If I rant on this could turn out to be a long entry, but I am in some physical pain with my chronic wound on my ankle (seven years now with only a small improvement, in spite of the marvelous work my wife does in dressing it three times per week), and writing here is talk therapy for me to help me through my discomfort. Along with talking to God of course, and I do believe He hears my prayers, not just for myself but also for my wife, and then for all the pain and suffering in this wicked world. Unfortunately day-to-day comfort in this world is not always readily available, and I do not blame God for that. My belief in Him keeps me going, there are far more people who are suffering far more than me and I thank God for the limited quality of life I have, enabling me to write these blog entries, for instance. However, I must bare in mind the comment by C. S. Lewis who said to hear about someone else's toothache does not help his own.
Anyway rant over. I now want to write about my views, as someone who is interested in the tenets of Christian Anarchism, on the subject of Eucharistic miracles. To begin I must write about the Eucharist, the Holy Communion ceremony as I have always understood it, never having been involved in Roman Catholicism. I was confirmed into the Anglican Church in my attempt to form a Christian relationship with my intended wife at that time, I was 38 years old and for her to accept our marriage she wanted me to be able to fully participate in Holy Communion during our marriage ceremony. I believed marriage was sacred, but I was not in love with her, but I wanted my commitment to our marriage to be seen in public. My marriage was a disaster, she appeared not to be a Christian, behaved adulterously, and we divorced. I do not believe God brought us together.
However, my commitment to my confirmation, to attendance at mainstream Churches and my participation in Holy Communion services remained, and remains to this day. However I can only see it, even now, as merely a ritual, a public expression of my commitment to God and the pleasure I get by joining in with other worshippers in this ceremony. My Christian wife now especially encourages me in this. Roman Catholicism appears to make much more of this ceremony, to the point of, I think, introducing a level of spiritualism into the beliefs of the laity. I say spiritualism, rather than spirituality, because their emphasis on Eucharistic miracles, not really substantially corroborated by scientific evidence (I have not researched this but every miracle may well be explained by ordinary decay of the bread and wine, or even deliberate contamination by the priests) is, I think, regrettable and even dishonest and evidence of the corruption within their Church.
Carlo Acutis would not be aware of this, as I have said in my blog entries earlier. His work on the Internet is, for me, inspiring, but it is his work and commitment to Jesus which really inspires me, not the subject of his work. He was a young and innocent child, he began his compilation of the Eucharistic miracles when he was eleven years old, and did what he did by being inspired by Jesus, but being in this world, and not trying to avoid being part of it, he accumulated his displays of the miracles on his website, a magnificent piece of worldly effort, albeit misguided. Jesus guides us all into activities which are designed to bring us closer to Him, but being in this world we must be constantly wary of the workings of the devil who will use the directions of Jesus to further his own desires. Carlo was inspired by Jesus to do the work he did, but I believe the devil guided him in his choice of subject. I ask again that any readers now of my blog entry look again at the machinations of the Roman Catholic Church, and any denominational, sectarian or cultish variations of Christianity, which are promoting their own aggrandizement rather than drawing their devotees to a closer relationship with Jesus. Carlo never reached that level of maturity to understand the wickedness of our political hierarchies, secular or religious.
I feel that I am running out of steam in writing this entry. I will close for the time being (I sometimes return to my entries and add a little more, or effect some corrections. I commend CF for arranging their edit facility to be able to do this), but with a full endorsement of all of the activities of Carlo Acutis, inspired by Jesus and not by His Church, even though Carlo may well have thought his Church played, to him, an acceptable part.
Anyway rant over. I now want to write about my views, as someone who is interested in the tenets of Christian Anarchism, on the subject of Eucharistic miracles. To begin I must write about the Eucharist, the Holy Communion ceremony as I have always understood it, never having been involved in Roman Catholicism. I was confirmed into the Anglican Church in my attempt to form a Christian relationship with my intended wife at that time, I was 38 years old and for her to accept our marriage she wanted me to be able to fully participate in Holy Communion during our marriage ceremony. I believed marriage was sacred, but I was not in love with her, but I wanted my commitment to our marriage to be seen in public. My marriage was a disaster, she appeared not to be a Christian, behaved adulterously, and we divorced. I do not believe God brought us together.
However, my commitment to my confirmation, to attendance at mainstream Churches and my participation in Holy Communion services remained, and remains to this day. However I can only see it, even now, as merely a ritual, a public expression of my commitment to God and the pleasure I get by joining in with other worshippers in this ceremony. My Christian wife now especially encourages me in this. Roman Catholicism appears to make much more of this ceremony, to the point of, I think, introducing a level of spiritualism into the beliefs of the laity. I say spiritualism, rather than spirituality, because their emphasis on Eucharistic miracles, not really substantially corroborated by scientific evidence (I have not researched this but every miracle may well be explained by ordinary decay of the bread and wine, or even deliberate contamination by the priests) is, I think, regrettable and even dishonest and evidence of the corruption within their Church.
Carlo Acutis would not be aware of this, as I have said in my blog entries earlier. His work on the Internet is, for me, inspiring, but it is his work and commitment to Jesus which really inspires me, not the subject of his work. He was a young and innocent child, he began his compilation of the Eucharistic miracles when he was eleven years old, and did what he did by being inspired by Jesus, but being in this world, and not trying to avoid being part of it, he accumulated his displays of the miracles on his website, a magnificent piece of worldly effort, albeit misguided. Jesus guides us all into activities which are designed to bring us closer to Him, but being in this world we must be constantly wary of the workings of the devil who will use the directions of Jesus to further his own desires. Carlo was inspired by Jesus to do the work he did, but I believe the devil guided him in his choice of subject. I ask again that any readers now of my blog entry look again at the machinations of the Roman Catholic Church, and any denominational, sectarian or cultish variations of Christianity, which are promoting their own aggrandizement rather than drawing their devotees to a closer relationship with Jesus. Carlo never reached that level of maturity to understand the wickedness of our political hierarchies, secular or religious.
I feel that I am running out of steam in writing this entry. I will close for the time being (I sometimes return to my entries and add a little more, or effect some corrections. I commend CF for arranging their edit facility to be able to do this), but with a full endorsement of all of the activities of Carlo Acutis, inspired by Jesus and not by His Church, even though Carlo may well have thought his Church played, to him, an acceptable part.
