Thanks for your answer, adrift.
You said, “The Eucharist is God Himself entering into us to enlighten and strengthen us to do His will.”
God Himself entered into me and enlightened and strengthened me to do His will 29 years ago when I decided to make Him my Lord. The more I read the Bible and pray and obey, the more I am enlightened and strengthened to do His will.
In my case, I did not decide to make Him my Lord. He had been knocking at the door to my heart for years, but I was always too busy having fun, pleasing myself. He finally took me by the scruff of the neck and gave me a good shake. and I surrendered to Him.
I’m not being sarcastic. I’m just reacting to what seems to me to be an implication that you take in his spiritual nourishment only when you partake of the Eucharist. I’m just helping you realize how Protestants think so we can learn to understand each other better.
We may partake of His spiritual nourishment any time. (
Act of Spiritual Communion) Only in the reception of the Eucharist does that nourishment become physical as well as spiritual.
During the consecration, when the priest adds the water to the wine, he prays softly, "By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled Himself to share in our humanity.
In the Eucharist, His Divine Body physically enters ours as food, as physical nourishment; His Divine Substance becomes part of our substance. This is how we share in Divine Life, how we become One Body in Christ. If we do not eat His Body and drink His Blood, our mortal flesh is not transformed, but remains mortal. The more we receive the Eucharist, the more our physical bodies are made of Divine Substance, the more Christ-like we become. He is our Food, placed in a manger at birth, called Lamb of God by John the Baptist, sacrificed at Calvary. And we must eat His Body and drink His Blood if we want to share in His Life.
It doesn’t matter what you feel. You can feel absolutely nothing, or be transported to the greatest spiritual heights. Neither has any bearing on the reality of sharing in the Divine Body of God and how our mortal substance is subsumed into divine substance, becoming the One Body of Christ, just as the water is subsumed into the wine.
As warned though, we must meet certain requirements to receive the very Body of Christ. Not meeting these requirements means that instead of bringing eternal life, the Body of Christ, the Divine Substance of God, will be our eternal death.
When one receives communion in a church, one is proclaiming oneself to be in communion with that church. One bread, One body, One Lord. If one is not in communion with the Church, does not believe as the Church believes and one receives the Lord anyway, that person has lied to God in the very act of receiving God. Can you not see how this would have grave consequences?
Yes, there is a dire warning in the Bible for the Corinthians who were actually getting drunk—can you believe it?—during the Eucharist. . . . and other disrespectful things . . . (It’s going to take too long for me to type out the verses I’m thinking of, so I’ll just paste them on here from
BibleGateway.com [which is a very handy tool, by the way].)
1 Corinthians 11:17-19, 20-22 (New International Version)
17 In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. 18 In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. . . . 20 When you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, 21 for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk. 22 Don’t you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not!
It’s nice to talk to you, adrift.
Yes, and having received the warning, the Church changed Her liturgical practices to stop that abuse.
Originally, the early Church celebrated the Eucharist as a
Passover meal. There was a substantial amount of food and wine in the liturgical agape meal quite apart from the Eucharist. Paul is chastising the Corinthians for abusing the agape meal.
Think about what would happen if your church started having a free cooked meal every Sunday, for anyone who wanted to come. Do you think some people might attend just for the free food, and act like those Corinthians in the passage?
And while they were not gorging themselves on the Body nor becoming drunk on the Blood, they were behaving in quite an un-Christian manner. As I recall, the Corinthians needed a lot of correction. Theirs was a decadent, hedonistic culture and their bad habits were hard to break.
It was precisely this sort of abuse which led to dropping the agape meal from the liturgy entirely.
[Eucharist
A Short History ](
CR Meyer Manpower Planner)
(btw, July is the month devoted to the Precious Blood of Jesus. The Litany of the Most Precious Blood can be found
here.)
Thank you, everyone, for your prayers. It is still to soon for the next PET scan, so there is no news on that front. The last ultrasound showed the baby is a girl. Now they have to decide if they really will paint the nursery neon pink.
, saying, “Great, we have lots in common after all.”