Posted on 04/04/2015 1:59:27 PM PDT by Steelfish
The Resurrection & The Eucharist by Fr. Rodney Kissinger S.J. (Former Missouri Synod Lutheran) http://www.frksj.org/homily_ressurection_and_the_eucharist.htm There is an important connection between the Resurrection and the Eucharist. The Eucharist IS the Risen Jesus.
Therefore, the Eucharist makes the Resurrection present and active in our lives and enables us to experience the joy and the power of the Resurrection. The Resurrection is the reason for the observance of Sunday instead of the Sabbath. According to the Gospel it was early in the morning on the first day of the week that the Risen Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene.
It was also on the evening of that first day of the week that the Risen Jesus appeared to the Apostles when Thomas was not present. Then a week later, on the first day of the week, he appeared again when Thomas was present.
So the Apostles began to celebrate the first day of the week, Sunday, as the beginning of the re-creation of the world just as they had celebrated the Sabbath as the end of the creation of the world. Originally the Liturgical Year was simply fifty-two Sundays, fifty-two celebrations of the Eucharist, fifty-two celebrations of the Resurrection. Today the Eucharist is still the principal way of celebrating the Resurrection and proclaiming the Mystery of Faith: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”
As we have seen the joy and the power of the Resurrection is not found in the empty tomb or in the witness of some one else it is found only in a personal encounter with the Risen Jesus. The Eucharist, the Risen Jesus, gives us an opportunity for this personal encounter. Will all who receive the Eucharist have a personal encounter with the Risen Jesus? Yes they will. Unfortunately, not all will recognize the Risen Jesus. Mary Magdalene had a personal encounter with the Risen Jesus but did not recognize him. She thought it was the gardener. It was not until she recognized Jesus that she experienced the joy and the power of the Resurrection. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus had a personal encounter with the Risen Jesus and thought that it was a stranger. It was not until they recognized him in the “breaking of the bread” that they experienced the joy and the power of the Resurrection.
The Eucharist is also a pledge of our own resurrection. “I am the living bread come down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” The Eucharist tells us that in death life is changed not ended. It is not so much life after death but life through death. Death is the door to life. This takes away the fear of death and gives us consolation at the death of a loved one.
The Eucharist also continues the two fold effect of the Resurrection which is to confirm the faith of the Apostles and to create the Christian Community. These are two sides of the same coin. To believe is to belong. Community was an integral part of the life of the first Christians. They were of one mind and one heart. When the Apostles asked the Lord to teach them how to pray, he taught them the “OUR Father.” In the Creed we say, “WE believe.” It is a personal commitment made in the community of believers.
The Eucharist also confirms the faith of the recipient and is the principle of unity and community. Without the Christian Community we lose our roots and our identity and our ability to survive in our culture which is diametrically opposed to Christ.
Through the Eucharist the Risen Jesus continues his two fold mission of proclaiming the Good News and healing the sick. Every celebration of the Eucharist proclaims the Good News and heals the sick. The Liturgy of the Word proclaims the Good News and the Liturgy of the Eucharist heals the sick. If people were healed simply by touching the hem of His garment how much more healing must come from receiving His Body and Blood?
How ridiculous it is then when people ask, “Do I have an obligation to go to Mass on Sunday?” If obligation is going to determine whether or not you go to Mass forget the obligation. You have a greater problem than that. Your problem is faith, you don’t believe. You don’t believe that the Eucharist IS the Risen Christ.
You just don’t realize the connection between the Resurrection and the Eucharist. In just a few moments we will receive the Eucharist and once again have an opportunity for a personal encounter with the Risen Jesus.
Let us ask for the faith to recognize him in the “breaking of the bread” so that we are able to say with Thomas, “My Lord and my God,” and in so doing experience the joy and the power of the Resurrection.
Go read up a bit before making fools of oneself. This is an early Church tradition BEFORE the books in the Bible were authoritatively assembled by the Catholic Church as part of infallible Petrine authority as the TRUE written word of God. There were so many things Christ said and did that were NOT written: John 21: 25.
Even Christ kept the old Jewish Sabbath. But now we have the new Sabbath. The first day of the week. Frankly, Bible Christians need to stop displaying their shallowness by tossing out s snippets of scripture. Perhaps, it will help to go ask those pre-eminent Lutheran and Episcopal theologians who after a lifetime of study, teaching, and preaching converted to Catholicism and where for example Fr.. Richard Neuhaus, America’s
foremost Lutheran theologian who wrote he found the “fullest expression Christ in the Catholic Church.”!!!! He is the founder of “First Things.” (But then again, these intellectual publications are beyond the ken of shallow Bible Christians)
Shallow Bible Christians will spend vapid and empty Easters with so-called “Sunrise Services” on the beach with picnic basket and dog in tow, Without the Eucharist all this is pure useless feel good stuff. Better to take a warm shower and you’d feel much better.
Indeed He did.. because He had to keep the whole law perfectly ...Remember Jesus lived in the Old Covenant.. And to be our sinless Savior, Jesus had to keep the levitical laws and all the commandments...something we could never do for ourselves..
We are no longer under the Old Covenant . .
We are not saved or damned because of our law keeping.. No one will be in hell because he went to a football game instead of church ..and no one will be in heaven because he never missed mass..
Law /law/ law
This is too sophomoric. Maybe not for Bible Christians. But now we have the Living Bread of Christ in the Eucharist- all the early Christians practiced this.
Unfortunately, Bible Christians know little if anything of the first fifteen centuries of Catholicism, the ONE truth Church founded by Christ, the church of the early Fathers, the Church that infallibly assembled the books in the Bible, and the Church that carried the scared oral tradition from then until now. Perhaps, a little time spent studying the great historical origins of the Church, their practices, and custom would help.
Unfortunately, Bible Christians know little if anything of the first fifteen centuries of Catholicism
If you had to choose only one or the other would you choose the Bible or the traditions of the Catholic Church?
Before the Bible, there existed the Church. You pose a false choice. The infallible Church that pored over and interpreted the hundreds of written texts at the time and cross referenced it with the oral tradition, and after centuries of checking and cross-checking gave us the authoritative canonical text of the Bible in the Synod of Rome in AD 382. That version has since never changed. Besides, the oral word of God (Jon: 21: 25) did not disappear into the desert air. The words of the Bible (like any written text) must be understood and interpreted by those who were closest to Christ and his disciples and not through the lens of 21st century literalists.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, “Bishop” TD Jakes, Joel Osteen etc,
How odd that those “preachers” you name have strayed from scripture nearly as much as your Catholic Church. Why try to put us in the same category as these blasphemers when Catholicism is much closer to their rejection of God’s word?
Are you saying you would reject the Bible in favor of Catholic tradition?
Did you check the original article?
Fr Rodney Kissinger, S.J.is the author. Not the people you mention.
Did you check the original article?
Did you happen to notice my post was a response to Steelfish?
Steelfish named those people in one of his posts (#5) so you should ask him why he believed those names were relevant to this discussion.
Happy Easter!
Indeed.. The NT church of Jesus Christ.. That church was not rome.. No pope, no priesthood, no "mass" no "holy water", no prayers to the dead, no idols ,no confessionals,no rosaries, no "queen of heaven
That church looked more like my church than Rome ...
Your silence is deafening.
You keep showing your splendid ignorance that even Protestant theologians would be embarrassed including Luther himself who hailed the Catholic Church for preserving and assembling the sacred script as they had assembled.
Now, we all know Bible Christians are shallow and are ignorant of Church history. But here’s something you ought know before further embracing your self.
In the year 110 A.D., not even fifteen years after the book of Revelation was written, while on his way to execution St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote: “Where the bishop is present, there let the congregation gather, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church”. The Church believes that when the bishops speak as teachers, Christ speaks; for he said to them: “He who hears you, hears me; and he who rejects you, rejects me” (Lk 10, 16).
“Now, we all know Bible Christians are shallow and are ignorant of Church history.”
You shame your self with your condescending, self-righteous, ignorance of what ‘Bible Christians’ believe or know. You could be describing a multitude of Roman Catholic Priests now and down through the ages...they may have studied these things in Cemetery school, but are many still ignorant.
Down through the ages too many of the Catholic clergy strayed into the he’n’ and he’n’ lifestyle. And the ‘Church’ has glossed it over. You have ‘condemned’ the Anglicans and other non-Rome churches for gay and lesbian excesses, but condone it in the ‘Church’? I do not consider these churches as ‘Bible Christians’...certainly they are not practicing what the Word teaches.
Communion with my Lord and Savior requires no middleman. He is my mediator between God the Father and me. If my wife and I partake of His Body and His Blood, as we do often and did this morning, it is at the highest level, and not surpassed by the Eucharist. We do not need a Priest to ‘Transubstantiate’ the bread and the wine. We believe, having blessed it, as Jesus did with His disciples, it is, as He said, ‘this is my body’, ‘this is my blood’. And we covenant with Him.
Nothing condescending about anything written here. Surely if you dismiss with a wave of the hand the vast constellation of Catholic theologians from Augustine to Aquinas to Newman and Benedict (whose works are studied in the theological departments of all the great universities and colleges around the world) and Bible Christianity is even rebuffed your own pre-eminent Protestant theologians who decamped and converted to Catholicism, surely the “condescending” and “self-righteous” is on your part to say nothing of hubris. Over and over again, its Protestant and Lutheran theologians who have indicated how terribly shallow Bible Christianity is.
Bible Christians swim in the shallow end of the theological pool. When taken to the deep end their either drown or converted to Catholicism.
So now we have another dissing the works of St. Ignatius! These are among the early Church father who sifted through hundreds of scraps of written texts and cross-checked them against the oral tradition and finally declared under Petrine Authority, the authenticity of the canonical texts they chose to include in the Synod of Rome in AD 382.
I am sure you know the books in the Bible did to fall from the skies and re-assembled themselves in the order we find them.
These we the painstaking efforts of the early Catholic theologians. The infallible authority of the Church did not suddenly disappear into thin air ELEVEN centuries with the curse of Reformation in 1517. No wonder, the renowned essayist Hillaire Belloc wrote that”unlike other heresies, Protestantism spawned a cluster of heresies.” No one dared call him “ignorant of Bible Christianity.”
Today Bible Christianity ha been reduced to a caricature. Each person, and every Tom, Dick, and Harry gets to crack open the pages of the Bible authoritatively put together by Catholics and feel free to toss out scriptural quotes, ignore altogether the received sacred oral tradition (against which the written texts were silted) and then each according to “his” mind “authoritatively” interpret them in contradiction to what the Church Fathers and early disciples did. What an absurdity!
All you can do is dredge up the “personal lives” of priests and popes as misdirection to discuss matters of doctrine. Apparently, we Catholic have no stones left to throw on the personal lives of Protestant leaders and local pastors, adulterers, and murderers.
The rubbish you written “ Communion with my Lord and Savior requires no middleman,” is typical of shallow Bible Christians. Apparently, the great Lutheran theologians who converted to Catholicism were hoodwinked, and great intellectuals like GK Chesterton, and even our own Judge Bork, Justice Thomas, Laura Ingraham, and the Chief Rabbi of Rome (to name a few) who converted to Catholicism have all been misled. Maybe they could not read straightforward plain text!!! What shame!
Dr. Robert Webber who is recognized by many as the authority on worship renewal. He taught at Wheaton College for 32 years as Professor of Theology and has authored over 40 books. Dr. Webber had a “life changing experience” at a Catholic conference center when he decided to receive the Eucharist . His testimony is recorded in a book entitled Signs of Wonder. Following is part of his experience in his own words:
“Closing my eyes, I allowed my life in the church to pass before me. My prejudices rose up within me: What are you doing here? You never worshiped in a Catholic setting, let alone received the bread and the wine from a Catholic priest! Then I heard my Catholic friends speak of their love for Christ, pray with fervency, and express a real desire to know the Scriptures and live by its authority. Those memories said, ‘Go ahead. After all, there is only one Lord, one church, one faith, one baptism, one Holy Communion.’ In that moment, God broke through the walls I had allowed to separate me from my brothers and sisters of different denominations. I am convinced the prejudices we hold and the walls we build between ourselves and other communities of Christians actually block our experience of God’s presence in our lives. Our biases cut us off from the spiritual communion of the fullness of the body of Christ. God dwells in his church, and to reject a part of God’s church is to reject him. Furthermore, rejecting apart of God’s church keeps us from experiencing what the creed calls “the communion of the Saints.” When God broke down my walls, he brought me into richer fellowship with the body of Christ throughout the world. You might say I was surprised by joy! I had never had an experience like that in my life. In that Catholic chapel, a new worship experience had bumped up against that old prejudice of mine, and a new attitude was born. I had taken into myself the experience of another tradition, I had been in dialogue with another worship tradition, and I was surely the richer for it.”
“…gets to crack open the pages of the Bible authoritatively put together by Catholics…”
NO! Put together by the Holy Spirit!
“The rubbish you written “Communion with my Lord and Savior requires no middleman,” is typical of shallow Bible Christians.”
You are writing rubbish. You are writing the party line of agnostic Catholic Theologians.
“Today Bible Christianity has been reduced to a caricature. Each person, and every Tom, Dick, and Harry gets to crack open the pages of the Bible authoritatively put together by Catholics and feel free to toss out scriptural quotes, ignore altogether the received sacred oral tradition (against which the written texts were silted) and then each according to “his” mind “authoritatively” interpret them in contradiction to what the Church Fathers and early disciples did. What an absurdity!”
I will pray for you that God opens your eyes and gives you a taste of true communion with Him, through our Lord and Savior, Jesus, the Christ. What God has given me, and many like-minded brethren of mine, is NOT Caricature! I may open the Bible, put together by the Holy Spirit, inspiring the words there, and not by Roman Catholics. That much is housed in a library in the Vatican does not make it ‘Catholic’! And we know, both you and I, that Catholic Tradition does not necessarily mesh with the Word of God!
“The rubbish you have written…”
Again, you subvert yourself to condescending tripe.
“Surely if you dismiss with a wave of the hand the vast constellation of Catholic theologians from Augustine to Aquinas to Newman…”
I know Newman…Cardinal Newman. A great man in the faith. Cardinal Newman was 21 years an Anglican Priest. He was contemporary with others in the 1800’s in England. I have studied him, about him and his family. John Henry Newman is well known on college campuses in this country. I have studied Augustine and Aquinas and those in between. They were true followers of Jesus Christ. And they would have been so, with or without any connection to the ‘Catholic’ Church.
‘So now we have another dissing the works of St. Ignatius!’
You subvert the truth. I did no dis the works of Ignatius. Ignatius was one of the great early church fathers, and I have read his writings.
“Petrine Authority”
Peter was a stone, a pebble. Jesus built his church on a rock…He Himself the Rock…the First Cornerstone…
“I am sure you know the books in the Bible did to fall from the skies and re-assembled themselves in the order we find them.”
No, they did not ‘fall from the skies’…they were given to us by the Holy Spirit, who inspired their writing, and inspirationally gave them to us.
“The infallible authority of the Church…”
There is no infallibility in the Roman Church. Infallibility is in the Word of God as given to us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. On the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit fell on all who were there (Jews). Period. It had nothing to do with Peter.
At the house of Cornelius, the Holy Spirit fell on all who were there. (Gentiles). It had nothing to do with Peter.
“Apparently, we Catholic have no stones left to throw on the personal lives of Protestant leaders and local pastors, adulterers, and murderers.”
We addressed that in a previous comment. It is not about throwing stones. If we were to do that we would dredge up the Inquisitions in Spain…we would talk about Joan of Arc…we would resurrect the ‘Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini’.
Each person, and every Tom, Dick, and Harry gets to crack open the pages of the Bible authoritatively put together by the Holy Spirit and use them for edification and for instruction, as the Holy Spirit leads.
So every Tom, Dick and Harry can crack open the pages of the Bible and with no singular teaching authority, “use them for edification and for instruction.”
Of course that’s what Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen, Jimmy Swaggart; Billy Graham, Jim, Jones David Koresh, Benny Hinn, and every kind of “First” (First AME; First Presbyterian; First Methodist; First Unitarian; First Baptist) with all their contradictory teachings instruct, to say nothing of the mainline Protestant and Evangelical denominations that now use scriptural warrant for ordaining married gay and lesbian pastors, are all using scripture “foe edification and for instruction.”
Do you now see the sheer rubbish you write? It upends the entire teaching of Christ to Peter and his successors to found One Church to teach ONE truth for all times.
This is precisely why leading Protestant pastors have branded it a “shallow” exercise and anyone with an intellectual curiosity converts to Catholicism. Protestantism today in any of its variations is an embarrassment.
Ulf Ekman one of the world’s largest Lutheran congregations of some 4000 members in Sweden explains more of the reasoning behind his conversion to Catholicism:
“I discovered how little I really knew about [Catholics], their spirituality and their beliefs. Unconsciously I carried many prejudices and bad attitudes and have been quick to judge them without really knowing what they actually believed. It has been good to discover and to repent from nonchalant and shallow opinions, based not on their own sources but on their opponents, and to discover a very rich heritage, a strong theological foundation and a deep love for Jesus Christ among them.”
See also Dr. David Anders Protestant historian who tried to prove Catholicism wrong and ended up converting!
“I thought there could be no better preparation for assaulting the Catholic Church and winning converts than to thoroughly understand the minds of the great leaders of our faith — Martin Luther and John Calvin”
Stellar List of Converts to Catholicism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_converts_to_Catholicism
The large mustard tree keep growing while every kind of wild mushroom of Protestantism withers and dies. Their leaders decamp, and the poor souls are left stranded in the pews reciting the shallow rot as Ulf Ekman says
“…with no singular teaching authority…”
You like to misquote. What I wrote that you find objectionable was ‘Each person, and every Tom, Dick, and Harry gets to crack open the pages of the Bible authoritatively put together by the Holy Spirit and use them for edification and for instruction, as the Holy Spirit leads.’
Read the last five words here…’as the Holy Spirit leads’. Apparently you think the Catholic Church hierarchy has more teaching authority that the Holy Spirit.
But of course that is where you and so many like you have gone astray. Jesus did not come to form a new religion, it is all about relationship. God seeks relationship in a personal way with man, even with you and me. If you reject that personal relationship you reject God and you nullify the redemptive work of Jesus on the Cross. When Jesus refers to the church He is referring to the collective body of His followers, His body (bride). The ecclesia, the ‘called out’ ones. And yes, this is the universal church, lower case ‘c’.
God seeks relationship with man. God sought relationship with Adam…He walked with Adam in the Garden in the cool of the day. He found relationship with Enoch…Enoch walked with God. And so with Noah…Noah walked with God. Personal relationships – Enoch and Noah understood relationship and walked in relationship with God. When church hierarchy gets in the way, personal relationship with God does not happen. Church hierarchies are not my mediator.
Religions, all religions, all religious systems, are created by and are systems of men. The systems of men will pass away. This includes economic, political, religious systems – all will end. The world’s systems would have none of Him and that is their downfall. The systems of the world are not His way and they are crumbling. When Jesus sets foot on this earth again, He will establish a new-world order that He controls. And when He comes He will not be going to Wall Street nor to Washington DC nor to Rome seeking permission for what He is about to do. All systems of men will be gone. Kaput!
Amen!!
What a pathetic display of shallow Bible Christianity, and no wonder Protestantism and all its conflicting brands today make for exhibit one of a caricature. No need to show the conflicting scriptural interpretations of Joel Osteen, or the vapid rot of Billy Graham, Rick Warren; Jimmy Swaggart, Benny Hinn, David Koresh; Jim Jones; Rev. Jeremiah Wright, or this or that First “Whatever” or every other kind of idiotic interpretations offered by every self appointed neighborhood foursquare church pastor.
Instead we have folks like ealgone tells Catholics to “go read John;” editor-surveyor, talks about “Yeshua remnant” (whatever the hell that means) and poor GGpaC4DumpedTea tries to rescue his his prior observations by trying to make it appear profound by by the qualifier ’as the Holy Spirit leads’. Wow; there must be thousands of “Holy Spirits” here given the 30,000 or so branches of Protestantism that began to divide and subdivide and continue to subdivide ever since it washed ashore some eleven centuries after the Holy Spirit guided the early Church Fathers in the Synod of Rome in AD 382 to infallibly assembled the canonical texts deemed authentic under Petrine authority.
This is not the Holy Spirit that hopscotches from one brach of a tree to another. Apparently hundreds of churches belonging to the mainline Episcopalian and Protestant Churches had the Holy Spirit with them until they began to ordain married gay and lesbian pastors.
It is precisely because of such shallow rubbish that every major Lutheran and and Protestant theologian have abandoned this drivel and converted to Catholicism. No less than America’s pre-eminent Lutheran theologian and scholar, Rev. Richard Neuhaus, not only abandoned Protestantism and converted to Catholicism, he said that in Catholicism he found “the fullest expression of the Christ.”
The brilliant Protestant and historian of Christianity, Dr. David Anders who tried to prove Catholicism wrong, ended up converting and said this:
“I thought there could be no better preparation for assaulting the Catholic Church and winning converts than to thoroughly understand the minds of the great leaders of our faith — Martin Luther and John Calvin”
So we know how that turned out.
But that’s not all, (this would make Iscool take refuge under his bed for tossing out incoherent scriptural interpretations), Francis J. Beckwith, a “born-again” evangelical, a tenured professor at Baptist-affiliated Baylor University in Waco, Tex, was the president of the Evangelical Theological Society, an association of 4,300 Protestant theologians resigned and joined the Catholic Church calling to account the inherent contradictions of Protestant belief with the scripture and the traditions and practice of the early disciples of Christ.
And if this is not enough, I offer you all, Ulf Ekman, the founder of Scandinavia’s biggest Bible-based school and church, with a congregation of some 4000 individuals, converted to Catholicism because after a whole lifetime of study his theological inquiry confirmed for him the indispensability of the Catholic sacraments.
Now lets not go into the realm of Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, or Benedict. Shallow Bible Christian who can barely keep afloat in the shallow waters of Bible-based theology would drown upon encountering the first wave of the insights of these theological giants. We have already seen the nonsense about “Yeshua remnant,” and the rest of this pool.
Then we have GGpaC4DumpedTea tell us:
“When Jesus refers to the church He is referring to the collective body of His followers, His body (bride). The ecclesia, the ‘called out’ ones. And yes, this is the universal church, lower case ‘c’.”
Wow? What profundity! Apparently, the “collective body” can hold different “truths” with each justifying their absurdity by saying these have interpreted for themselves scripture “ for edification and for instruction, as the Holy Spirit leads.”
Some Holy Spirt we have here who led followers of David Koresh and Jim Jones to their ghastly deaths for following what “they” believed were authentic interpretations of scripture no more than a Billy Graham or a Rev. All Shaprton or a First AME or a First Whatever claim to usurp the authoritative teaching of the Church in its Credo and Magisterium.
Finally, as all theologians (except for those Protestants stranded in the pews) we must end where we began, ONE Church, teaching ONE infallible truth, for ALL times.
What was truly said in in the year 110 A.D. is true just as today. Barely fifteen years after the book of Revelation was written, while on his way to his execution, St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote:
“Where the bishop is present, there let the congregation gather, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic church”. The Church believes that when the bishops speak as teachers, Christ speaks; for he said to them: “He who hears you, hears me; and he who rejects you, rejects me” (Lk 10, 16).
No need for any “Yeshua remnant” or any rot. No need for remnant when you have the gigantic mustard tree of the Catholic Church with its branches spread across to all part of the world, and which alone holds in its belief the Living Christ as John 6:53 confirms “Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.”
This is why the wild and lifeless mushrooms of Protestantism have begun to decay and wither away and rot as married gays and lesbian pastors now occupy the pulpit of mainline Protestant denominations. Led, by the Holy Spirit? Methinks not.
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