Subject: What is so wrong with Catholics |
Bible Note: Rev T, If I may, I would like to clarify a few points about the Catholic belief of the Ral Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Since I recently had an e-mail exchange with someone else on the subject I will use that material. The Real Presence in the Eucharist is a mystery of faith akin to the mystery of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation. Of course all in the end all of these mysteries can only be grasped by faith in God's Revelation. I fear my efforts to address the Real Presence in the Eucharist may fall short, but I will make the effort nonetheless. On the question of the "locality" of Christ in the Eucharist under the appearance of bread and wine while He is in heaven in His resurrected body and while he also is "with us always" in a spiritual sense. Your example was Christ at the Last Supper. (not your example, Rev. T, but my other friend's) Let me address that moment with the disciples in Emmaus only three evenings after the Last Supper. Jesus was with them at table, yet they only recognized His Real Presence in "the breaking of the bread" at which instant He disappeared. This is worth meditating upon. Fr. John Hardon in his catechism made a graphic comparison. He said: "there is as much difference between Christ's presence in the Blessed Sacrament and His presence elsewhere on earth as there was between His presence among the disciples when He appeared to them on Easter Sunday night and His presence in their midst before and after His appearance." In other words Christ was present among them both before and after he appeared, as He is present "whenever two or more are gathered in my name" but His appearance to them was more substantial. It is interesting that this example in Luke's Gospel also follows immediately upon the recognition of Christ in "the breaking of the bread" at Emmaus. C.S. Lewis speaking about the Incarnation made a point that is equally applicable to the Real presence in the Eucharist. "The world which did not know Him as present everywhere was saved by His becoming local." The Incarnation is a stone that makes men stumble as is the doctrine of the Eucharist as seen in John 6, and especially verse 61. The Incarnation is not God's prison it is our salvation. So too, the Eucharist is not God's prison. Again see John 6. The presence is called real--by which is not meant in any way to exclude all other types of presence as if they could not be "real" too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense. It is a substantial presence by which Christ, the God-man is wholly and entirely present." Paul VI in Mysterium Fidei. The Catholic Church also recognizes the presence of Christ in the gathered community and in the word of God found in the Scriptures. So, rather than excluding other presences of Christ, the Eucharistic presence ratifies them because in the Church's understanding is centered in the very heart of the Christian faith-- in the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Jesus. John 6 is the key. Jesus is very blunt and as the people become more and more disconcerted He actually becomes stronger in the language He uses to describe the eating of His body and the drinking of His blood. He does not even explain it to His disciples as He does elsewhere when He is speaking in parables or merely figuratively. Mark tells us He always explained what he meant to His disciples. (Mark 4:34 )But no explanation is forthcoming in John 6. Jesus just asks if this teaching causes them to stumble and if they too will leave Him. Jesus makes it clear that this teaching can only be grasped by the faith (the spirit) and cannot be understood in the carnal understanding (the flesh) when He says: "my words are spirit and truth, the spirit gives life, the flesh availeth not. But some of you do not believe." Indeed it is there that Judas turns away in his heart. This was a teaching of Jesus like His teaching about the Resurrection and Ascension, which he also mentions here, understood only after the fact. Paul in 1 Corinthians warns of the fate of those who "fail to recognized the body." It is the same as Judas' fate, death. Lutherans of course hold to the Real Presence under their doctrine of Consubstantiation. Emmaus |