Posted on 02/12/2014 6:44:27 PM PST by NKP_Vet
Notice how none of the usual FR Catholic bashers have weighed in on the Real Presence. I could name names, but they know who they are. The reason is simple. All Church fathers believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
Why are you attending these services as a Catholic?
If you haven't met ANYONE, perhaps you need to expand the circle.
This is a good counter to such commonly misused passages. Passages that, perhaps not technically taken out of context (at least not in a certain sense), are at least divorced from Catholic understanding, specifically here the understanding that the Sacraments are both symbolic AND effectual.
Ultimately though, that point (Protestant divorce of Church fathers from Catholic understanding) will be lost on such people. Not only because once one accepts the historical reality that indeed these men WERE part of the Catholic (or "Papist" as some call it today) Church, (thus, it makes no sense to apply any other understanding or assumptions to their writings) their position crumbles like a sand castle, but also, apparently, because such people are, for whatever sad reason, too obstinate to even consider their position wrong.
So this is a good reference to keep. To keep ourselves grounded in the truth, if nothing else comes of it (which it probably won't, given the obstinacy I mention above).
Bread and wine are offered, being the figure of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. They who participate in this visible bread eat, spiritually, the flesh of the Lord. (Macarius, Homily xxvii.)
For He, we know, who spoke of his natural body as corn and bread, and, again, called Himself a vine, dignified the visible symbols by the appellation of the body and blood, not because He had changed their nature, but because to their nature He had added grace. (Theodoret, Diologue I, Eranistes and Orthodoxus.)
For the Lord did not hesitate to say: “This is My Body”, when He wanted to give a sign of His body. (Augustine, Against Adimant.)
He admitted him to the Supper in which He committed and delivered to His disciples the figure of His Body and Blood. (Augustine, on Psalm 3.)
We have received a memorial of this offering which we celebrate on a table by means of symbols of His Body and saving Blood according to the laws of the new covenant. (Eusebius of Caesarea, Demonstratio Evangelica.)"
In which of these quotes is it affirmed that the bread and wine are changed literally into His body and blood, rather than being figurative-literal tokens. as symbols, for the express purpose of reminding observers and partakers of His Cross-wounds?
In the article as presented here, there does not appear to be a clear connection with the hypothesis that these elements become invested with His Life.
‘Whosoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord’ [1 Cor. 11:27]. ~ Saint Paul
Same type of thing. The Flag is a symbol, and the patriot truly honors that symbol when the rite of allegiance is called for as a statement of persistent fidelity to this country, its fellow-citizens, and the genius of Freedom as contained in our Founding Documents.
Likewise, the recitation of the Pledge in the presence of the Flag, and as a congregation of citizens, is a continuing reminder to other citizens, as well as before the onlooking world, of that lifelong commitment.
Regarding the Commemoration Supper, the partaking of the symbols reminding the whole congregation, this is all that Jesus called for TILL HE COME: a persistent, continuing rite of fidelity to Him as Savior and Master.
Jesus, all of Him, including His Blood, is currently in Heaven in the Presence of The Father. The Holy Ghost is in this earthly sphere, most particularly dwelling with the soul and spirit of the totally committed regenerated believer-disciple, and He speaks through His Written and Spoken Word. How much holier can one get?
Whosoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily, is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord’ [1 Cor. 11:27].
Please note that in this translation of the words given by The Holy Ghost, spoken by Paul, recorded by one of his amanuenses, preserved by The God, and translated to a reasonable degree, but not with the precision demanded here upon which to found a doctrine. Looking at it more closely, Paul's (The Holy Ghost's) words show that the bread as it was being used in the rite was still "artos" (bread loaf), not "sohma" (body), and Paul called it so as guided by The Holy Spirit exactly as appropriate and literally without uncertainty. Similarly, the wine was not said to have turned to blood, it was still just wine in the cup.
One knows that this consumption is not that of a regular meal, but of the Remembrance Supper, because the eating and drinking are in the subjunctive mood. That is, it is being performed as the expectation in participating in the ordinance of remembrance, not as the ordinary meal in which one may consume (or not consume) whatever one wishes. There's more, but this clearly is not a basis for transubstantiation, in my opinion.
“There’s more, but this clearly is not a basis for transubstantiation, in my opinion”
I’ll take Jesus’ own words over any protestant that for some reason doesn’t like to to take Jesus at His word. They always seem to think he was talking out of His head and didn’t know what He was saying. I will also take the words of all the Church fathers from the very beginning that believed in the Real Presence.
Will you, now? Let's see if you really believe that:
Question: Was Jesus speaking/teaching using figurative terms throughout the occasion of the Passover meal in that upper room in less than 24 hours before His death?
Listen to a small sample of these words which Jesus spoke to His disciples at the Last Supper, the same gathering in which He introduced the Ordinance of Remembrance:
"I am the vine: you the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing" (John 15:5 DRB).
(1) "I am the vine . . ." -- Was Jesus here speaking figuratively, or was He suddenly transformed before their very eyes into a literal wood-and-bark trunk and root of a grape vine? Please make a choice here as to which mode Jesus is speaking in.
(2) ". . . ye the branches . . ." -- Was Jesus here speaking figuratively, or did each of the disciples suddenly become transubstantiated into a literal branch of a grape vine? Choose here which mode He is addressing the disciples in terms of.
(3) "He that abideth in me, and I in him . . ." -- Was Jesus here speaking figuratively as to their trust in Him, and His teachings carried out and passed on through them? Or was it simply that they found themselves, each a literal vine branch, literally sprouting in that room out of a literal trunk of grape wood, with no other spiritual consequence? Please choose which this illustration is, now.
(4) ". . . the same beareth much fruit . . ." -- Was Jesus figuratively speaking of His expectation that they would make more disciples, or was He speaking of them literally growing bunches of literal grapes at the ends of the limbs into which they had literally been changed? Choose which mode he is talking in, in this parable.
OK, if you do not see the point, it is because you haven't become mature enough to grasp similes and poetic language in speaking and teaching. Or else you are willingly blind to the conceptual mode in which Jesus was instructing his intimate friends.
If so, only you can help yourself. This is not about Protestantism or Catholicism (which are not diametrically opposed); it is about obvious Truths versus blindness and falsehoods (which are diametrically opposed).
Of course, using the literal (but illogical) model of transubstantiation will make catechizing little, concrete-thinking, as-yet illiterate children much, much easier, won't it? Trying to explain the above verse, and its meaning in context would be very difficult with a six year old child would be very difficult, would it not? Or even to an uneducated low-information adult?
I suspect this is the main reason for the use of this approach to explaining the spiritual purpose and meaning of the communal Remembrance Experience to people not prepared for it, eh?
"All these things Jesus spoke in parables to the multitudes: and without parables he did not speak to them. That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world" (Mt. 13:34-35 DRB).
"And with many such parables, he spoke to them the word, according as they were able to hear. And without parable he did not speak unto them; but apart, he explained all things to his disciples" (Mk 4:33-34 DRB).
You see, Jesus took some three and a half years to educate his disciples to understand literary communication, so that they were quite fit to hear and understand the parable of the vine, and the parable of the fig tree, and the parable of the communal Remembrance Supper and the central elements of Its symbolism, and to explain it to others.
You have just called all the Church fathers liars. You know more than they do. Pardon me for believing first Christ, then 2,000 years of Church teaching, starting in the 1st Century.
I believe Christ first, and His willingness to bear my sins actually in His Body on the Cross, on Golgotha; and to not merely cover my sins with His Blood, but to wash them away for ever.
I am keenly aware that He rose from the dead ones and ascended to the Holiest of Heaven, where every drop of His Incorruptible Blood was placed on Heaven's Mercy Seat that The Mighty God's righteous wrath might be proptitiated; and that I might be reconciled to The Father, Who has offered me the gift of intimate fellowship if I but accept the transaction of yielding my sins and myself to His Son for which He would then confer His Son's righteousness upon me in exchange.
I am sad to know that you do not seem to be able to grasp the import of the fact that Jesus related spiritual truths to the multitudes with figurative-literal language, which they were not able to understand without spiritual guidance (See Matthew 13 for example).
But Jesus took His disciples (including Judas Iscariot) aside, and opened their understanding by explaining the method of understanding the mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven. By the time they were congregated for the Last Supper, they were quite familiar with understanding the spiritual truths taught them during His discourses before, during, and after that Supper, using figurative-literal examples throughout.
That is most certainly the mode in which He taught them to recapitulate the special ritual through future generations to make sure they remembered and passed on the sense of His once-for-all=time substitutionary sacrifice to satisfy The God's just wrath pent up to exercise on mankind. He was not telling them that the bread and wine had literally become changed into His flesh tissue and hematological oxygen-bearing blood, some part of them which then would not have gone to the Cross! This does not even make common sense, let alone spiritual, theological, nor physical sense.
No, he was giving them a ritual in which they were commanded to use as symbols to perpetually bring His offering of Himself as the One And Only Sacrificial Lamb which would utterly remove Sin and sins as a barrier to fellowship with the Father.
The only real thing happened on the Cross, and no transubstantiation was instituted, required, or desired to proclaim spiritual truth until His Second Coming. I don't believe He endorsed some kind of dispensation of a chewable for of Grace as the purpose of the Remembrance.
No, I have never met anyone. Sniff.
You need to get out more.
OK, now I will.
By the way, here is a salutory tale. Be sure not to tell anyone, or no one, as the case may be. And never, no not ever, dangle your participle in public!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vf8N6GpdM
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