Is Eucharistic Adoration idolatry?

[st_felicity]

In John 6 …67 Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” 68 Simon Peter answered him, "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

And in John 14 Last Supper Discourse
Jesus answered and said to him, "Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.

 

[Lisa4Catholics]

michaelp:

Hey all, I think that this has no where to go but into circles now. We have given each other enough to chew on (pardon again ).

Thanks for the great discussion on this thread. Lisa has given us a good place to stop. Please PM her. But just pray for the grace part, you don’t have to fill in the blanks!!

Michael

Oh, no you don’t Michael I am requesting that people pray for you to recieve the grace to believe in the Holy Eucharist:tsktsk: PM me anyone who would like to participate in requesting that our Lord give Michael the grace to believe in the Gift of the Eucharist. God Bless

 

[MariaG]

posted by Michaelp

Yes, but being a heritic does not mean that you have EVERYTHING wrong and everything that you have ever said is invalidated does it? In other words, if someone held to a heretical teaching sometime in their life, does that mean that everything that they ever believed is of no historic value at all? This seems to be what you are implying.

No. What I meant was that there was a time when Tertullian broke with the Church. Why? Because he did not agree. Some of the things he wrote after, were clearly heretical. I was saying I did not know when those writings you quoted were written. Before the break or after.

It appears from this article newadvent.org/cathen/14520c.htm that it he had not yet formally broken with the Church, however, he was with a group whose teachings were later declared wrong (around 206).

However in paragraph 16 of the article, it talks about Tertullian teaching not only the Real Presence, but transubstantiation.

And the fact remains, that the Catholic Church has never changed its position on the Real presence. While someone today may be able to go back and *reinterpret *the writings, there was no confusion on what the writings meant from then until now except by the Protestants.

Frankly Michael, this is just a high brow intellectual attempt of a non-Catholic coming along and trying to tell Catholics what they Really believe. A very pleasant, polite one, but still someone trying to tell Catholics what Catholics really teach.

The Catholic Church reserves the right to interpret herself. In fact, the Catholic Church has not “interpreted” these teachings from the church fathers, but simply passed them down.

As to the link you gave me for Webster, here is a quote from him:
the-highway.com/eucharist_Webster.html

Clement of Alexandria (150-211/216 A.D.) also called the bread and wine symbols of the body and blood of Christ, and taught that the communicant received not the physical but the spiritual life of Christ.8 Origen (185-253/254 A.D.), likewise, speaks in distinctively spiritual and allegorical terms when referring to the eucharist.

yet from CA here catholic.com/library/Real_Presence.asp

**Clement of Alexandria **

“’Eat my flesh,’ [Jesus] says, ‘and drink my blood.’ The Lord supplies us with these intimate nutrients, he delivers over his flesh and pours out his blood, and nothing is lacking for the growth of his children” (*The Instructor of Children *1:6:43:3 [A.D. 191]).

Saying one statement out of context does not mean a church father taught that it was ONLY symbolic. Yet that is what Webster is implying. Clearly, Clement did not hold to an only symbolic view of the Eucharist.

God Bless,
Maria

 

[Lisa4Catholics]

st_felicity:

Poor Felicity…:crying: I guess I’m just not one of the “Elect”…:crying:

Yes you are My sister:thumbsup: Grace is needed here, he can’t see what is right in front of him PM me we will go into spiritual battle God Bless

 

[Ani_Ibi]

**1) he who comes to Me will not hunger **

michaelp:

Comes=eating in the context. This is parallel, meaning that they both represent the same thing.

I have just explained to you that they are not parallel. You have wrongly used the term ‘parallel,’ yet you persist.

**2) he who believes in Me will never thirst **

michaelp:

Believe=drinking (to satify the thirst). This is parallel, meaning they both represnt the same thing.

Again, you have wrongly used the term ‘parallel,’ yet you persist.
Ani Ibi:
(1) is parallel to (2).

michaelp:

Agreed, VERY good! I am impressed!!

Your airs of being the teacher here are utterly unjustifiable. The tone of your response drips with sarcasm and insincerity, which are notably not characteristics associated with the teaching profession. I notice that I am not the first to pick up on this latest approach of yours.

As for agreeing and being impressed: I find it difficult to believe that anyone would say something so stunningly self-contradictory.

’(1) is parallel to (2)’ means that clause one which says ‘He who comes to Me will not hunger’ is parallel to clause two which says ‘He who believes in Me will never thirst.’

You claim to agree with me that clause one is parallel to clause two, yet you persist that the parallels are between the verbs ‘comes’ and ‘eating’ and ‘believe and ‘drinking.’

My claims and your claim are mutually exclusive: As such, you cannot reasonably agree with both claims. Perhaps, then, you do not agree with your own claim?
Ani Ibi:
If it seems so clear to you then why have you failed to explain it?

michaelp:

That is a purely subjective statement.

This is merely yet another tiresome evasion on your part; heavy on rhetoric, light on logic, and devoid of supportive argumentation. The explanation I gave was objective, clear, and supported. The explanation you gave – **based as it was on a totally wrong use of the term ‘parallel’ – **could not have been more unclear.
Ani Ibi:
And as for the grammatical part of your historical-grammatical-cultural-literary hermeneutic: where is it?

michaelp:

That is what we are talking about. Grammer includes syntax.

So where does your previous post demonstrate knowledge of syntax? Parallel structure is a core skill in writing effectively. You have demonstrated unequivocally, in plain view, that you do not know what parallel structure is.

Your claim is to a historical-grammatical-cultural-literary hermeneutic. I have called your claim to the grammatical part of that field of inquiry into doubt.

 

[st_felicity]

Lisa4Catholics:

Yes you are My sister:thumbsup: Grace is needed here, he can’t see what is right in front of him PM me we will go into spiritual battle God Bless

Already done!!! Check your mail!

You can’t escape Michael…The Rosary is a serious weapon!

 

[Genesis315]

michaelp:

All I can say at this point is that it cannot be literal since the disciples did not begin to eat Christ and since John does not even record the last supper.

Remember, Christ, in context, was not looking ahead necessarily to the last supper, but behind to the manna in the wilderness. He was identifying himself with the manna. If he were speaking literally, the manna and water in the wilderness would have to be
His literal body and blood as well. Exegetically, this would be more plausible, but it is still insufficient since there would be not implications to his present audience. They did not know what He was talking about, and wern’t willing to stick around to find out like the other disciples were.

Check out these parallels:

47 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.

51 “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”

As well, same context:
**John 6:29 **29 Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”

Belief is mentioned alone.

But this is the most important. Same context:

**John 6:35 **35 Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.

Notice how hunger (eat) is directly parallel to “comes to Me” and thirst (drink) is directly parallel to “believes in Me.”

It seems pretty clear what He is talking about. This is probebly why the disciples did not ask for a bite of his leg.

Michael

I still don’t understand why the dsciples would have left if he was speaking symbolically. If they had the wrong idea, why would Jesus let them leave. Why would he lose followers over a misunderstanding?

 

[MariaG]

Michael

source newadvent.org/cathen/05573a.htm
It is true that even among the Semites, and in Scripture itself, the phrase, “to eat some one’s flesh", has a figurative meaning, namely, "to persecute, to bitterly hate some one”. If, then, the words of Jesus are to be taken figuratively, it would appear that Christ had promised to His enemies eternal life and a glorious resurrection in recompense for the injuries and persecutions directed against Him.

God Bless,
Maria

 

[st_felicity]

Genesis315:

I still don’t understand why the dsciples would have left if he was speaking symbolically. If they had the wrong idea, why would Jesus let them leave. Why would he lose followers over a misunderstanding?

That’s it EXACTLY. No one seems to get it and Michal won’t explain it for us…:yawn: I am so tired…gotta get to bed–maybe there will be an answer in the morning…

Join us in the prayers for the grace of Faith in the Real Presence for Michael–3:00 daily!

G’NITE!

 

[MariaG]

Michael,

As to Augustine and his view

newadvent.org/cathen/05573a.htm

The position held by St. Augustine is at present the subject of a spirited controversy, since the adversaries of the Church rather confidently maintain that he favored their side of the question in that he was an out-and-out “Symbolist”. In the opinion of Loofs (“Dogmengeschichte”, 4th ed., Halle, 1906, p. 409), St. Augustine never gives, the “reception of the true Body and Blood of Christ” a thought; and this view Ad. Harnack (Dogmengeschichte, 3rd ed., Freiburg, 1897, III, 148) emphasizes when he declares that St. Augustine “undoubtedly was one in this respect with the so-called pre-Reformation and with Zwingli”. Against this rather hasty conclusion Catholics first of all advance the undoubted fact that Augustine demanded that Divine worship should be rendered to the Eucharistic Flesh (In Ps. xxxiii, enarr., i, 10), and declared that at the Last Supper “Christ held and carried Himself in His own hands” (In Ps. xcviii, n. 9). They insist, and rightly so, that** it is not fair to separate this great Doctor’s teaching concerning the Eucharist from his doctrine of the Holy Sacrifice, since he clearly and unmistakably asserts that the true Body and Blood are offered in the Holy Mass.** The variety of extreme views just mentioned requires that an attempt be made at a reasonable and unbiased explanation, whose verification is to be sought for and found in the acknowledged fact that a gradual process of development took place in the mind of St. Augustine

Once again, context is everything.

God Bless,
Maria

 

[Ani_Ibi]

michaelp:

Baseless statement with nothing but your subjective opinion to back it up.

Nice try, but unfortunately the truth shall show your claim for what it is: a baseless statement with nothing but your subjective opinion to back it up.

Now you like giving us homework; here’s some homework for you:

Read everything you’ve written so far. Read how, instead of listening to the others and responding directly to each point they raise, you evade their points, ignore their requests, condescend to them, and indulge a taste for tautology. Read how, when their responses to you demonstrate solid argumentation, good referencing, and clear writing, you suddenly get busy or take offence where none is given or relanguage what the others are saying.

It appears to me that Catholic Answers Forum is for you, not a opportunity for discussion, but a platform for your views.

CONDUCT RULES
4. Do not view the discussion area as a vehicle for single-mindedly promoting an agenda.

1. Non-Catholics are welcome to participate but must be respectful of the faith of the Catholics participating on the board.

 

[hlgomez]

What do you mean, the Eucharist is Jesus. I don’t understand. Jesus is a divine person. The Eucharist is, at most, Jesus’ flesh and blood. I don’t understand how the two can be equal. My human person resides in my flesh and blood, but my flesh and blood are not “me”.

---

– Angainor

Angainor,

Blessings in Christ!

You seem to confuse even your very being! You say, how can your flesh and blood be “you”? Are you confusing your very person, or have you lost your identity? If your flesh and blood is not “you” then you aren’t yourself! Without your flesh and blood you don’t exist as a person. For God has created you whole as a person, not parts. Your very person is entire–body and soul (with your blood of course, if I may sound foolish).

We say the Eucharist is worthy of worship and adoration-for it is Christ himself substantially present. We may call it Eucharist-for indeed it is. It is no longer mere bread and wine. For what is the distinction? Right after the consecration it is changed permanently into His Body and Blood.

If one can not believe that it is Jesus in the Eucharist, then how can one believe that God Almighty became man? Christ becoming man precedes the Eucharistic Lord. For it will be hard for us to understand the Eucharist if Christ didn’t became man.

I urge you brother to pray for understanding. If you try to understand it by your own–you can never do it. For no man did it by himself to believe. Believing is a gift from God–so that NO ONE MAY BOAST BEFORE HIM. If you are sincere in you faith, ask God why He is truly present there. He will give you answers.

Pio

 

[Ben_Trovato]

Greetings, Michael–

michaelp:

Hey all, I think that this has no where to go but into circles now.

New here. Been reading in this thread, and this seems like a good place to jump in, if that’s ok with everybody? I’ll wait.

OK, no objections…

Well then – it really doesn’t have to go in circles. The question doesn’t resolve itself on a close reading of John. Clearly the disciples were scandalized. Clearly Jesus meant them to be. If He’d let them wander away because they mistook a figure of speech, He stands convicted of being a lousy preacher and not much of a savior. Is it to be believed that He let them walk away because He did something rhetorically cute, and they weren’t clever enough to pick up on the fact that He was merely talking about a future memorial feast? The only way the savior lets us walk away is if we understand, and cannot bear, cannot accept what we have understood. We have to reject.

I’m troubled by the recurring literalism in the thread. Surely you are aware of figuralism as a fundamental part of Catholic thinking, that the same pattern, the same underlying force deploys itself over and over again in history, so that when the Eucharist is offered up, it is not a memorial or a re-creation of the Sacrifice, but another primary instance of the Thing Itself. You’ve heard about that, right? Just as human love is both original and eternal: the love between a husband and wife today is the same as the love their grandparents had for each other, the same as the love the bridegroom had for the bride in the Song of Songs, the same as the love Christ has for His bride, the Church. Each sound healthy love is a new and original instancing of Love. The accidents change, but the substance is the same.

Somebody earlier in the thread mentioned the difficulty of thinking with the heart. Imagination and poetry are the necessary companions of scholarship for sound learning.

Peace,

Ben

 

[st_felicity]

John begins his gospel pointing out Jesus is the WORD of God and IS God.

Jesus’ words in John 6:

27 Do not work for food that perishes but for food that endures for eternal life.

45 listen

47 believes

48 I am the bread

50 bread of heaven…eat

51 I am…bread…whoever eats…the bread…is my flesh

52 “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”(—they understood him literally)

53 unless you eat…flesh…drink his blood…you do not have life

54 eats my flesh…drinks my blood

55 flesh is true food…blood is true drink

56 eats my flesh…drinks my blood

57 the one who feeds on me will have life

58 eat this bread

Jesus’ words say EAT = munch, gnaw. This is absolutely concrete—NO symbolism, NO figurative language—EAT–DRINK. Jesus’ words wouldn’t even make sense if they were taken figuratively—“disrespect me and you have life”??? NO—He spoke PLAINLY. They did not “come up and bite Jesus” because **they were flabbergasted ***(it is ridiculous to even entertain this point—it’s a red herring, a poor attempt to derail the argument into absurdity, and disrespectful—if you really think this point is worthy of discussion, I have given you more credit than you deserve)—*they believed He was saying He expected them to LITERALLY EAT HIS FLESH, but they did not understand and those who didn’t believe, LEFT.

63 The words…are spirit and life…but…some…do not believe

67 Jesus…said…”Do you also want to leave?”

68 Simon Peter answered…”You have the words of eternal life.”

You point out that John does not have the “this is my body” discourse in his last supper. But he does—over and over and over again—tell people to LISTEN to his WORDS and BELIEVE what he has SAID, HEAR his VOICE, and DO as He TELLS…And who DOESN’T listen?—the Pharisees—He tells them in Chapter 8:43 “Why do you not understand what I am saying? Because you cannot bear to hear my word.”

The meaning you have gleaned from the word of God is not wrong—but it does not contain ALL that he said—you miss the most important essence of the WORD of God, because it asks you to believe something that is hard to believe and yet said so plainly. It requires you to BELIEVE His WORDS and not what you want him to say—it requires you to abandon yourself and cling to Him in complete trust—that is a hard teaching.

 

[mtr01]

michaelp:

Ummm . . . OK . . . and which position is this relevant for???

Nice evasion, but you still haven’t answered. I have given you concrete proof that in Scripture “eating the flesh” and “drinking the blood” of someone meant to do them harm, not to “come and have one’s thirst satisfied”. Thus your symbolic reading of John 6 is Scripturally untenable, and moreso, refuted. Your only recourse is to say that Jesus was introducing a new idiom without letting anyone know…then letting them leave because He refused to explain it (deception from a God who cannot deceive).

Yet you refuse to explain how you can still hold to your symbolic interpretation in light of this Scriptural evidence to the contrary. This is nothing but a clear case of extreme eisogesis.

 

[Sherlock]

Michaelp,

You wrote: “So do you believe that the people at the last supper were actually eating Christ while he was alive, or do you say that he was sybolically looking ahead to a literal future?”

They were partaking of Christ in the sacrament, yes. Are you suggesting that God is unable to do this?

You wrote: “Also, how come the Apostle’s did not start eating (chomping on) Christ when he said for them to in John 6. If they were taking him literally, they did not do anything about it.”

They were scandalized, yes, and many of His disciples left because it was a hard saying. The remaining disciples trusted Jesus, and left their limited human understanding behind in favor of letting Jesus show them the way. You might say that they were “awaiting further instructions”—which came at the Last Supper. Now, I suppose if Jesus had said, “Start chomping now, beginning with My bicep”, you might have seen what you think should have happened. But obviously that’s not what He said, and Jesus revealed the mystery of John 6 at the Last Supper, at the Passover meal. Jesus is the Passover Lamb, the perfect fufillment of the OT covenant. If what you say is true, then Jesus’ New Testament fulfillment is actually inferior to its OT prefigurements: the Jews actually ATE the manna in the desert, and in addition to spreading the Passover lamb’s blood on the doorposts, they then had to EAT the lamb itself.

You didn’t answer my question: if the Eucharist is just symbolic, then why does Paul say, "“Therefore whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. . . . For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself”? Seems like a pretty harsh penalty for unworthy reception for partaking if it’s merely a symbolic little ritual. And if it’s symbolic, then what does Paul mean by “discerning the body”? How can one discern a body in a symbol?

 

[st_felicity]

No one will be mad or disappointed if you give up this indefensable position–we won’t think you arrogant or foolish for having loved Christ in the way you have for so long–and so well–we will be overjoyed that a brother has come home to the fullness of his inheritance.
Michael you are a brother we love.

 

[Angainor]

hlgomez:

You seem to confuse even your very being! You say, how can your flesh and blood be “you”? Are you confusing your very person, or have you lost your identity? If your flesh and blood is not “you” then you aren’t yourself! Without your flesh and blood you don’t exist as a person. For God has created you whole as a person, not parts. Your very person is entire–body and soul (with your blood of course, if I may sound foolish).

Yes, I see your point. We all also have the resurrection to look to when our body and soul will be reunited.

However, before that happens, I will die someday. My soul will leave and my body and blood will remain. That body and blood are no longer “me”. If you showed me someone’s body and blood alone, I would not say that was a person anymore. If you showed me Jesus’ body and blood, I would not say that was Jesus.

 

[st_felicity]

Angainor:

I will die someday. My soul will leave and my body and blood will remain. That body and blood are no longer “me”. .

If the body and blood are no longer “you”–what makes you think “you” are the soul?
Why don’t you think “you” are the body and blood rather than the soul? 'Cuz that’s nasty–it decays? Where did you get the idea that “you” exist seperate from your created body?–

NO–“you” are body, blood, AND soul.–
And the Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul, AND Divinity of Christ.

 

[Scott_Waddell]

Angainor:

Yes, I see your point. We all also have the resurrection to look to when our body and soul will be reunited.

However, before that happens, I will die someday. My soul will leave and my body and blood will remain. That body and blood are no longer “me”. If you showed me someone’s body and blood alone, I would not say that was a person anymore. If you showed me Jesus’ body and blood, I would not say that was Jesus.

But if it is Jesus’ body, blood soul and divinity as the Church teaches, then it is reasonable to say it is Jesus.

Scott