The body of Christ

[dangel]

When the bread and wine is turned into the body of Christ, and we eat it, are we supposed to believe that we are truly eating remnants of the body of Christ himself and is it ok to refer to this act of changing the bread and wine as a 'ritual'?




When I was younger (about 7-8 years old) my mum didn't let me take the bread but she only said 'I was too young' but never went into detail of why I wasn't allowed to take it. Anyone have any idea why this may be? Is it a common trait?

[GratefulFred]

There are many passages it the Bible but I will mention only the most important. Allowing me to not provide exact quotes and cites to the New Testament, here is what I believe:

Christ said, "Unless you eat My body and drink My blood, you shall not have life within you." No one could understand what he meant and many turned away from Him rather than stay to learn more.

Please read the Last Supper in the Gospels. Here is where Christ instituted the Holy Eucharist: "Take and eat, THIS IS MY BODY. It will be given up for you. And take and drink. THIS IS THE CUP OF MY BLOOD. The blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in rememberance of Me."

Jesus Christ is God. He cannot lie. He can perform miracles. He changed bread and wine into His body and blood. He gave the Apostles the power to also change bread and wine into His Body and Blood. He told them to do it. He said it was an everlasting covenant.

Although we cannot taste any difference from actual bread and wine, GOD said it is Him whom we receive. Christ wants to be be with us. He comes into us. He would not have come into this world to teach us and to suffer and die for us unless He really wanted to be with us. He is with us when we receive Him in the Holy Eucharist.

It also follows that anyone in the presence of God should be worthy to be there. We should be as free from sin as possible and believe that the Holy Eucharist is indeed the Body and Blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Living Son of God. Anything less of us mocks God and puts us into grave sin.

Christ instructed His Apostles for an extended period of time before He gave them His Body and Blood in the form of bread and wine. We too must be instructed in Christ's ways, and accept Him as the Living Son of God before we receive His Body and Blood.

Christ (God Himself) commissioned His Apostles. Christian religions today should be able to trace their authority back to the Last Supper. Many mean well, but at some point they gave themselves their authority when they found something in the Church that Christ established that they thought was wrong. They protested and went their own way. Most of these Christian religions do not claim that their communion is indeed the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I believe that the Catholic faith is indeed the Church that Christ established. Our Church has His authority and teaches what Christ Himself taught in the Gospels.

[Eucharisted]

Ignatius of Antioch

Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God. . . . They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes (Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6:2-7:1 [A.D. 110]).

. . . and are now ready to obey your bishop and clergy with undivided minds and to share in the one common breaking of bread – the medicine of immortality, and the sovereign remedy by which we escape death and live in Jesus Christ for evermore (Letter to the Ephesians 20 [A.D. 110]).

Justin Martyr

We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration [i.e., has received baptism] and is thereby living as Christ enjoined. For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these, but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus (First Apology 66 [A.D. 151]).

Irenaeus

He has declared the cup, a part of creation, to be his own blood) from which he causes our blood to flow; and the bread, a part of creation, he has established as his own body, from which he gives increase unto our bodies. When, therefore, the mixed cup [wine and water] and the baked bread receive the Word of God and become the Eucharist, the body of Christ, and from these the substance of our flesh is increased and supported) how can they say that the flesh is not capable of receiving the gift of God, which is eternal life — flesh which is nourished by the body and blood of the Lord and is in fact a member of him? (Against Heresies 5:2 [A.D. 189]).

Clement of Alexandria

"Eat my flesh)" [Jesus] says, "and drink my blood." The Lord supplies us with these intimate nutrients, he delivers over his flesh and pours out his blood, and nothing is lacking for the growth of his children (The Instructor of Children 1:6:43:3 [A.D. 191]).

Hippolytus

"And she [Wisdom] has furnished her table" [Proverbs 9:1] . . . refers to his [Christ's] honored and undefiled body and blood, which day by day are administered and offered sacrificially at the spiritual divine table, as a memorial of that first and ever-memorable table of the spiritual divine supper [i.e., the Last Supper] (Fragment from Commentary on Proverbs [A.D. 217]).

Aphraahat

After having spoken thus [at the Last Supper], the Lord rose up from the place where he had made the Passover and had given his body as food and his blood as drink, and he went with his disciples to the place where he was to be arrested. But he ate of his own body and drank of his own blood, while he was pondering on the dead. With His own hands the Lord presented his own body to be eaten, and before he was crucified he gave his blood as drink (Treatises 12:6 [A.D. 340]).

Cyril of Jerusalem

The bread and the wine of the Eucharist before the holy invocation of the adorable Trinity were simple bread and wine, but the invocation having been made, the bread becomes the body of Christ and the wine the blood of Christ (Catechetical Lectures 19:7 [A.D. 350]).

Do not, therefore, regard the bread and wine as simply that, for they are, according to the Master's declaration, the body and blood of Christ. Even though the senses suggest to you the other, let faith make you firm. Do not judge in this matter by taste, but be fully assured by faith, not doubting that you have been deemed worthy of the body and blood of Christ. . . [Since you are] fully convinced that the apparent bread is not bread, even though it is sensible to the taste, but the body of Christ, and that the apparent wine is not wine, even though the taste would have it so. . . partake of that bread as something spiritual, and put a cheerful face on your soul (ibid„ 22:6,9).

Theodore

When [Christ] gave the bread he did not say, "This is the symbol of my body" but, "This is my body." In the same way when he gave the cup of his blood he did not say. "This is the symbol of my blood," but, "This is my blood," for he wanted us to look upon the [Eucharistic elements] after their reception of grace and the coming of the Holy Spirit not according to their nature, but receive them as they are, the body and blood of our Lord. We ought . . . not regard [the elements] merely as bread and cup) but as the body and blood of the Lord, into which they were transformed by the descent of the Holy Spirit (Catechetical Homilies 5:1 [A.D. 405]).

[j2c99]

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[Filioque]

When the Eucharist is consecrated in a Catholic or Orthodox Liturgy, it is no longer bread. While it retains the apperence of bread, it is the Body and Blood of Jesus. Aside from the first time this occured at the Last Supper and was done by Jesus, (The first of many times*) every other time that the bread and wine have been consecrated has been since He overcame death, and as now has a body that is Glorified, and immune to death, illness etc. Having the properties of a Glorified Body, (we read that he was able to pass through walls and doors, and did not have the limitations we now have, He cannot be sectioned off. In each host/altar bread, consecrated and drop of wine mixed with water is the entire Christ, not just a remnant. His body is no longer constrained by time and space.

[bpbasilphx]

\\When the bread and wine is turned into the body of Christ, and we eat it, are we supposed to believe that we are truly eating remnants of the body of Christ himself and is it ok to refer to this act of changing the bread and wine as a 'ritual'?\\

It is NOT "remnants" of the body of Christ. It's the ENTIRE Christ that is received by each communicant.

\\When I was younger (about 7-8 years old) my mum didn't let me take the bread but she only said 'I was too young' but never went into detail of why I wasn't allowed to take it. Anyone have any idea why this may be? Is it a common trait?\\

Apparently you were baptized as a Catholic. Alas, the Latin Church is out of step with the rest of the Apostolic churches in that it delays First Communion until several years after baptism, instead of practicing infant Communion as do the other Churches of God.

[Filioque]

Originally Posted by bpbasilphx

Alas, the Latin Church is out of step with the rest of the Apostolic churches in that it delays First Communion until several years after baptism, instead of practicing infant Communion as do the other Churches of God.[/b]

While the development of delaying First Communion among Latins followed historical and cultural reasons, it was not universal. Among many, even up to the Eve and after Vatican II, the practice was to commune infants, and also to confirm.

Long before Pope Pius XII granted faculties to Pastors of parishes to confirm thier own subjects in extraordinary circumstances, there was an indult among most Hispanic cultures (including in Arizona where you live, Bp Basil) to both commune and confirm at baptism infants. The rationale was both the high rate of infant and maternal mortality, and the infrequent visits by the priests who orignially could only visit rarely due to the size of their missionary territory. I know people who were born in the mid 1960's in Hispanic parishes in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, (Individuals, and not one person born in all three states at once ) who received all three Sacraments, even though at the time they had a priest who staffed the parish full time. As the concession was granted and never removed, it is still licit for a priest in a Hispanic parish to do so, although unlikely.

N.B. the priest or infant did not have to be of Spanish or Native origins, simply to be in a parish, or mission that was.

[dangel]

Originally Posted by bpbasilphx

\\When the bread and wine is turned into the body of Christ, and we eat it, are we supposed to believe that we are truly eating remnants of the body of Christ himself and is it ok to refer to this act of changing the bread and wine as a 'ritual'?\\

It is NOT "remnants" of the body of Christ. It's the ENTIRE Christ that is received by each communicant.

\\When I was younger (about 7-8 years old) my mum didn't let me take the bread but she only said 'I was too young' but never went into detail of why I wasn't allowed to take it. Anyone have any idea why this may be? Is it a common trait?\\

Apparently you were baptized as a Catholic. Alas, the Latin Church is out of step with the rest of the Apostolic churches in that it delays First Communion until several years after baptism, instead of practicing infant Communion as do the other Churches of God.

Lol calm down, thanks for the heads up, just going by what I've been taught.

My mum didn't baptise me, could that be why I wasn't allowed it?

[dangel]

Originally Posted by Filioque

When the Eucharist is consecrated in a Catholic or Orthodox Liturgy, it is no longer bread. While it retains the apperence of bread, it is the Body and Blood of Jesus. Aside from the first time this occured at the Last Supper and was done by Jesus, (The first of many times*) every other time that the bread and wine have been consecrated has been since He overcame death, and as now has a body that is Glorified, and immune to death, illness etc. Having the properties of a Glorified Body, (we read that he was able to pass through walls and doors, and did not have the limitations we now have, He cannot be sectioned off. In each host/altar bread, consecrated and drop of wine mixed with water is the entire Christ, not just a remnant. His body is no longer constrained by time and space.

So this bread must become VERY important once that ritual has been done. How strongly is one meant to protect that bread between the change and consumption?

It must be as important as the cross itself if it's the ACTUAL body of Christ, if that makes sense.

[MrZetterlund]

Originally Posted by dangel

When the bread and wine is turned into the body of Christ, and we eat it, are we supposed to believe that we are truly eating remnants of the body of Christ himself and is it ok to refer to this act of changing the bread and wine as a 'ritual'?




When I was younger (about 7-8 years old) my mum didn't let me take the bread but she only said 'I was too young' but never went into detail of why I wasn't allowed to take it. Anyone have any idea why this may be? Is it a common trait?

Tell your mom she shouldn't worry. It is symbolic to show the partaking in the New Covenant. Jesus said "take and drink, for it is the blood of the New Covenant, that is poored out for many for the redemption of sin."

"By His stripes we are healed" -says the prophet Isaiah.

[GratefulFred]

Originally Posted by dangel

When the bread and wine is turned into the body of Christ, and we eat it, are we supposed to believe that we are truly eating remnants of the body of Christ himself and is it ok to refer to this act of changing the bread and wine as a 'ritual'?

When I was younger (about 7-8 years old) my mum didn't let me take the bread but she only said 'I was too young' but never went into detail of why I wasn't allowed to take it. Anyone have any idea why this may be? Is it a common trait?

The term, "ritual" is correct, but a better term would be "Divine Liturgy." Many groups use the term "ritual" for their way of doing a ceremony whether they are Christian or not. Liturgy is a stronger religious word and Divine Liturgy is specific to God Himself.

"Remnants" is clearly the wrong term to use for receiving the Holy Eucharist, in my view as a life long Catholic. Remnants implies the idea of a left over part. Holy Eucharist is the not a left over or even a part of Jesus Christ. Each Holy Communion IS the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the Living Son of God.

If one asks, "How can I believe this?" My answer would be that if one says he believes in GOD, a God that does not lie, then he must also believe that God revealed Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ. God Himself confirmed that Christ is His Son. See Christ's Baptism and Transfiguration in the Bible. So Christ is God and cannot lie. Please see my post above for how Christ established the Holy Eucharist and how it has been handed down to us today.

Thus, for me and a billion more Catholics, it is all or nothing;

God exists.
Christ is His Son.
Niether God, nor the Son of God can lie.
The Holy Eucharist IS the Body and Blood of Christ.
OR we do not really believe in God.

Each Catholic may or may not be thinking about this, and this clearly, when they come to Mass to worship God and to receive Jesus Christ, but it is what is going on. It is why going to Mass and Holy Communion is the best thing we get to do in this life.

If one does love God, one would want to receive the Holy Communion Christ Himself established and handed down to us. This awareness of what Holy Communion really is is not understood at least until the age of 7 or older and only after proper teaching.

[dangel]

Originally Posted by MrZetterlund

Tell your mom she shouldn't worry. It is symbolic to show the partaking in the New Covenant. Jesus said "take and drink, for it is the blood of the New Covenant, that is poored out for many for the redemption of sin."

"By His stripes we are healed" -says the prophet Isaiah.

Bit late to tell my mum that, unfortunately.


What does that mean, by His stripes we are healed?

[dangel]

Originally Posted by GratefulFred

The term, "ritual" is correct, but a better term would be "Divine Liturgy." Many groups use the term "ritual" for their way of doing a ceremony whether they are Christian or not. Liturgy is a stronger religious word and Divine Liturgy is specific to God Himself.

"Remnants" is clearly the wrong term to use for receiving the Holy Eucharist, in my view as a life long Catholic. Remnants implies the idea of a left over part. Holy Eucharist is the not a left over or even a part of Jesus Christ. Each Holy Communion IS the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the Living Son of God.

Oh I see, I have heard it called Liturgy but I never considered it until now. Makes sense though, I mean it's another word for ritual(s) so it clears a lot up right there. Cheers

I've heard people, priests as well, say the bread holds (specific) remnants of the Body of Christ so that's why I used it here. I always guessed it just held His heart and soul and all the important bits like that but I will question the next person I hear use the word remnants next time, just to see why they say it.

[MrZetterlund]

Originally Posted by dangel

Bit late to tell my mum that, unfortunately.


What does that mean, by His stripes we are healed?

It means exactly what Jesus said: "This is the blood of the New Covenant that is shed for many for the repentance of sin." Because death comes by man's sin, and Christ came and paid the ultamite price for our salvation. He is an eternal sacrafice. I believe one quote was "He was bruised for our inequities."

[GratefulFred]

Hi Dangel,

In helping ourselves and others reach a better understanding of the Mystery of God, we have the exact words in the Bible. We also have the writtings of the early Church Fathers, given in a response above. And we other writtings of many theologians through time. Still we search for common everyday words to make God's Mystery clear. I can see how some would use the term, "remnant." But, to me, it is too loose a term that can bring up a false image and misunderstanding. However, I am not a theologian.

Not trying to steel Mr Z's answer to what does "By His stripes we are healed." mean:

"Stripes" is the Passion of Christ. The brutal whipping He received, the Crown of Thorns, the pain and suffering and His Crucifixion. THE Son of God, perfect in every way, suffered greatly by these stripes and thus, He earned for us Salvation from our sins, our healing.

By His stripes we are healed.
By His passion and crucifixion, we have eternal salvation.

Hell is no place to spend eternity. I gotta love the guy that earned me my eternal salvation. I gotta understand Him as best I can and follow Him as best I can. I have to do my best to live my life the way Christ would have me live it: rejecting sin and loving others for the love of Christ. Receiving Holy Eucharist worthily weekly, or more often, helps me stay close to Christ and to live the life Christ wants me to live. As best I can.