Jesus Within Us

[Caedmon]

The other night, I had a friend ask me why one should go to a Catholic church, and what the significance of the Eucharist was. Below are the paraphrased thoughts that my friend presented:

Why would one need to go to a Catholic church and receive the Eucharist to have Jesus inside him? If all Christians have the Holy Spirit, does that not mean that we all have Jesus inside us anyway, since Jesus is God is the Holy Spirit? Isn't it the same thing? Why would we need to eat Him to have Him inside of us? Why would it matter whether or not we receive a Catholic Eucharist?

 

[MariaRegina]

Why would it matter whether or not we receive a Catholic Eucharist?

My dearest humblejoe:

Christ is in our midst! He is and always shall be!

The Eucharist is Christ's presence on this earth. He is with us and always shall be.

Christ is with us when we read the Scriptures for He is the Word of God.
Christ is with us whenever we pray with others.
Christ is with us in His Eucharist.

The Eucharist is Christ's Precious Body and Blood. Can you imagine receiving God into your very soul? This is what the Eucharist is. And when you receive Holy Communion at Church, Christ is truly in our midst.

At Communion time, I like to watch people receiving Holy Communion. They become other Christs. If we could see their souls, they would be glowing on fire with Christ.

If we only realized this precious gift which Christ is giving us - His very life. And this very life of Christ in our souls purifies us, cleanses us from sin and makes us heirs of Heaven. Christ said that we must partake of the Eucharist, "Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink of His Blood, you shall not have eternal life." (cf. John 6)

It's all a Holy and Heavenly Mystery. Pray that Jesus will give you the grace to desire Holy Communion and to believe in His Presence.

YSIC
Elizabeth

P.S.: Sometimes a feeling of loneliness comes over a person because they are not eating properly. So eat good healthy meals. Remember your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. So treat it with respect.

 

[CopticOrthodox]

In Baptism we meet the Holy Spirit in the waters who cleanses us with the Blood of Christ and regenerates us. In Chrismation we are sealed with the Holy Spirit and can now cooperate with Him to bear the fruits of the Spirit. In Confession we confess to Christ who takes away our sins, by the working of the Holy Spirit through the priest. In Marriage the Holy Spirit descends and makes the two into one, which represents the love between Christ and His Church. In Holy Orders the Holy Spirit is given to the priest in a special way so that he can administer the Sacraments. In the Annointing of the Sick God gives His grace to forgive sins and regenerate the body. In Commuion, the Body and Blood of Christ mingle with our body so that we may participate in the divinity. The Sacraments are all ways in which we receive God's grace, and they are complementary, not competing with each other. Christ in His wisdom instituted these 7 to give us the grace we need for salvation, and they work very well together.

 

[Credo]

The other night, I had a friend ask me why one should go to a Catholic church, and what the significance of the Eucharist was. Below are the paraphrased thoughts that my friend presented:

Why would one need to go to a Catholic church and receive the Eucharist to have Jesus inside him? If all Christians have the Holy Spirit, does that not mean that we all have Jesus inside us anyway, since Jesus is God is the Holy Spirit? Isn't it the same thing? Why would we need to eat Him to have Him inside of us? Why would it matter whether or not we receive a Catholic Eucharist?

In reply to "Why would we need to eat Him..." I will quote Jesus' own words from John 6:54,59 -
"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...He that eateth this bread shall live for ever."

Pretty powerful words; and we as Catholics have the faith and courage to take Jesus at His word.

Also, something I noticed in the paraphrase of the conversation (and maybe it's just due to the paraphrase), it appears that your friend is confusing Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It looks like he said:
Jesus = God = Holy Spirit
If this is what your friend truly said, this is a heresy that was condemned in the early church.
In reality, it's more like this:

the Father = God; the Father is not the Son and is not the Holy Spirit
the Son = God; the Son is not the Father and is not the Holy Spirit
the Holy Spirit = God; the Holy Spirit is not the Father and is not the Son

The Trinity is 3 distinct persons that share the same essence; thus each is wholly God, yet distinct from the others.

It's a tremendous mystery and there is no way with our finite minds that we could ever expect to understand it completely. That's why we must have faith and the trust of a child!

God Bless!

 

[Benedicta00]

Joe,

Communion is a very mystical experience and that is why we need to eat his flesh and drink his blood because it sanctifies us as we are journeying home to him. Baptism gives us the spirit of God and frees us from our bondage to Adam’s sin but we must still be transformed into Christ’s image and the Eucharist is how we are transformed.

Protestants do not understand because they believe salvation is an event that the instant one is “saved” he or she has been transformed already by imputed righteousness and then they work what is already there all out over their lives. Catholics believe that we receive sanctifying grace through the sacraments and are transformed as we persevere in grace. So they see no need to “fuel up” so to speak on grace because they see themselves as already having it and it is just unfolding, as we see it has God gives us the graces we need as we walk along with him and preserve resisting sin and repenting when we fall.

Receiving Jesus in holy communion is how we are divinized. This is what Jesus was talking about in John 6 when he said “Unless you eat the flesh of the son on man you will have no life in you.” He is not meaning salvation, as in eternal life so much as he is meaning divine life while we are journeying home to him which is what will give us eternal life and salvation.

The divine came to earth and took on our humanity in order to give back to us what we lost in the fall and that is the divine life of God. The Eucharist is how we receive this divine life of Jesus. When in a state of grace he binds himself to us and literally gives us his divine life and we are then closer to God then we are to ourselves because we have become what we were originally suppose to be, sons and daughters of the most high in the one body of Jesus Christ. We are the closest to God with out actually being God.

We receive him because Jesus is the only son of God so we in him , literally in his body and are sons and daughters of God as he presents us to the father as one body made possible through holy communion. Jesus becomes one with us so we are one with him and God sees his son when he sees us because his son is living in us.

 

[Caedmon]

I still don't understand how you don't have Jesus in you if you have the Holy Spirit. They're all God, so isn't it all the same?

And what exactly is this "divine nature"?

 

[Benedicta00]

Yes we have the holy spirit in us at all times even when we sin but we do not have sanctifying grace in us at all times if we sin. Sanctifying grace is when we share in God's life of grace; he gives us in the sacraments his own divine life, that is what he came to do by dying on the cross for us. To reconcile us back to God.

In baptism we have the spirit and in confirmation we are sealed with the spirit but because we do not believe that salvation is OSAS, we believe it is a process that we persevere in, so we "need" Jesus in the Eucharist to bind himself to us in order to bring the gift of the Holy Spirit to fruition.

It keeps us on the straight and narrow. Protestant do not feel they need this because they think they are already saved, even if they still have to make the journey home that we all do, they do not think falling into sin will cause them to lose grace, we believe it does, so we believe we need Jesus in all his sacraments to keep us in his grace. The gift of the Holy Spirit is to convict us of our sin and it cleanses us from original sin but we still need Jesus in the Eucharist where he pours out his spirit to sanctify us on our journey and gives us strength to not fall away.

 

[CopticOrthodox]

We receive the Holy Spirit through Chrismation (aka confirmation), and if we cooperate with Him we can foster the fruits of the Spirit which we need to become holy and to get away from sin so that we can be saved. But the gifts of the Spirit can never save us apart from the regeneration of our spirits in Baptism, and the eternal life & patricipation in the divine we receive through partaking of the Eucharist and having His flesh mingle with ours.

It the OT, when a person sinned they had to offer a sin offering. They'd put thier hands on the animals head and confess their sins before the priest, so transfering them from themselves to the animal, which then receved the consequence of sin, death, in their place as it was slaughtered.

In the New Testament we confess our sins to the priest, and they are transfered from us. When the priest starts the Mass, the sins are transfered to the new testament lamb, to Christ at calvery, and then we partake of His life-giving flesh just like in the Old Testament the person would eat of the sacrifice they'd just offered.

It's bye this combination of Baptism, Confession, and Eucharist that we receive the forgiveness of sins from God. It is by partaking of the Body and Blood that we participate in the divinity are receive grace to be holy.

The working of the Holy Spirit who we receive at Chrismation is also key to the process, as He convicts us of our sins and encourages us to confess them and receive Communion that we may be forgiven. He also gives us grace to foster the fruits of the spirit, and this grace along with the grace we receive through Communion is what allows us to be holy if we cooperate and make spiritual progress.

The way we receive the Son and the Spirit is distinct, just as the two persons are distinct in the Trinity, and the working of the two in us is similarly distinct, while at the same time there is no act done by one that does not involve all three persons. For at Communion it is the Holy Spirit who descended and turns the bread and wine into the Body and Blood, and in Chrismation it is Christ who sends us the Paraclete, as at Pentecost.

It's very important to understand that neither of these two ways we receive God into our lives are equivalent or even parallel to the Protestant notion of asking Jesus into your heart and getting saved. I don't know if you're looking at it from that viewpoing and trying to translate things to make sense, but if you are, just give it time and you'll more and more live in the Catholic theological system rather than the Protestant one, and these things will start to make more sense to you.

 

[Benedicta00]

We receive the Holy Spirit through Chrismation (aka confirmation), and if we cooperate with Him we can foster the fruits of the Spirit which we need to become holy and to get away from sin so that we can be saved. But the gifts of the Spirit can never save us apart from the regeneration of our spirits in Baptism, and the eternal life & patricipation in the divine we receive through partaking of the Eucharist and having His flesh mingle with ours.

It the OT, when a person sinned they had to offer a sin offering. They'd put thier hands on the animals head and confess their sins before the priest, so transfering them from themselves to the animal, which then receved the consequence of sin, death, in their place as it was slaughtered.

In the New Testament we confess our sins to the priest, and they are transfered from us. When the priest starts the Mass, the sins are transfered to the new testament lamb, to Christ at calvery, and then we partake of His life-giving flesh just like in the Old Testament the person would eat of the sacrifice they'd just offered.

It's bye this combination of Baptism, Confession, and Eucharist that we receive the forgiveness of sins from God. It is by partaking of the Body and Blood that we participate in the divinity are receive grace to be holy.

The working of the Holy Spirit who we receive at Chrismation is also key to the process, as He convicts us of our sins and encourages us to confess them and receive Communion that we may be forgiven. He also gives us grace to foster the fruits of the spirit, and this grace along with the grace we receive through Communion is what allows us to be holy if we cooperate and make spiritual progress.

The way we receive the Son and the Spirit is distinct, just as the two persons are distinct in the Trinity, and the working of the two in us is similarly distinct, while at the same time there is no act done by one that does not involve all three persons. For at Communion it is the Holy Spirit who descended and turns the bread and wine into the Body and Blood, and in Chrismation it is Christ who sends us the Paraclete, as at Pentecost.

It's very important to understand that neither of these two ways we receive God into our lives are equivalent or even parallel to the Protestant notion of asking Jesus into your heart and getting saved. I don't know if you're looking at it from that viewpoing and trying to translate things to make sense, but if you are, just give it time and you'll more and more live in the Catholic theological system rather than the Protestant one, and these things will start to make more sense to you.

Very well said!

 

[Woodsy]

Presented graphically:

 

[Theresa]

If someone says to you, "I just saw Jesus, he was walking down the street," and he was, most people would run after him. That's the difference between saying God is everywhere, and saying God is down the street.

Only, the amazing part is, if I say Jesus was down the street, it is totally true, because at the Church at the end of the Street his presence is there as much as if he was standing there, and there's not many people running to see him there.


But just as the Jews had to eat the sacrificial lamb, I mean literally at the Passover, whoever did not eat the lamb, if they were first-born, they would have died.

Eating the lamb is what seals the covenant, it did then and it does now. The whole point of reconciliating with God is to be allowed at the family dinner table, back to the table for supper to consumate your covenant with him.

In the Old Testament you entered the covenant through circumcision, and you consumated it at the Passover.

In the NT, you enter into the covenant through baptism, and you consumate it with the Eucharist.

Once again I am reminded of the walk to Emmasus.

 

[Spotty]

The Reason for me:

Good question. Why is Christ recieved in the Eucharist. Well, I'll be taking the presupposition that He is in the Eucharist since we don't seem to be debating whether He is or is not in this particular thread. If you want the reasons for if he is or not then that is a different subject.

Question - was Christ any more present on the Earth before the NT times compared to when he walked the earth during those times?

Answer - No. He was simply present in a different manner. He walked the feet of mortality though his presence was never increased or diminished by his physical manifestation, however He was present in a different manner.

Question - Why take Christ in the Eucharist (again, presuming that He is in fact literally there; Body, Blood, Soul, Divinity).

Answer - The short answer is, because He said so, but I doubt that that would adequetly answer your question. I would for now, relay you to an article of a man by the name of Scott Hahn, entitled the Fourth Cup which deals with the Eucharist and it's importance and it's meaning for the Faithful. Also, if He is indeed present, God is always more powerful than a symbol of God, which could give one numerous answers as to "Why?" But I am being very vague on purpose - I want you to read that article...just go to google and type in Scott Hahn and or The Fourth Cup. While I don't agree with all of it, it's overall point is quite intruiging.

-Spotty