Eucharist questions

[URA]

I recently met with my college's non-denominational Campus Minister to talk about the Real Presence of the Eucharist. We had a very good conversation, lasting about an hour. However, there were a few questions he asked that I couldn't really answer, so I'd like to ask the Catholics here for input:

When going through John 6: "53 Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day." My Campus Minister asked a few questions here:

--His first issue was seeing Eucharist like baptism. If it gives you eternal life, then why take it more than once? How many times do you have to receive the Eucharist to be saved?
I tried explaining that the Eucharist, like so many things, isn't about legalism but is designed to help us. I talked about the spiritual nourishment we get from it, but what he still questioned & I couldn't answer well was him wondering how many times we need to get eternal life, and how people who don't take the Eucharist can be saved.

--When I about the Real Presence in the tabernacle at Chruch, he cited the part of Jesus' Passion, where "the curtain of the temple was torn in two". This curtain was what held God's presence in the Holy of Holies, and the curtain tearing in two was God's presence being relrased for the whole world. He saw the Real Presence in the tabernacle at Church as somehow restraining God to that place, when God's presence was sent everywhere at the Crucifixion. He also asked, "Is God here?", which I said Yes, because God is everywhere. The best I could do was say that the tabernacle held God's presence in a more concentrated manner than anywhere else, and that it's all based on faith anyway.

Thank you for your input, and please pray for all to be in full communion with Christ's True Church!

May God bless us all!

 

[Davidnic]

I'm about to head out the door so I can't give in depth answers at the moment.

but I highly recommend this book it is one of the best books on the origins and nature of the Eucharist.

Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper
by Brant Pitre

 

[Not David]

I recently met with my college's non-denominational Campus Minister to talk about the Real Presence of the Eucharist. We had a very good conversation, lasting about an hour. However, there were a few questions he asked that I couldn't really answer, so I'd like to ask the Catholics here for input:

When going through John 6: "53 Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day." My Campus Minister asked a few questions here:

--His first issue was seeing Eucharist like baptism. If it gives you eternal life, then why take it more than once? How many times do you have to receive the Eucharist to be saved?
I tried explaining that the Eucharist, like so many things, isn't about legalism but is designed to help us. I talked about the spiritual nourishment we get from it, but what he still questioned & I couldn't answer well was him wondering how many times we need to get eternal life, and how people who don't take the Eucharist can be saved.

--When I about the Real Presence in the tabernacle at Chruch, he cited the part of Jesus' Passion, where "the curtain of the temple was torn in two". This curtain was what held God's presence in the Holy of Holies, and the curtain tearing in two was God's presence being relrased for the whole world. He saw the Real Presence in the tabernacle at Church as somehow restraining God to that place, when God's presence was sent everywhere at the Crucifixion. He also asked, "Is God here?", which I said Yes, because God is everywhere. The best I could do was say that the tabernacle held God's presence in a more concentrated manner than anywhere else, and that it's all based on faith anyway.

Thank you for your input, and please pray for all to be in full communion with Christ's True Church!

May God bless us all!

Maybe you could say that the Eucharist provides spiritual healing, and since you are a synergist, you believe you need to continue improving and maintaining your relationship with God and your spiritual health.

 

[Mark_Sam]

--His first issue was seeing Eucharist like baptism. If it gives you eternal life, then why take it more than once? How many times do you have to receive the Eucharist to be saved?

The Eucharist ("Thanksgiving") is first and foremost prayer and worship of thanksgiving to God. It has its type in the daily sacrifices of the Temple, and was prophesied in Malachi 1:11.

Baptism is the beginning of the Christian life and has its type in circumcision. Therefore it is a one-time event.

And I think you are correct in that the Eucharist is more about having a living relationship with Jesus than a legalistic "do this X times to be saved".

He saw the Real Presence in the tabernacle at Church as somehow restraining God to that place, when God's presence was sent everywhere at the Crucifixion. He also asked, "Is God here?", which I said Yes, because God is everywhere. The best I could do was say that the tabernacle held God's presence in a more concentrated manner than anywhere else, and that it's all based on faith anyway.

Christ, being God, is omnipresent. But he is not present in the same way in every place. In the Eucharist, he is present in the most real way possible, this side of Heaven. But his presence in the hearts of believers, for example, is more "spiritual" (I don't know if that's the proper term to use here). So we can worship the Eucharist as Christ present with Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in real way. But we cannot worship eachother, as Christ's presence in our hearts is different.

This was actually an great debate within the Lutheran movement, as the Ubiquitarian faction which argued that the Body of Christ was just as present in the cabbage stew as in the Eucharist! And that Christ is present as both man and God in all places at all times. Ubiquitarianism should be understood as an overreaction to transsubstantiation and the sacred power of the priest, and has not as far as I can tell survived into the modern area.

You can actually spin the Temple curtain story the other way: God's holy Presence was limited to one Temple, but since the curtain is torn, God's holy Presence can be everywhere, in every church and on every altar, not only in a spiritual (pneumatic) way, but also in a more real way. The Protestant views of pneumatic presence (Christ is only spiritually present in the elements of the Eucharist) and of Memorialism (Christ is not present in any meaningful way in the elements of the Eucharist) actually makes God less present in the New Covenant, than in the Old Covenant.

 

[TuxAme]

They should be seeing circumcision like baptism, not the Eucharist. Circumcision is something which can only be done once (like baptism), but Jesus explicitly tells the apostles to do this (offer the Eucharist), as often as they do it, in memory of Him (I think this is Luke's account of the Last Supper).

Why do we receive the Eucharist as often as the apostles (and their successors) offer it? John gives us a hint in his gospel, when he writes about how the Jews asked, "What sign do you perform? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert". Jesus is the true bread which came down from Heaven, and as the Israelites ate the manna until they entered the promised land (Joshua 5:12), so will we eat of the Eucharist until the day when we enter into Heaven.

 

[Monk Brendan]

I recently met with my college's non-denominational Campus Minister to talk about the Real Presence of the Eucharist. We had a very good conversation, lasting about an hour. However, there were a few questions he asked that I couldn't really answer, so I'd like to ask the Catholics here for input:

When going through John 6: "53 Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day." My Campus Minister asked a few questions here:

--His first issue was seeing Eucharist like baptism. If it gives you eternal life, then why take it more than once? How many times do you have to receive the Eucharist to be saved?
I tried explaining that the Eucharist, like so many things, isn't about legalism but is designed to help us. I talked about the spiritual nourishment we get from it, but what he still questioned & I couldn't answer well was him wondering how many times we need to get eternal life, and how people who don't take the Eucharist can be saved.

--When I about the Real Presence in the tabernacle at Chruch, he cited the part of Jesus' Passion, where "the curtain of the temple was torn in two". This curtain was what held God's presence in the Holy of Holies, and the curtain tearing in two was God's presence being relrased for the whole world. He saw the Real Presence in the tabernacle at Church as somehow restraining God to that place, when God's presence was sent everywhere at the Crucifixion. He also asked, "Is God here?", which I said Yes, because God is everywhere. The best I could do was say that the tabernacle held God's presence in a more concentrated manner than anywhere else, and that it's all based on faith anyway.

Thank you for your input, and please pray for all to be in full communion with Christ's True Church!

May God bless us all!

How often do you have to eat to preserve your physical life?

BTW--ALL the pre-Reformation churches believe that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood of Christ.