“Oh, Lord I am not worthy to come under your roof, but only say the word, and I will be healed.” This is an act of faith, contrition and humility.
We bow before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, contrite and humble, then receive Him, and are healed.
As Catholics, we believe the priest is taking the place of Christ as he consecrates the bread and wine. We believe we can confess to a priest, as he represents Christ, no matter that he is also a sinner, he is ordained to do this, and absolve our sins.
We believe in Apostolic succession which was broken by Luther, and further splintered by Knox, Calvin and Swengli.
The Sacraments are where the Divine meets the Profane. (Profane in the archaic sense, of ‘earthly’) they are where the spiritual meets the human.
And, I’m sorry if this disappoints the protesters/protestants, but you don’t have them, because the line of succession was broken.
As for the host turning into “real blood and flesh”, I’m almost certain that these are hoaxes by people who are saying, “You want to eat flesh and blood, then ,here, eat them!” Jesus said the bread is his body, and we humbly, contritely, and faithfully take Him at His word.
Some of these hoaxes have been proven to have real human blood-- but the DNA is female! Or it’s meat from a butcher shop. I don’t think the Church condones any of them, or keeps them around to see if they rot, or any of that type of thing, which I consider a mean-spirited act on the part of someone who doesn’t understand faith, where God meets us in the middle, where Christ is still fully present.
I also know that as a child, when we heard stories of saints who had these experiences we wanted so badly to be a saint like that! To have a vision! Like Bernadette, or the three children at Fatima, that some of our friends saw the statue of Mary in church smile at them.
Don’t get me wrong, I know Mary smiles. (She’s probably smiling at me as I write this, as only a mother can do.) But statues with solemn faces don’t smile. I guess that is “wishful thinking”.
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Marcus Grodi had a former member of Willow Creek Church near Wheaton, IL on his (EWTN) Journey Home program recently. (Dr Steven Smith, now a professor at a Catholic Seminary in Maryland). Willow Creek is the end result of Evangelization and splintering without anything substantial. It is "non-denominational", so as not to frighten off un-believers. There is no liturgy, no order, nothing connecting one week's events to the next.
They take a Verse from the New Testament and preach about it. No continuity. No rituals.
And the best part is, you cannot tell that this is a church!! It is an auditorium, with a stage. No altar, no beauty, just hi-tech light shows and entertainment. And it’s all NEW Testament, EXCEPT for the part about tithing.
This church is huge. Not huge the way the Catholic Church is huge, all under one Pope, but huge in numbers to the point where if someone breaks off-- and they do-- they are basically starting a whole new church.
The problem that Dr Smith had was, “we can bring in people and save them, and entertain them-- especially the kids and teens, but— then what?” (my paraphrase).
Are we supposed to be entertained at church? I don’t know, but I go to movies, plays, libraries, coffee shops, etc for entertainment.
Should we be uplifted and grow closer to God through worship that is beautiful and meaningful? Enough that we want to go out and share the Good News? Absolutely!
But the connected-ness, the family that I find in my tiny parish is enriched by the fact that I know that all over the world, there are other Catholics who are saying the same Bible readings, the same prayers, the same hymns, and most of all receiving Our Lord in the Eucharist, as passed down through the ages and kept together as the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit.
We remember how You loved us when You died, and now we celebrate that You are with us still. We remember, we celebrate, we believe.
He loves us.
All of us,
and I am so thankful.
Oh,yes.At the risk of sounding ultra-pious,I KNOW that Jesus is there.When I’m out of communion, I ball so hard I have to leave.The feeling of having disappointing Our Lord is so overwhelming,that it is literally sobbing and snot.:bighanky:
But, I would still be ‘me’ with no hair, or shorter or taller, less weight or more, etc. 
