Posted on 12/06/2005 3:32:33 PM PST by franky
I personally think those Chreaster Christians will be stting this Christmas out -- unless they can find a service in the evening or late in the afternoon. This is the first Sunday Christmas in over a decade. My suspicion is that if they are not inclined to go every Sunday, then they are certainly not going to be inclined to get up on Christmas morning and go to Church. My bet is that they will all show up at the Saturday Night service. Better break out the folding chairs for that one.
Do you have scriptural authority for that?
And remember that after Christ said, "Verily I say unto you: unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you," many of his disciples fell away. "This is an hard saying - who can hear it?" If it was "merely symbolic," why did Christ not say so? And why did his followers have such a hard time with it?
"There body and blood, soul and divinity, is what I meant."
Interesting. Jesus told the Samaritan woman that God is spirit, "and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Hebrews 8:1 says that Jesus, in His resurrected body, sits at the right hand of God making intercession for us. The resurrected body is a material body, able to be seen and touched, and localized in specific areas, not omnipresent like the Holy Spirit. That's why He told the disciples it was good that He was going away because the omnipresent Holy Spirit would come. Who then is physically present in each location that communion is celebrated?
Sat eve is actually Sunday, if I understand him correctly.
That is correct. You just need to adjust your time-sense to think sundown-to-sundown instead of midnight-to-midnight.
And if we assume that John 6:53 was meant to mean that the Disciple was to eat the physical flesh of Christ at communion, then we have to admit that the rest of the passage wherein Jesus claims to be "Bread" would mean that his body was not composed of human flesh, but that Jesus was actually made of wheat and barley flour. If he meant that we are to literally eat his flesh and drink his blood, then we must admit that Jesus was made out of bread.
Wrt John, you need to read Aquinas on the doctrine of Accidents or Appearances. Readers Digest version: the "accidents" or appearances of the bread and wine remain the same, but the essence or substance is miraculously transformed into the Body and Blood. Read all about it: Transubstantiation
Using those same scriptures I can show that Christ was really made of bread. After the miracle of transubstantiation, what do the elements taste like? They taste like bread and wine. Thus from a "physical standpoint" there is more physical vidence to suggest that Jesus was made of Bread and wine than there is physical evidence to show that the bread and wine have somehow miraculously turned into human flesh and blood.
The communion is not a physical experience it is a spiritual experience. We are not attaining physical immortality by drinking and eating, but we are looking forward to spiritual immortality. IOW we are not achieving eternal physical life, but eternal spiritual life.
If the eucharist is a physical event, how do you account for the fact that so many who have partaken of it have suffered physical death?
6:64. It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.*
I was reading Jn. 6 earlier, as I had been directed there by something I was reading, and I've included a couple of things that strike me as persuasive, insofar as your take is concerned. I didn't include all the preceeding Text even though it would have been beneficial, because it took up too much space.
But, in light of first passage, those who walked away from Him couldn't have believed that he really meant that he was going to offer his body up, as was, for His followers to feast upon, or drain a vein to drink from, could they? They must not have understood what he was really getting at, because he doesn't back down from the command, in fact, He becomes more forceful about it, and less enigmatic.
It's basically a children's service, which we've incorporated into our Christmas Eve early evening carol service. There is a basic description of the meaning of the Christingle, and then they are lit and passed to all the congregation, typically with the children making sure everyone receives one.
The children themselves make the Christingles the preceding Sunday, while the grownups work on "The Greening of the Church" -- decorating it for the Christmas season to come.
But as we are both physical and spiritual, so is the Eucharist.
Yeah, that's the same level of understanding Cartman had.
SD
Why don't they submit some of the unused elements of the Eucharist to the same scientific inquiry?
Perhaps because physically it is literally bread and wine, but spiritually it is literally Christ's body and blood?
Prove me wrong.
My personal belief is that it's a 12th century forgery - since the bishop of the time identified the forger and condemned him . . .
As for your rhetorical question, I already answered that. The "appearances" or "accidents" do not change, so no scientific test is possible.
The Shroud of Turin isn't even in the same league as the Body and Blood.
This:
The Catholic Church has spent lots of money and run all kinds of scientific tests attempting to prove that the Shroud of Turin is the actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ. Why don't they submit some of the unused elements of the Eucharist to the same scientific inquiry?
is enough to demonstrate that you don't understand the Catholic teaching on transubstantiation. Until you can wrap your head around that, there is little point in trying to go forward.
When you start asking questions that demonstrate you understand the topic, then we can begin.
SD
So it is not a "physical" experience, nor is it there a literal physical change, but it is a spiritual event. IOW while the participant is literally consuming the body and blood of Christ, the event occurs on a spiritual level and not on a physical level?
Is that right?
Then why the insistence on a "Physical presence" when the fact is that there really is no literal "physical presence" but merely the literal "actual" presence.
If, indeed, there was a literal "physical presence" then the elements would be subject to physical scientific testing and confirmation. DNA evidence would be available in every empty cup. The fact that they are not so subject to physical testing seems to prove conclusively (at least on a physcial level) that the change is not physical.
I'm hoping to go to midnight mass with my family.
Usually one asks questions because they do not fully understand the topic. The answers I have been getting do nothing more than to generate new questions.
Perhaps you have some additional scriptural authority for the proposition that Christ's body is literally physically present in the Eucharist? Perhaps you have some scientific evidence that the elements have literally changed?
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