If the Eucharist is Jesus

[Pancras]

I am not sure if this was correctly directed to me; however, we are in full agreement and I said almost the exact same things you have here.

Dear irishpatrick,

My post may have appeared to have been directed at you, but I was really replying to millstreet, to whom you had replied. That’s why I included his post in the quote that I posted from your reply, when the system would automatically have deleted his contribution. He had asked a question there, to which you provided your answer, but I thought that he might not have been able to comprehend your terse reply. Since I thought I knew what you were referring to with those few words, I offered a more extensive response, in hopes that it might help answer millstreet’s uncertainty or query. Since you have replied that we are in complete agreement, I am happy to see that I was not presuming incorrectly. I hope I did not interfere with your conversation. I was only trying to fill out some details that would help to answer millstreet’s question more completely. Now, I suppose it’s possible that millstreet doesn’t know that I replied to his post. Perhaps he is waiting for an e-mail to his tablet or iPhone alerting him to a response to his post which he won’t receive because my format indicates to the system that I was replying to you. I didn’t think of that. But since I don’t know how the system works, I’m not sure if this is correct or what.
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[Pancras]

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This thread has been a very nice example of Catholic doctrine in action, it seems to me, and I’d like to thank all the contributors, especially irishpatrick and R_C and djeter.
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[Pancras]

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I’m having a very hard time posting right now because the format features do not work, the smileys do not post, and every time I click “post reply” or “save changes” or whatever, it takes about 1 or 2 minutes before the little hurricane circle stops spinning and the new page appears. In the meantime, I get tired waiting and so I have 3 tabs open with 3 threads and 3 conversations going on at the same time, which I’m not used to doing so it’s getting a bit challenging.

For example, I just typed a 200-word response to a thread, and right clicked to select all, copy, and save changes. Right click takes 10 seconds to get the pop-up menu. Clicking on Select All has no effect for another 20 seconds. Copy, same thing. Then Save Changes takes about 2 minutes to process. So I went to the other threads while waiting for these things. By the time the changes were supposedly processed, there had been 21 minutes elapsed since the post was first made, and my 200-word edit disappeared, since what was on my clipboard was a quote from a different thread, somehow. I’m not sure how that happened.

So I would have posted a smiley as the “forum rules” suggest, after my previous post, but like I said, the smileys are not working right now.

We should keep in mind that when it comes to the Blessed Sacrament, we don’t have to worry about technical details like whether the smileys are working or if your Internet connection is okay or whether you’re running out of battery power or maybe you have a system error or malware or virus blocking update in process.

The Blessed Sacrament is the real presence of Our Lord, and it’s that simple. No glitches, no software issues, no malfunction.
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[FrMatthewLC]

I have to admit that I haven;t read all the posts on this thread so I’m not going to respond to them. I saw the first post on the forum and it screamed out for the blog I wrote this week on why adoration is so attractive to young people and affects them so powerfully. I just thought I’d share.

p.s. I’m not new to the forum, I’m just trying to get my account switched over as I had a different account as a religious brother.

In Christ,
Fr Matthew P. Schneider, LC

 

[glendab]

Hello Irish.

It seems to me that the Eucharist is the single most powerful tool for Evangelizing, because if the Eucharist is what the Church claims–than that means it is (God), and all believers of all faiths should want to partake of that amazing Grace-filled and saving gift. However, if the Eucharist is merely bread and wine, than for all the history of the Church, Catholics would have been routinely committing grave sin by worshipping falsely.

I think it is a simple proposition…if the Catholic Church is correct about the Eucharist (which obviously stems from Jesus’s teachings and statements, and Scripture), than everyone should be Catholic.

I beg to differ. The single most powerful tool that we have for Evangelization is the Holy Spirit. He it is who fills the world with His Love and opens the minds and hearts of men to hear the Word of God and act on it. It is He Who as Promised by God would be our Advocate and would “speak” in ways the heart hears so when the person whose heart has been touched by the Holy Spirit hears someone talk of God and His Church can hear and respond in a way that moves them to His Church and the Sacraments. This Sunday’s Reading bare witness to this for it was the Holy Spirit that didn’t have the Apostles speaking all the different languages but rather those listening could hear in their native tongues what the Apostles said in their own languages. Get it? It also says that hearts are turned to discovering that Jesus is God by the Holy Spirit. This means God is still working but in ways we don’t so easily see or recognize these days.

The Eucharist is both source and summit of our faith. It is only 1 of seven Sacraments though. God is equally present in all the Sacraments yet the Eucharist is a visible one that remains with us every day. It takes some degree of faith to see Him there. And I think it is by the Holy Spirit that He is revealed in that Sacrament to men and women in the fullness of their own particular time if they prepare for it. Your faith is greater than when you first believed, I assume, as it is for me too. This is the working of the Spirit in our lives. See what I mean?

Glenda

 

[irishpatrick]

Hello Irish.

I beg to differ. The single most powerful tool that we have for Evangelization is the Holy Spirit. He it is who fills the world with His Love and opens the minds and hearts of men to hear the Word of God and act on it. It is He Who as Promised by God would be our Advocate and would “speak” in ways the heart hears so when the person whose heart has been touched by the Holy Spirit hears someone talk of God and His Church can hear and respond in a way that moves them to His Church and the Sacraments. This Sunday’s Reading bare witness to this for it was the Holy Spirit that didn’t have the Apostles speaking all the different languages but rather those listening could hear in their native tongues what the Apostles said in their own languages. Get it? It also says that hearts are turned to discovering that Jesus is God by the Holy Spirit. This means God is still working but in ways we don’t so easily see or recognize these days.

The Eucharist is both so

urce and summit of our faith. It is only 1 of seven Sacraments though. God is equally present in all the Sacraments yet the Eucharist is a visible one that remains with us every day. It takes some degree of faith to see Him there. And I think it is by the Holy Spirit that He is revealed in that Sacrament to men and women in the fullness of their own particular time if they prepare for it. Your faith is greater than when you first believed, I assume, as it is for me too. This is the working of the Spirit in our lives. See what I mean?

Glenda

The Holy Spirit is God, Jesus is God–the three persons in God are equal. Therefore, the Eucharist (being God) is of utmost importance because people who receive in a state of Grace are spiritually and physically in Communion with God. Many non-Catholic Christians are guided by the Holy Spirit, yet Catholics have the amazing opportunity to be guided by the Holy Spirit AND by the Risen Lord in the Eucharist. Catholics truly Communion (physically and spiritually) with God, not just spiritually, they have the mystery of receiving both.

In a very real way, when we receive the Eucharist, we are similar to the Apostles, in that we are physically and spiritually with our Lord. God is Present in all Sacraments, yet He is most fully Present in the Eucharist, in which He is Present in His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. There is a reason the Eucharist is called the source and summit of our faith. Jesus said we have no life in us if we do not receive–powerful words, powerful realities.

It was Jesus who said He would said the paracleate, the helpmate (the Holy Spirit); however, Jesus also said He would personally remain with us, and He does that through the Eucharist.

Further, the Eucharist is not just one of the Sacraments as the Catechism points out:

*1324 The Eucharist is "the source and summit of the Christian life."136 "The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch."137

1325 "The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God’s action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit."138

1327 In brief, the Eucharist is the sum and summary of our faith: "Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking."140 *

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*1373 “Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us,” is present in many ways to his Church:197 in his word, in his Church’s prayer, "where two or three are gathered in my name,"199 in the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned,199 in the sacraments of which he is the author, in the sacrifice of the Mass, and in the person of the minister. **But "he is present . . . most especially in the Eucharistic species."200 **

1374 The mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as "the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend."201 In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained."202 "This presence is called ‘real’ - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be ‘real’ too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present."203 *