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Ignatius33
Guest
I have those!Just reading the Didache earlier tonight actually.
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Bluegoat
Guest
My immediate response is - what other facts are you 100% sure of in life?
I am sure I exist, 100%.
About everything else, I am less sure. But I am pretty sure that the world around me exists. I am pretty sure of mathematical truths, at least the ones I can comprehend. I am pretty sure that god is real, and also that the Trinity and the incarnation make sense. I am sure that god is also above human knowledge in many ways.
I am slightly less sure that Jesus is God, after all, I am depending on witnesses to have transmitted the whole thing to me. But I think it is very likely and will act on that. I also think that there are probably black holes, but that is purely a matter of believing someone I think would know.
I think that the Real Presence makes sense, and that it is the teaching of the Church, which also fits in with what makes sense about the Church, and my observations of it first hand, and through other’s witness. But I could be wrong.
Not to be snarky, but outside of personal revelation (which can still be questioned IMO) there are very few things that we know 100%.
I am sure I exist, 100%.
About everything else, I am less sure. But I am pretty sure that the world around me exists. I am pretty sure of mathematical truths, at least the ones I can comprehend. I am pretty sure that god is real, and also that the Trinity and the incarnation make sense. I am sure that god is also above human knowledge in many ways.
I am slightly less sure that Jesus is God, after all, I am depending on witnesses to have transmitted the whole thing to me. But I think it is very likely and will act on that. I also think that there are probably black holes, but that is purely a matter of believing someone I think would know.
I think that the Real Presence makes sense, and that it is the teaching of the Church, which also fits in with what makes sense about the Church, and my observations of it first hand, and through other’s witness. But I could be wrong.
Not to be snarky, but outside of personal revelation (which can still be questioned IMO) there are very few things that we know 100%.
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Didi
Guest
We believe that God is omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing) and omnipresent (present in all time).
So Jesus was indeed offering Himself at the Last Supper, knowing that His sacrifice was in the future in human time, but God is outside of our realm of time. It is the same sacrifice, then, now and always. We believe during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that we are transported back in time to Calvary, present at His crucifixion, and also present as His resurrection.
The Jewish people also had this understanding at Passover. It was as if they were at the very first Passover when they celebrated this feast.
Remember that God’s ways are not our ways! We can’t constrain God to human principles and understanding. If we believe He is God and capable of anything, then the idea of offering Himself prior to His sacrifice is not a big deal for God!
By the way, Catholics also believe that Mary was saved by Jesus, just that her salvation was applied in advance so that Jesus could have a holy and sinless vessel in which to dwell. Another case of something being done “outside” of time.
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Brian_Culliton
Guest
In the Ante-Nicene church the Eucharist was central in Christian worship, but that does not mean they believed it was the literal body and blood of Christ. If you are considering whether or not to believe the Catholic doctrine I suggest you ask some tough questions. Here are a few I came up with:
Where in Ante-Nicene history do we find evidence that Christians worshiped the Eucharist?
Is there any explicit evidence that proves the Ante-Nicene church believed the doctrine? (References to the Eucharist being the body and blood of Christ do not prove that Christians believed it literally transubstantiated).
Is there evidence that denies that the Ante-Nicene church believed the doctrine?
Is there evidence that the Ante-Nicene church believed Jesus was speaking metaphorically in the Bread of Life discourse?
And consider this: in the Bread of Life discourse Jesus made these two statements:
Since I am sure you consider both statements to be true, the first statement must be figurative. And if the first statement were literal, the second could not be true.
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Chris_S_1
Guest
Hey Curtis,
I just wanted to say that you’re right - we should be awfully sure that the Real Presence is true before we worship it, and I can understand your desire to be 100% sure. Some might say that it is safer to withhold worship just in case it happens to be idolatry. But here’s the problem: if it truly IS the flesh and blood of Christ, then it would be a sin NOT to worship it, as St. Augustine points out. Not to mention the scary John 6:53:
So in the same way that a believer in the Real Presence should be absolutely sure that it’s true, a non-believer should also be totally and completely positive that it’s false.
Anyway, to answer your question, I have to admit that as a cradle Catholic, it was simply the Church’s teaching on the doctrine that convinced me unequivocally that it’s true. However, I have done some study on it figure out the reasoning behind the teaching, and it’s very solid. I’d go as far as to say it’s the most easily defended Catholic belief. I wouldn’t even know where to begin - there’s just so much support for it, as you can see in all the previous posts.
Also, the attempts to explain it away just don’t do it for me. All evidence aside, the idea that every Christian was worshipping idols for 1500 years before God decided to step in and set it right is downright terrifying. How many other sins are we committing that God won’t reveal to us for another 1500 years?
One last note, Curtis - have you ever heard of Eucharistic miracles? Many people, even Catholics, aren’t aware of them. I find them quite remarkable, and after I read about them, the tiny traces of doubt I may have had disappeared. The most famous one took place in Lanciano, Italy, and you can read about it here:
miraclerosarymission.org/lanciano.html
There are countless others as well. I was somewhat of a sceptic at first, but the fact that they are tested vigorously by scientists just leaves me with no choice but to accept beyond any doubt that the Church has been right all along.
God Bless
M
MariaG
Guest
The Holy Spirit.
I was sitting in an Evangelical Church, getting ready to go up for communion. I had started to go to the Catholic Church on Saturdays, (not recieving communion because I didn’t want to be Catholic), but I was not ready to give up my Evangelical Church.
As I was getting ready to go up, the Pastor said something like, some believe that communion is more than just a symbol, which is beyond my understanding… It was then that the Holy Spirit convicted me and I sat in my pew with tears running down my face and realized I could not recieve communion with my brothers and sisters in Christ, because I DID believe in the Real Presence of Christ. Right then.
So, how do I know? In the same way I know that the bible is God’s word cover to cover including the cover as stated in my saving grace sermon where God grabbed ahold of my heart in a Nazarene Church 18 years ago, through the Holy Spirit.
God Bless,
Maria
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Verbum_Caro
Guest
Hi Curtis,
For me, it basically came down to the realization (prompted by grace) that there isn’t any reason that the Eucharist couldn’t be what the Catholic Church says it is and that it just seems to make sense that Christ, being able to accomplish, chose to accomplish it.
When you approach it this way, you start to notice things. You start to see all the hints in the Old Testament - prefigurement, typology - that point to the Eucharist (the manna, the shewbread, the manna in the Ark of the Covenant, the sacrifice of Melchizedek, etc). You start to notice the same thing in the New Testament, as mentioned above (Bethlehem meaning house of bread, the manger is a feeding trough, the Road to Emmaus).
Once you accept that it could be (which is really nothing more than accepting Christ as God. . .i.e. “believing in him”) some turn to investigating how it could be. That is what has taken me deeper and deeper into the mystery. The Church has in her treasury wonderfully cogent explanations for what happens in the Eucharist and at mass. Sometimes these explanations can help us develop our faith, or overcome objections. It might be important to mention though that there are some basic core beliefs that Catholics hold (and must hold) about the Eucharist and the Mass, and there are also theological theories which attempt to explain them which aren’t necessarily held by all Catholics at all times. (For instance the idea that we are actually present on Calvary’s hill during the Mass is a theory – there are and have been other explanations about how the Mass is the sacrifice that we know it is).
One more thing that might be worth thinking about is how the Eucharist calls us into a new relationship of faith in Christ. In the Old Testament the theophanies (the manifestations of God’s power and presence) were often spectacular. But, faith was in it’s infancy. When Christ was born, His Divinity was “hidden” as it were behind his obvious humanity. Although the miracles manifested His Divinity (especially the Transfiguration and the Resurrection) and helped us to believe. But Christ seemed to be teaching us something. Recall this moment in the Gospel of Mark:
Here is how St. Thomas Aquinas (through Hopkins) puts it:
Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived:
How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed;
What God’s Son has told me, take for truth I do;
Truth Himself speaks truly or there’s nothing true.
On the cross Thy godhead made no sign to men,
Here Thy very manhood steals from human ken:
Both are my confession, both are my belief,
And I pray the prayer of the dying thief.
You can see that the Eucharist demands faith, and give us the opportunity for it.
VC
For me, it basically came down to the realization (prompted by grace) that there isn’t any reason that the Eucharist couldn’t be what the Catholic Church says it is and that it just seems to make sense that Christ, being able to accomplish, chose to accomplish it.
When you approach it this way, you start to notice things. You start to see all the hints in the Old Testament - prefigurement, typology - that point to the Eucharist (the manna, the shewbread, the manna in the Ark of the Covenant, the sacrifice of Melchizedek, etc). You start to notice the same thing in the New Testament, as mentioned above (Bethlehem meaning house of bread, the manger is a feeding trough, the Road to Emmaus).
Once you accept that it could be (which is really nothing more than accepting Christ as God. . .i.e. “believing in him”) some turn to investigating how it could be. That is what has taken me deeper and deeper into the mystery. The Church has in her treasury wonderfully cogent explanations for what happens in the Eucharist and at mass. Sometimes these explanations can help us develop our faith, or overcome objections. It might be important to mention though that there are some basic core beliefs that Catholics hold (and must hold) about the Eucharist and the Mass, and there are also theological theories which attempt to explain them which aren’t necessarily held by all Catholics at all times. (For instance the idea that we are actually present on Calvary’s hill during the Mass is a theory – there are and have been other explanations about how the Mass is the sacrifice that we know it is).
One more thing that might be worth thinking about is how the Eucharist calls us into a new relationship of faith in Christ. In the Old Testament the theophanies (the manifestations of God’s power and presence) were often spectacular. But, faith was in it’s infancy. When Christ was born, His Divinity was “hidden” as it were behind his obvious humanity. Although the miracles manifested His Divinity (especially the Transfiguration and the Resurrection) and helped us to believe. But Christ seemed to be teaching us something. Recall this moment in the Gospel of Mark:
The forgiveness of sins is hidden, and so harder to believe. But a cure is obvious and easier to believe. But, Christ seems to be calling us to something more. Of course, he mentions this specifically in relation to St. Thomas after His Resurrection: "“Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” This surely meant all those generations who believe in Christ without walking the dusty roads of the Holy Land with Him – but could it mean more?
Here is how St. Thomas Aquinas (through Hopkins) puts it:
Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived:
How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed;
What God’s Son has told me, take for truth I do;
Truth Himself speaks truly or there’s nothing true.
On the cross Thy godhead made no sign to men,
Here Thy very manhood steals from human ken:
Both are my confession, both are my belief,
And I pray the prayer of the dying thief.
You can see that the Eucharist demands faith, and give us the opportunity for it.
VC
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Church_Militant
Guest
God bless you! I’m glad I could be of some help.Thanks for those links…Just finished reading your Testimony…Good stuff!
When it all comes down to it, the Holy Eucharist is the great divide…Either you believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is Present in the Eucharist (i’m not talking about consubstantiation like some other churches believe). It seems from what I read from the Early church fathers and Scriptures, that the Lord is Present and that is starting to make my decision a lot easier.
I’m also reading about the Eucharist in the CCC now as well. I’m just gonna keep on learning and, in your own words, “study man study”
Be praying for me at Mass bro…God bless.
~Curtis
Another very good source that I found was John Paul the Great’s encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia which is long but well worth the time to read and study. Chapter 4 is especially helpful because it speaks to many questions that we are often asked.
Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum.
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Randy_Carson
Guest
Amen.
When I was a new convert to the Catholic Church, I’m sure that I believed in the Real Presence on an intellectual level.
However, about a year after joining the Church, I was considering entering the Trappists, and I had gone to visit St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, MA. I was lying on my bed in the guest house one night, and it hit me as clear as a bell that Jesus was really and truly present in the Eucharist. I mean that I “got it” at a deeper level. I don’t know how else to describe it.
The next morning, Fr. Basil Pennington, who was the vocation director at the time, came to the cottage to talk, and I told him about the experience. He said it was a gift from God.
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Church_Militant
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Look at 1st Corinthians 11:23-30. How could one become “guilty of the body and blood of the Lord” if it was not really there or only a symbol? That’s about as Ante-Nicene as one can get, seeing as it is inspired scripture penned by St. Paul himself.
Fallacious premise and biased premise both. If as most n-C Christians tell me, scripture (alone) interprets scripture (not our Catholic belief btw), then you have to take the scriptures at their face value as I did above. Moreover, St. Ignatius of Antioch’s letter to the church at Smyrna (Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans ) goes so far as to say that if anyone does not believe that the Eucharist is the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that the faithful should not even speak of them in private and have nothing to do with them. Again…this is an Ante-Nicene source and even penned by a direct disciple of St. John the Evangelist.
Obviously not…
Again, no there is not…
Again…if you believe that scripture interprets scripture, then you cannot divorce the 6 the chapter of John from 1st Corinthians 11, and conclude that the Eucharist does indeed miraculously become the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, just as the Early Church Fathers did.
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Pax
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Brian_Culliton
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Brian_Culliton
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Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans ) goes so far as to say that if anyone does not believe that the Eucharist is the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that the faithful should not even speak of them in private and have nothing to do with them. Again…this is an Ante-Nicene source and even penned by a direct disciple of St. John the Evangelist…
Please, it is not your place to tell me how to take anything.
What Ignatius said was this:
Who are “they?” Why do they not confess the eucharist to be the flesh of Christ? And what does Ignatius mean by “Eucharist and prayer?” Who was Ignatius referring to? Prior to making the above statement, Ignatius identified the heretics in a couple of different places.
And,
The they Ignatius was talking about are Dosetists. The word means, “to seem.” Docetism claimed that Christ did not exist in human form. And, as Ignatius points out, they claim He only seemed to suffer, to which Ignatius replied, “They only seem to be Christians.”
They do not confess the Eucharist to be the flesh of Christ because they didn’t believe he truly suffered. And the Eucharist itself, Ignatius describes, is: “our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again.”
In other words, the Eucharist is the communal thanksgiving of the passion and resurrection of our Lord. Ignatius goes on to say this:
It is utterly criminal what the catholic apologists have done to the compassionate work of Ignatius. They attempt to make it look as though the Dosetists objected to the Eucharist because they didn’t believe the bread and wine used to celebrate it to be the literal flesh and blood of Christ. That simply isn’t true; rather, Ignatius conveys that the gift of God is eternal life made possible by the sacrifice of Christ. That sacrifice is what the Eucharist is all about. It is the sacrifice and suffering of Christ the Dosetists spoke against and, therefore, abstained from celebrating the Eucharist in which thanksgiving is offered for Christ’s passion.
And there is indeed evidence that the Ante-Nicene church understood Jesus to be speaking metaphorically in the Bread of Life discourse.
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MariaG
Guest
He was right. It was a gift from God. One that I wish all would recieve.
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Lutheranteach
Guest
I like this answer far more than one of the others. The other sounded like someone blindly following orders. “It’s true because my superiors said it was true!!” Graveyards around the world are filled with, and because of, people who gave similar reasons for things.
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Randy_Carson
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You cite Origen…is it your belief that the Early Church Fathers held that the Eucharist is to be understood purely symbolically? That it is not really Jesus’ body and blood?
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LilyM
Guest
That would be the same Origen who castrated himself out of a misguided notion that doing so would help him with his problems with lust - as if the mind can’t lust every bit as sinfully as the body.
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brb2
Guest
Until you convert, you will have to take our word for it. Once you convert, you too will experience the grace/forgiveness we receive from the Sacrament. Protestant communion is not the same … and doesn’t claim to have the healing/forgiving power of Catholic hosts.
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Radical
Guest
How very odd that all those experts that produced the various translations of the Bible somehow didn’t think to insert that “really” or that “actually” that you think ought be there…could it be that you are inserting your bias into the text?
Really? According to Ben Witherington III in ** New Testament History** “…Jesus would have said something like, ‘This—my body,’ for the verb “is” found in the Greek would not be in the Aramaic.”
Your interpretation is misguided…Paul continues with* " 18 Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar? 19 What do I imply then? That food sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. *
Paul indicates that one could be a partner with demons by eating food sacrificed to idols even though an idol isn’t anything…a real presence is not necessary for the partnership Paul envisions.
again, how odd that none of all those qualified translators thought to insert “murder” in their translation
If you read what proceeded the “thus” or “therefore” you would have noted that Paul’s argument is that guilt follows b/c by eating the bread and drinking the cup, one proclaims the Lord’s death until he comes again…and what Paul doesn’t argue is that guilt follows b/c of a Real Presence.
IMHO, these sort of over-the-top assertions may fool some of the people some of the time, but…
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Ignatius33
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And yet, Origen elsewhere emphatically affirms the Real Presence in the Eucharist:
“We give thanks to the Creator of all, and, along with thanksgiving and prayer for the blessings we have received, we also eat the bread presented to us; and this bread becomes by prayer a sacred body, which sanctifies those who sincerely partake of it” (Against Celsus [ca. 248 AD]).
While Origen there refers to the Eucharist as “a sacred body,” he elsewhere goes further and states in plain terms that the Eucharist is the Body of the Lord:
“I wish to admonish you with examples from your religion. You are accustomed to take part in the divine mysteries, so you know how, when you have received the Body of the Lord, you reverently exercise every care lest a particle of it fall, and lest anything of the consecrated gift perish. You account yourselves guilty, and rightly do you so believe, if any of it be lost through negligence. But if you observe such caution in keeping His Body, and properly so, how is it that you think neglecting the word of God a lesser crime than neglecting His Body?” (Homilies on Exodus [after 244 AD]).
Again, Origen remarks:
“Formerly there was Baptism, in an obscure way, in the cloud and in the sea; now however, in full view, there is regeneration in water and in the Holy Spirit. Formerly, in an obscure way, there was manna for food; now, however, in full view, there is the true food, the Flesh of the Word of God, as He Himself says: ‘My Flesh is truly food, and My Blood is truly drink’” [John 6:56] (Homilies on Numbers [248 AD]).
As Johannes Quasten (a patristics scholar) observes, Origen “is convinced of the sacrificial and expiatory character of the Eucharist and mentions a real alter: ‘You see how the altars are no longer sprinkled with the blood of oxen, but consecrated by the precious blood of Christ’ [In Jesu Nave 2, 1]” (2 Patrology, pg 86).
True, as you point out Brian, other passages (the ones where he “digs” for a “deeper” allegorical meaning – often where Origen gets into trouble, incidentally) of Origen interpret the body and the blood allegorically as the teaching of Christ by which our souls are nourished.
Yet, as Quasten points out, “such passages do not exclude the literal interpretation which he gives on other occasions. He expressly states that the Blood of Christ can be drunk in a twofold manner, namely ‘sacramentally’ (sacramentorum ritu), and ‘when we receive His lifegiving words’ [Homilies on Numbers] (2 Patrology, pg 86).
At bottom, Origen is a poor example of a Church Father who denied the Real Presence for the simple reason that he did not deny it. In fact, I am unaware of a single Church Father who denied the Real Presence. There is nobody who said (as Brian is now saying), wait a second, don’t take all of this literal language literally, it’s not really Jesus’ Body and Blood. Nobody (of which I am aware) says that.
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