Bread of Life

BREAD OF LIFE
this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. (john 6: 50)
The miracle of God’s physical presence to us at every Mass is the truest testament to Christ’s love for us and His desire for each of us to have a personal relationship with Him. Jesus Christ celebrated the first Mass with His disciples at the Last Supper, the night before He died. He commanded His disciples, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). The celebration of the Mass then became the main form of worship in the early Church, as a reenactment of the Last Supper, as Christ had commanded. Each and every Mass since commemorates Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross through the Holy Eucharist. Because the Mass “re-presents” (makes present) the sacrifice on Calvary, Catholics all around the world join together to be made present in Christ’s timeless sacrifice for our sins. There is something fascinating about continuing to celebrate the same Mass—instituted by Christ and practiced by the early Church—with the whole community of Catholics around the world…and in heaven.

THE REAL PRESENCE

Why does the Catholic Church believe Christ is really present in the Eucharist?
The Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence is the belief that Jesus Christ is literally, not symbolically, present in the Holy Eucharist—body, blood, soul and divinity. Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist because Jesus tells us this is true in the Bible:

“I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh." The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ So Jesus said to them,

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” - John 6:48-56
Furthermore, the early Church Fathers either imply or directly state that the bread and wine offered in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper is really the body and blood of Jesus Christ. In other words, the doctrine of the Real Presence that Catholics believe today was believed by the earliest Christians 2,000 years ago!

This miracle of God’s physical presence to us at every Mass is the truest testament to Christ’s love for us and His desire for each of us to have a personal relationship with Him.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PSYCHOLOGY AND CATHOLICISM

Classical Freudian psychoanalysis is atheistic, and so is most psychotherapy today. Even though the brilliant French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan had some familiarity with Catholicism, religion has no part in his psychoanalysis either. But Lacan can teach Catholics much about psychology.

Jacques Lacan

To put it in a nutshell, Lacanian analysis ultimately shows you that all your identifications with the world are just empty illusions. So you start analysis with your identity like a precious porcelain vase, and you end the analysis as a naked man sitting alone in a pile of broken pottery. So that’s life, you learn, just a pile of illusions. “Go make something of it anyway,” you’re told.

So what does this have to do with Catholicism? Well, read Saint John of the Cross and you will find that his description of spiritual purgation is, in its practical effects, quite a bit like Lacan’s philosophy.
The difference between the two, of course, is Christ. Christ begins where Lacan ends. Lacan leaves us with the stark, bare psychological truth of our broken lives. Christ—and only Christ—can heal the brokenness. And in that gap between Lacan and Christ is precisely where I locate the relation between psychology and religion.
Juan de la Cruz
Psychology cannot heal us, but it can help us recognize just how broken we really are, and it can help us overcome our resistance to total surrender to Christ. Once we make that surrender, our healing begins. And that is precisely what Saint John of the Cross told us.

Stopping Self-fulfilling Prophecies

1. Begin by accepting the fact that, when you were a child, others inflicted their own internal unconscious conflicts on you and that you were not to blame for their hostility.

2. Then you can stop believing that you “deserved it.”

3. Then you can stop hating. You can stop hating others for being so mean to you; you can do this by having compassion for their suffering in their own unhealed emotional pain, and you can forgive them for their blindness and failures. And you can stop hating yourself for being unable to fix things.

4. Then you can stop letting your own emotional resentments unconsciously contribute to the emotional chaos of the world around you. You can say, “From now on, I will do everything I can to seek to understand others, to seek their good, and to help them heal from their emotional pain.”

5. Then you can stop unconsciously wishing to punish yourself.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Saint John spoke of the Dark Night as an experience of spiritual purgation in which all physical and psychological satisfactions are stripped away to leave the soul in the presence of nothing but the physically invisible (and therefore, to human experience, dark) and silent workings of divine grace.

As unnerving as it is, it still is a profound experience of spiritual healing, not a questioning of—or loss of—faith.

June 17, 2010 at 7:30 AM
daveg4g said...

GOSPEL:

Jesus said to his disciples:

“In praying, do not babble like the pagans,

who think that they will be heard because of their many words.

Do not be like them.

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

“This is how you are to pray:

‘Our Father who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name,

thy Kingdom come,

thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread;

and forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass against us;

and lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.’

“If you forgive others their transgressions,

your heavenly Father will forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others,

neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.” (Matthew 6:7-15)

June 17, 2010 at 7:34 AM

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