Today we hear about one of the Seven Deadly Sins, gluttony. Screwtape talks about how this vice can be disguised so that it can go completely unnoticed by the patient!
Today I’d like to talk a little bit about Jesus’ Real Presence in the Eucharist.
A little a while ago I was conversing via email with a non-Catholic called Gerry. We spoke briefly about the Eucharist and he graciously agreed to allow me to post some of our conversation here. Here’s what he said:
“And the mother of it all, in my opinion, is the Eucharist. Transubstantiation. Utterly abominable. Christ was a “victim” once and it was sufficient forever!
The mass is as unholy as a thing can be. We eat His flesh and drink His blood in the spiritual sense, not literal. And to think they even bow down and worship and kiss that cracker because it is (supposedly) Christ in the flesh. And God won’t judge these abominations?!” – Gerry, Email #2
I’m not going to offer a complete defense of the Eucharist here, many other more capable than I have done that already. Instead, today I’d just like to ask a couple of questions concerning one Scripture passage and then on Friday to take a brief look at Christian history.
Below is part of the “Bread of Life” discourse given by Jesus in John’s Gospel:
I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh….Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. – John 6:51-54
There are two main questions I’d like to raise here:
1. How did Jesus’ audience understand Him?
After giving this sermon, many people who had been following Jesus left Him. Why did they leave? It’s because they took Him at His word! They believed that He was saying that they had to actually eat His flesh and drink His blood.They took his words literally!
Souls were lost that day because they assumed Jesus wasn’t speaking metaphorically. This begs the question: if Jesus was speaking figuratively, why did He allow so many to leave Him over a something that was just a misunderstanding? Would God really be that cruel?
2. What would He have had to say if He wanted to speak literally?
When speaking with people who interpret John 6 figuratively, I propose the following thought experiment. Firstly, I assume that they are correct in their interpretation of John 6. Jesus was speaking figuratively. However, I then offer the following challenge: if you wanted to go back and alter John 6 to make Jesus speak literally about His flesh, what would you change? Or, put another way, if Jesus had wanted to speak of his flesh literally, what could He have said to convince you that he was speaking literally and not figuratively? I mean, how could His language have been any more extreme than “my flesh is real food“?
As some of you know, my Mum came to visit me in San Diego recently. In case anyone was looking for ideas for things to do when friends visit, I thought I’d post some of the things we did (or tried to do) while she was here :
Food
Sandwich lunch at Hillcrest Sandwich Store
Lunch at Peohe’s
Gelato at Pappalecco (Little Italy)
Sunday Brunch at Pappalecco (Hillcrest)
Dinner at El Prado
Once again, in the spirit of regaining more of my free time to engage in other projects, these notes will be fairly terse and to the point…
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time: August 19th, 2012
The Readings this week continue on a similar trajectory to those of recent weeks. In Proverbs we hear how Lady Wisdom has “dressed her meat [and] mixed her wine” and sent out an invitation to all to come eat and drink at her table. In our Responsorial Psalm, the psalmist invites us once again to “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord”. St. Paul continues his moral exhortation to the Ephesians in the Second Reading , commending them to be “filled with the Spirit” rather than wine. Finally, in our Gospel extract, the Lord again affirms that He is “the living bread that came down from heaven” and He promises that “whoever eats this bread will live forever”.
For the last few weeks the Readings have all been about food and drink. Are you hungry yet? Are you spiritually salivating? Are you hungry for holiness? Do you long for the flesh of Christ?
I have no delight in corruptible food, nor in the pleasures of this life. I desire the Bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was of the seed of David; and I desire the drink of God, namely His blood, which is incorruptible love and eternal life. – St. Ignatius to the Romans, Chapter 7
I saw someone post this on Facebook and thought it was simply brilliant:
Everyone puts their phones in the middle of the table. Whoever cracks first by touching their phone, pays for the entire meal.
The purpose of the game was to get everyone off their phones, away from twitter, facebook, texting, etc and to encourage conversations. In other words, help cure the “Anti-Social Social Media Craziness”. Here are the rules:
1. The game starts after everyone sits down.
2. Everybody places their phone in the middle of the table.
3. The first person to touch their phone loses the game.
4. Loser of the game pays the bill for everyone’s meal.
5. If the bill comes before anyone has touched their phone, everybody is declared a winner and pays for their own meal.
