Struggling to believe in Eucharist

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Oh dear, it sounds like you are in such an uncomfortable position.

There are only two reasons to look at arguments against the Eucharist: to determine their truth (if you don’t believe), or to disprove them (if you do believe). Either way, you need to be prepared to do a lot of very hard work. This is too serious a subject to take the position of a gawker. If you’re just looking for the sake of looking, you’re playing with fire – and you are finding right now that fire is hot!

My (no-longer-Protestant!!) husband just finished up an intense round of study on the Eucharist, trying to figure out if the Catholics are right, or the Protestants. He found that the Protestant arguments pulled from the Church Fathers were invariably taken out of context. Those built upon “reasoning” were inherently and often blatantly flawed. He worked very hard to determine the truth, and in the end, he was intellectually convinced that the Catholic Church teaches it.

Jesus Christ is in every tabernacle across the world. He meant for Communion to be taken literally. It is AMAZING. It is a MIRACLE. It is the most beautiful thing that has ever existed. Ever.

The Eucharistic miracles are there to strengthen our faith. If they don’t strengthen your faith, don’t pay any attention to them. I don’t. It’s a perfectly legitimate personal choice.

St Paschal Baylon is the patron saint of Eucharistic adorers and Conferences. He had an intense love for the Eucharist. You might try praying to him for help.
 
G2024 said:
people angrily screaming “pagan” and presenting some decent evidence against transubstinaton.
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It is good that you have decided to learn more about your faith. It is important that you be able to respond to this “evidence” even if only in your own mind.
G2024 said:
I’m very concerned about this. Did Jesus mean the passage where he says “My body is true food and My blood is true drink” literally?
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Yes. This is why so many disciples walked away on that day (John chapter 6)
G2024 said:
I know that the apostles had trouble with this teaching too.
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Not “trouble” so much, but they did not understand until after the Passover what He meant.
G2024 said:
Another issue I have is that transubstination started in the 11th century, so it could be a false teaching of the Church.
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The term transubstantiation was coined later, but not the belief. If you use that as a criteria, then you will also have to throw out the word Trinity, which does not appear in the bible and was not adopted by the Church until 325. You will also have to throw out the list of books that belong in the Bible, which was not finalized until the 4th century, and the hypostatic union.
G2024 said:
it could be a false teaching of the Church.
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Jesus promised to lead the Church into all Truth, and therefore, there are no “false teachings of the Church”. The gift of infallibility prevents this from happening.
G2024 said:
feel my faith in God slipping sometimes as I go and read these arguments people have
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This is not a bad thing, as one’s faith does become weak when one is assailed by falsehoods. It is a sign that it is time to learn more about the faith into which you were bapitzed, and understand why the Church teaches what she does.
G2024 said:
wonder, what’s the point of doing this at all if I’m gonna be in front of the throne of God one day only to be turned away? What if Jesus didn’t mean for communion to be taken literally?
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This is an important thought, as we are all going to stand before Him, and we will be held accountable for our failure to grasp what was given to us.

If He did not mean for communion to be taken literally, then Jesus failed in His promise to guide the Church into all Truth. If that is true, then you have no foundation for your faith, as He did not tell the Truth.
G2024 said:
Isn’t He in heaven at the right hand of God, not in every tabernacle across the world?
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Yes, and Yes! He remains with us in many ways, within the Eucharistic elements being only one.
 
G2024 said:
It could have been symbolic of his sacrifice that he was about to do
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They are, but they also contain that which they symbolize. You can see how the early church fathers believed this.
AlNg said:
If it is so clear, why do many Protestants say he was not speaking literally?
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They reject the Sacred Traditions that were handed down to us from the Apostles. They think all the Apostles taught is in the Bible only, and they have not followed the Apostolic command to preserve ALL the teaching, both oral and written.
 
Yes, you’re absolutely right. These are instances of hyperbole. They are very clearly not meant to be taken literally; hence, they didn’t require any explanation.
 
When you have an hour or so listen to this talk. He takes you through the history. It cleared up a lot of things for me.
 
Yes, that can be a punishment in some countries. I believe in such cases, however, it is a matter of codified law, not a literal reading of hyperbole in a religious text. Do you have a source for the basis of that punishment? I wouldn’t mind taking a look.
 
pianistclare said:
Pretty clear.
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JimG said:
Just listen to what Jesus says. He is quite clear.
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But there are 900 million Protestants, most of whom do not take the words literally. So although it is clear to Catholics, it is not clear to many millions of other people?
There were Protestant missionaries who came to my door preaching various things in the Bible. When I asked them about John 6:53, they said that this was to be taken metaphorically because cannibalism is wrong.
 
There were not 900 million Protestants when Jesus instituted the Eucharist. He said ‘unless you eat my body and drink my blood you have no life in you.’ He gave no correction when people walked away–he did not call them back. At the last supper he said This IS my body. This IS my blood. After the resurrection on the road to Emmaus the disciples “recognized him in the breaking of the bread.” The Eucharist is one of the most biblical teachings possible. If any one believes in the bible, he must believe in the words of Jesus about the Eucharist.
 
Cannibalism is wrong. What we’re doing is not cannibalism. Firstly, we are not consuming flesh and blood with in form of flesh and blood; we are consuming flesh and blood with the accidents of of bread and wine. Secondly, part of the argument against Judeo-Christian cannibalism is the prohibition against the drinking of an animal’s blood given in Leviticus. The reason the drinking of blood was forbidden is because it is the blood that carries life. Christ gave us his blood specifically to give us life.

I can’t tell you how hard my husband struggled against the Church’s teaching on this. He understands it much better than I do, now. I would rather adore the Eucharist than study it. So I just asked him, “Does the Church teach that reception of the Eucharist is cannibalism? I want to make sure before I write that it isn’t.” “NO. That was one of Justin Martyr’s things, defending the Church against people who were saying that Christians were cannibals.” Note that this means that all Christians at the time of Justin Martyr were practicing a belief in the Real Presence. And apparently, if you would like more on the subject, you can go read Justin Martyr. 🙂

Honestly, pianistclare has it right. Protestants who disagree with this clear teaching in the Bible often disbelieve because they don’t want to agree with the Catholic Church on the matter. It’s that simple.
 
JimG said:
He said ‘unless you eat my body and drink my blood you have no life in you.’
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Does that mean that a Jew does not have life within him? If Jews have no life in them, how come so many of the Nobel prizes are won by Jews?
 
The thing about miracles is that I do not believe in big miracles. I believe in small miracles. For example, I did not go to confession for over 40 years. Then, one day, I just made the cell phone call and set up an appointment with the local parish priest. It is like the collective of prayers from my family and friends, and my own prayers were answered.
I do believe in the power of prayer.
But much more than that, I believe that the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ at every Mass. Amen!
 
I find it sad that the presence of an adversary is what makes my faith stronger, as with this and exorcism.
Knowing that there are people who hate the Catholic Church not because of its teachings, but for its closeness to the Lord for some reason strengthens my faith.
 
G2024 said:
Another issue I have is that transubstination started in the 11th century, so it could be a false teaching of the Church.
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Says who?
Jesus told His apostles at the Last Supper “this is My body”
Sounds like it came from Jesus and not from the Church a millennium later…
 
G2024 said:
…
Please help me with this.
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Pope Paul VI, Mysterium Fedei, 1965, excerpt:
46. To avoid any misunderstanding of this type of presence, which goes beyond the laws of nature and constitutes the greatest miracle of its kind, (50) we have to listen with docility to the voice of the teaching and praying Church. Her voice, which constantly echoes the voice of Christ, assures us that the way in which Christ becomes present in this Sacrament is through the conversion of the whole substance of the bread into His body and of the whole substance of the wine into His blood, a unique and truly wonderful conversion that the Catholic Church fittingly and properly calls transubstantiation. (51) As a result of transubstantiation, the species of bread and wine undoubtedly take on a new signification and a new finality, for they are no longer ordinary bread and wine but instead a sign of something sacred and a sign of spiritual food; but they take on this new signification, this new finality, precisely because they contain a new “reality” which we can rightly call ontological. For what now lies beneath the aforementioned species is not what was there before, but something completely different; and not just in the estimation of Church belief but in reality, since once the substance or nature of the bread and wine has been changed into the body and blood of Christ, nothing remains of the bread and the wine except for the species—beneath which Christ is present whole and entire in His physical “reality,” corporeally present, although not in the manner in which bodies are in a place.
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http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_03091965_mysterium.html
 
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