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.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

BEWARE THE UNTEACHABLE

Daniel Goldhagen

One of the reasons that participation on a message board like Steve Ray's can be very frustrating is that some of the participants are simply unteachable. An anti-Catholic fundamentalist Protestant may spout some slanderous error about Catholic faith, or practice, or history. He is then corrected. And corrected. And corrected. He may go on to some other topic. And another. And yet another. Eventually, though, he will make his way back to the issue on which he had been repeatedly corrected, as if the episode had never occurred at all.

The Weekly Standard published the other day a review of an upcoming book by Daniel Goldhagen, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair. The reviewer spends some time pointing out the numerous factual errors in the book. And he notes that Goldhagen has already been corrected about most of them, to no avail:
.... Goldhagen took a first swipe at this material in an unbearably long essay in the New Republic earlier this year, and Ronald Rychlak (author of "Hitler, the War and the Pope") wrote an almost equally long indictment of Goldhagen's allegations in the June/July issue of First Things. As near as I can tell, the only one of the errors Rychlak pointed out that Goldhagen has corrected is his identification of the Danish king as Christian II instead of Christian X. As I say, no one is going to have trouble finding Goldhagen's mistakes. And that's exactly the problem. By writing such an error-filled, anti-Catholic diatribe as "A Moral Reckoning," Goldhagen makes what used to be the extreme of public discourse look like middle ground -- the middle ground that, on any historical question, most of diffident, well-mannered America wants to inhabit.
(Thanks Dale.)
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Catholic Church more so than any other group calling itself a church takes tremendous pride in its 2,000 year old holistic and completly integrated bible teachings. Most non-Catholics teach only mere verses and fragments of the bible as stand alone truisms and end up contradicting one or more other verses.

Catholics have not a single case where a teaching is in conflict with any other scripture anywhere in the bible. No one has successfully demonstrated an error in Catholic theology.

But this should not be surprising since Jesus promised us that the Holy Spirit would guide His Church to all truth and that "the gates of hell would not prevail" in any aspect (teaching or failing to release prisoners from hell's bondage viz apostolic absolution and the sacraments of grace).BF

August 29, 2011 at 12:32 PM
daveg4g said...

Hold firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church.---- St. Thomas Aquinas

August 29, 2011 at 12:34 PM

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