least from the perspective of mode of presence.

Is Christ really present? Yep. Is He truly present? Yep. Is the presence one of body, blood, soul, and divinity? Yep. Is it a physical presence, though? Nope. It’s a sacramental presence. In the Eucharist, the Real Presence of Christ exists sacramentally: the substance of Christ is made present under the appearance of bread and wine. It’s truly Christ, but all those ‘accidents’ that you mentioned in your post are present as accidents of bread and wine. (It’s no longer ‘bread’ or ‘wine’, of course – but those are the physical accidents present.)

Big difference from saying “physically present.” I get it, though: if you use you terms a bit sloppily, hearing “sacramental mode of presence” sounds like you’re hearing “not really and truly present”… but that’s not what’s being said.

Thank you so much for this explanation, Gorgias.

I was going to post something similar, in response to a post upthread which claims Jesus is ‘physically’ present, but you have explained it so much better.

It seems to me that some Catholics think there are only two realities, the spiritual and the physical. As you say, the point of the Real Presence is that it is another type of being present, a sacramental presence. Claiming that Jesus is physically present is saying that He is subject to decay, and also that He is limited to the space He takes up in our world - which is plainly nonsense, for how could He then be present in Tabernacles all over the world and still be complete?

Saying that Jesus is not physically present in the Blessed Sacrament is not saying that He is not present at all. It is not denying the Real Presence as some seem to think. In case someone is assuming this is some kind of new-fangled heresy, I would advise them to consult the Baltimore Catechism, which ought to be conservative enough for anyone. In its section on the Blessed Sacrament, absolutely nowhere is the claim made that the Presence is a physical one. The ‘accidents’ are physically present, yes.

Which is why I cringe when I see reports of ‘Eucharistic miracles’ detailing type of heart muscle, blood group and the like.

 

[KjetilK]

SWF2 and Rita are Lutherans so they are answering for the Lutheran church, not the Catholic.

There is no such thing as ‘the Lutheran Church,’ just as there is no such thing as ‘the Byzantine Church’ or ‘the Markonite Church.’

Fair enough… although there are Lutherans on this thread who have already replied to your post that [Christ in] the Eucharist is worshipped in their tradition.

Which is the Lutheran tradition. If SWF2 and Rita states that their Church do not worship Christ in the Eucharist, even during Mass, then their respective churches aren’t Lutherans. They might be ‘Philipists.’ But I suspect that what they actually mean is that they do not have special adoration services.

 

[Starwarsfan2]

There is no such thing as ‘the Lutheran Church,’ just as there is no such thing as ‘the Byzantine Church’ or ‘the Markonite Church.’

Which is the Lutheran tradition. If SWF2 and Rita states that their Church do not worship Christ in the Eucharist, even during Mass, then their respective churches aren’t Lutherans. They might be ‘Philipists.’ But I suspect that what they actually mean is that they do not have special adoration services.

I’m not a phillipist , I said I worship Christ who is physically present in the Eucharist,

 

[KjetilK]

I’m not a phillipist , I said I worship Christ who is physically present in the Eucharist,

Yes, that is what I suspected, hence my last sentence.

 

[KathleenGee]

The other night I was inducted into an apostolate where we had our 3 bishops present.

Our head bishop was sharing with us…if he were to go to heaven…he hopes and we do, too…that he would like to see the apostle who initiated the laying on of hands that ordained and then passed on to the bishops, each successor to the apostles.

It is this laying on of hands that is the final criteria for apostolic ordination to turn ordinary bread and wine into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.

Communion is just that: our communion in the Holy Trinity actualized by His Divine Presence and authorized by the laying on of hands.