The Real Presence-the Eucharist

[Root of Jesse]

Amongst other Christians, don't forget the martyrs of Lyons. They went to their deaths denying they were eating human/divine flesh. So, your statement is incorrect.

Proof please, that they denied they were eating divine flesh?

 

[Root of Jesse]

I think it would be best to remain in words that Jesus declared:

It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
John 6:63

Truly, truly I tell you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death at all.”
John. 8:51

Why would Jesus say that his divine flesh was useless? Was he contradicting Himself? "I AM the Bread of Life." said HE.
Jesus Word was "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you..."

 

[Root of Jesse]

Even if the Catholics were right, there would be no scripture to back up the claim that Protestants that those who don't participate are rejecting God. That would be just another Catholic tradition imposed on such an action.

These assumptions also divide people into only Catholics and Protestants. There were believers being tortured and murdered for many years by the RCC prior to the reformation. They and their legacy would not be either Catholic or Protestant.

Ya? Who? Believers who were heretics?

 

[Goatee]

Ephesians 3:9-11
9 and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; 10 that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. 11 This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord,

'Through the Church'. Yes, the Catholic Church! All truth comes.

All you people who are against anything Catholic, you must understand that it is through and from the Catholic Church that we have been given these Sacred Teachings! Sacred Tradition married with Sacred Scripture.

Of course the Eucharist is the REAL BODY AND BLOOD OF OUR LORD!

Did not Jesus say:

John 6:54
54 he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

Jesus was telling the truth!!!

 

[SeventyOne]

Ya? Who? Believers who were heretics?

Only according to the RCC. Not exactly a reliable source.

 

[Wordkeeper]

Ephesians 3:9-11
9 and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; 10 that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. 11 This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord,

'Through the Church'. Yes, the Catholic Church! All truth comes.

All you people who are against anything Catholic, you must understand that it is through and from the Catholic Church that we have been given these Sacred Teachings! Sacred Tradition married with Sacred Scripture.

Of course the Eucharist is the REAL BODY AND BLOOD OF OUR LORD!

Did not Jesus say:

John 6:54
54 he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

Jesus was telling the truth!!!

John 6:54
54 he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

Apparently, Catholics, having eaten the real flesh, have eternal life.

Eternal life is the same as the kingdom of God:

Mark 10
17 As He was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to Him and knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 You know the commandments, ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” 20 And he said to Him, “Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth up.” 21 Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him,“One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” 22 But at these words [a]he was saddened, and he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property.

23 And Jesus, looking around, *said to His disciples, “How hard it will be for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God!”

I'm so pleased to hear that we have posters who have entered the kingdom of God, not by giving up everything and following Christ, but by eating His flesh.

Please tell me about your experiences in the kingdom of God.

 

[amadeois]

I ask a question: Have the Catholics read Revelation 18???

That great city that has their people dressed in scarlet and purple and has done business with all the world.

And is reach with gold a precious stones.

Anybody has a guess of what city is this?

Why did Jesus have such negative comments?

It will be destroyed in one hour.

Verse 4 says, get out of there.

MANY DEAF EARS TO JESUS' WORDS.

 

[Grafted In]

Try to stay on topic...pleaseBut His presence in the Eucharist is unique, and not found anywhere but in the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches. It's why we build great monuments to God around the Eucharist.

Do you honestly believe God is impressed by man-made monumemts?
Does not He dwell inside you? Those are the monuments that matter to Him.
Does God dwell inside of you?
What better monument than believing the gospel and having God indwell your person?

 

[PeaceByJesus]

Let's say that's all true. Let's say that everything credited to St. Ignatius was not actually written by St. Ignatius in the early 2nd century.

Why do the other Church Fathers agree with him about the Real Presence? Even if St. Ignatius was mistaken (which you have yet to demonstrate), his "error" was pretty widespread. How did that happen, I wonder?

How? The same way other traditions of men because accepted.In Scripture we have absolutely zero prayers by anyone except pagans (or idolatrous Israelites) to anyone in Heaven but the Lord, despite prayer being a most basic common practice (and with plenty of created beings to pray to), with the Holy Spirit providing approx. 200 prayers in our Bible, for He is faithful to provide such. Yet Catholics pray to created beings.

Likewise coming up with a distinctive class of clergy besides apostles, presbuteros (senior/elder) and episkopos (superintendent/overseer) denoting one office, and deacons, and a class distinctively titled "priests" which distinctive word is never used for NT pastors, nor does it mean the same.

Likewise church law that requires virtually all NY pastors to be celibate, contrary to Scripture.

And the list goes on.

This deformation did not mean the church totally apostatized and could not have saved souls in it, but as is usually the case, it was a remnant of souls of poor and contrite hearts.

Sola Scriptura is your limitation. Please don't make it mine. Thanks!

Sola ecclesia is Rome's presumption. Please don't make it mine. Thanks!
It is your burden to do as the Lord and Paul and others did in showing that Jesus was the Christ, and thus the noble Bereans were convinced. Invoking uninspired men who, however pious, manifestly succumbed to traditions of men which are not what we see in the NT church, but are invoked to support another such tradition, is an argument against Catholicism in so doing.

 

[PeaceByJesus]

Actually, the NT is full of references to eating the Lord's Supper.

Which is another of your desperate bare assertions that ignores what i showed to the contrary. I dare you to show any manifest description of the Lord's supper besides what I described, let alone any description of the Catholic Eucharist, that of a central overarching daily ritual sacrifice for sins at the hands of a class of believers distinctively titled "priests," turning bread and wine into the "real" body and blood of Christ, which was to be eaten in order to obtain spiritual life.

Your wanton, egregious extrapolative efforts will only make you look more desperate. If the Catholic church is that of the NT then the above is just what we would clearly and abundantly see in the record of the NT church, versus merely breaking of bread in gladness of heart, and the mention of a feast of charity, and the only manifest description in one epistle which does not describe the Catholic Mass and Eucharist, as explained.

God didn't tell us that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood, and then not give us a way to eat his flesh and drink his blood.

Another question-begging logical fallacy, for that God told us we must literally physically eat his flesh and drink his blood is what needs to be established, but cannot.

By the way, we don't eat human flesh, hence, no cannibalism.

Actually by claiming to eat the "real" body and blood of Christ in order to obtain spiritual qualities you are essentially doing what those who engage in endocannibalism do, without the neoplatonic thought and Aristotelian metaphysics.

And yet not eating actual human flesh is contrary to the purely literal understanding of the Lord's words at the last supper, as explained, for the body and blood which He said to consume was what would be crucified and poured out , which certainly looked, tasted and would taste and test as real human flesh.

Also, it is noted that there is dissent about what the Eucharist is. Those disciples in John 6 didn't want to believe Jesus, either.

Yes, for they seemed to have imagined the Lord was going to actually give them His flesh and blood, like as other Jews presumed when He spoke of destroying the Temple then He was speaking of the literal one, and they did not wait for the spiritual explanation.

Yet he persisted in what he told them, even deepened the term he used.

As He did in telling Nicodemus that he needed a second birth, and in telling the women at the well about the living water, both of which had a spiritual meaning, as was given in John 6:63

The fact is that it was a passover meal,

As in Jesus passover Ratzinger states, not the Jews: "...the Jewish authorities who led Jesus before Pilate’s court avoided entering the praetorium, “so that they might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover” (18:28). The Passover, therefore, began only in the evening, and at the time of the trial the Passover meal had not yet taken place; the trial and crucifixion took place on the day before the Passover..."

"Thursday evening-Jesus’ Last Supper with the disciples, but not a Passover meal; Friday, the vigil of the feast, not the feast itself-trial and execution; Saturday-rest in the tomb; Sunday-Resurrection. According to this chronology, Jesus dies at the moment when the Passover lambs are being slaughtered in the Temple. Jesus dies as the real lamb, merely prefigured by those slain in the Temple."

"...essentially, this farewell meal was not the old Passover, but the new one, which Jesus accomplished in this context. Even though the meal that Jesus shared with the Twelve was not a Passover meal according to the ritual prescriptions of Judaism, nevertheless, in retrospect, the inner connection of the whole event with Jesus’ death and Resurrection stood out clearly. It was Jesus’ Passover. "
(Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI; http://catholiclane.com/dating-the-...jesus-of-nazareth-part-2-by-joseph-ratzinger/

the Hebrews sacrificed and ate a lamb, and painted his blood on their doorways. Had they not eaten the lamb, they wouldn't have been saved. We Catholics follow instructions.

Then to be consistent, you need to paint blood on your doorposts, for unless they did that then they would not have been saved. However, as with so many other like things, these have a spiritual fulfillment.

And if not, and physically consuming Christ was essential for salvation, then the Lord's supper would have been preached as the means of obtaining spiritual life in Acts onward, which it is not, nor would Prots we able to be saved if they denied the Catholic "Real Presence," which is not modern RC teaching.

Strike three.

 

[Goatee]

I ask a question: Have the Catholics read Revelation 18???

That great city that has their people dressed in scarlet and purple and has done business with all the world.

And is reach with gold a precious stones.

Anybody has a guess of what city is this?

Why did Jesus have such negative comments?

It will be destroyed in one hour.

Verse 4 says, get out of there.

MANY DEAF EARS TO JESUS' WORDS.

What city is it? No name is given to it that we know of? You been watching too much youtube?

 

[Goatee]

Do you honestly believe God is impressed by man-made monumemts?
Does not He dwell inside you? Those are the monuments that matter to Him.
Does God dwell inside of you?
What better monument than believing the gospel and having God indwell your person?

Ark of the Covenant was man made via God's instructions!

 

[Goatee]

Snip

Its quite obvious reading your posts that you really dont understand Catholicism. Maybe you should sit down and study it better from proper literature rather than from comics!

 

[PeaceByJesus]

Why would Jesus say that his divine flesh was useless? Was he contradicting Himself? "I AM the Bread of Life." said HE.

He did indeed say it, and was not contradicting Himself, but as in other places in John leading up to this in which the physical was used as a representative metaphor (the Lamb; the temple; the serpent; second birth; well-water; doing God's will) the explanation comes after the use of the metaphor.

And in context, the sense in which His incarnated crucified flesh was useless was as food, the very thing which needs explanation, and thus the Lord stated that "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him. (John 6:63-64)

And which is the only understanding that is 100% consistent with the rest of John and Scripture, in which spiritual life is never obtained by literally physically eating anything, and in the NT it is obtained by believing the gospel, and living by Christ is that of living by His word.

Thus the Lord said "As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me." (John 6:57) And how did the Son live by the Father? By consuming His flesh? No, for as Jesus said in once again using metaphor in John, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of...My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work" (John 4:34) For " It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4)

And this is what we see in the rest of John and the NT, in which the Word of God is said to be "milk" and "meat" by which the believer is "nourished" and built up. (1Pt. 2:2; 1Co. 3:2; Heb. 5:13-6:2; 1Tim. 4:16; Acts 20:32)

In contrast, nowhere is the Lord's supper set forth as the means of obtaining spiritual life, or described as spiritual nourishment, let alone the expiatory Catholic Eucharist of a sacerdotal priesthood.

"Jesus Word was "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you...""

And which is as unequivocal as other "verily, verily" statements, and thus it is either referring to the literalistic Catholic comprehension or receiving the Lord Jesus by believing His word, as fully as one chews and ingests food.

If the former, it would mean that partaking of the Lord supper would be what was preached in John and Acts onward as the means of obtaining spiritual life, and which would necessitate apostolic preaching on the nature of the elements, and with the offering up of such being the primary active function of the pastors, and exhortations to do so, like as with preaching the word.

But which is not the case, but instead it is believing the gospel that one obtained spiritual life, and the preaching of the word being the primary active function of the pastors, and with that word being called "milk, "meat' and which nourishes and builds believers up.

Thus you must either equivocate on Jn. 6;53, or damn all Prots who deny the Cath "Real Presence" and also show the Lord's supper being preached as the means of obtaining spiritual life in the life of the NT church, and of spiritual nourishment, and and primary active function of pastors.

Or you can just admit that your doctrine is not manifest in the life of the NT church, and agree with what is, instead, but devotion to Rome prevents that.

 

[PeaceByJesus]

Its quite obvious reading your posts that you really dont understand Catholicism. Maybe you should sit down and study it better from proper literature rather than from comics!

Really? I assure my understanding here is taken from Catholic teaching and I challenge you to show where it is not, and i will change it if it is, or expose your own ignorance. Put up or shut up. Your immature recourse to ad hominem betrays your desperation.

 

[Grafted In]

Root of jesse, do you have the indwelling of The Holy Spirit? Did He not come into your heart at salvation and does He not help you understand the things of The Spirit?
Or is it your belief that the bread and wine teach you and lead you in your relationship with God?

 

[ken777]

Why would Jesus say that his divine flesh was useless? Was he contradicting Himself? "I AM the Bread of Life." said HE.
Jesus Word was "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you..."

"Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life" John 6:54
Just asking to help me understand - does that mean everyone who takes part in the mass has eternal life? I've heard that in some churches, the people only receive the bread - is that right?

 

[Original Happy Camper]

Satan the Counterfeiter has gone and done it again. The RCC teaching on the Eucharist is a pagan teaching.

The Dionysus Connection
Ritual ingestion of wine was already common and sacred at least 500 years before the birth of Jesus. Known as Bacchus in Rome, Dionysus was the Greek god of fertility and ecstasy. He was celebrated through ritual wine drinking and yearly festivals that also included dancing and intoxication. In the "Bacchae," by Greek playwright Euripides, written in the 5th century B.C., it is revealed that not only is Dionysus born of a virgin but his blood is wine to be shared.

The Mithras Mystery
Another prominent pagan religion that was at the height of its popularity at around the same time as Jesus was the cult of Mithras. Mithras actually shares many attributes with Jesus, including a last supper just before Mithras ascended to heaven. Initiates of the Mithras cult partook of a sacred meal in honor of Mithras that included both bread and wine, which were believed to be the flesh and blood of a great bull that was slain by Mithras.

Remember the counterfeit has to come before the real or it has no credibility.

3 So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:
5 And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon The Great, The Mother Of Harlots And Abominations Of The Earth.
6 And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.
Revelation 18King James Version (KJV)
18 And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.
2 And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
3 For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
5 For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

 

[PeaceByJesus]

"Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life" John 6:54
Just asking to help me understand - does that mean everyone who takes part in the mass has eternal life?

To be consistent - not that Caths are in this - not only must the bread and wine actually be that same manifest incarnated and crucified body and blood (versus an inanimate Christ which does not look, taste, or would test as flesh and blood), but those who do receive the corporeally present whole and entire Christ disguised as bread and wine have eternal life, and those who deny this not have not.

Which conflicts with modern RC teaching affirming baptized Prots as being part of the body of Christ. Therefore, after invoking John 6:53 as an unequivocal absolute imperative for moral souls, then unless they are part of a RC sect or schism, they must labor at explaining this away as not an unequivocal absolute imperative for moral souls. As well as show the expiatory Eucharist by sacerdotal priests in the life of the church as the means of obtaining spiritual life, and providing spiritual nourishment. Or ignore the challenge.

Stand by for either.

" I've heard that in some churches, the people only receive the bread - is that right?

Cath theology is that the entire Christ is present even in one particle from its crumbs, and as such particles can be minute and likely even become airborne, then some can likely end up in the vacuum cleaner. Thus the most scrupulous care is enjoined in handling this false Christ.

 

[thecolorsblend]

How? The same way other traditions of men because accepted.In Scripture we have absolutely zero prayers by anyone except pagans (or idolatrous Israelites) to anyone in Heaven but the Lord, despite prayer being a most basic common practice (and with plenty of created beings to pray to), with the Holy Spirit providing approx. 200 prayers in our Bible, for He is faithful to provide such. Yet Catholics pray to created beings.

Am I to assume that you don't and wouldn't ask another Christian to pray for you... even though Sacred Scripture recommends doing so?

Also, it's a bit hard to believe that the Church Fathers universally fell into error the instant the final surviving apostle breathed his last. Seriously? NOBODY held onto right doctrine starting late in the first century?? Because they all believed the Eucharist to be the Body and Blood of Our Lord. So if that belief is in error, it must have come into the Church very early on and been accepted by everyone.

Inspired or not, the writings of the Church Fathers show us what was normative practice and doctrine in their time. Rejecting those things because it doesn't seem to line up with your abbreviated Bible seems a bit presumptuous.