Receiving the Eucharist
Receiving the Eucharist – are you doing it right?! 😉
Tag: The Eucharist
TEA: Jesus In Disguise
Today I gave a talk on a retreat entitled “Jesus In Disguise”, where I look at the different ways in which we can encounter God behind the veil of the ordinary. The audio is available below:
Jesus in Disguise (Download)
Buffering the Vampire Slayer
I’ve always been an avid fan of podcasts, but in recent months my habit has been increasing somewhat. Even while I was walking the Camino De Santiago, I’d listen to a couple of podcasts each day, catching up on shows such as The Art of Catholic, The Catholic Man Show, and Hobo For Christ.
Early on in my journey across Spain, iTunes recommended a podcast called “Buffering The Vampire Slayer”. This was a podcast about the popular Joss Whedon show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which tells the story of a teenage girl who fights the forces of darkness who converge upon her town of Sunnydale.
I had seen the movie while I was still a teenager and, although it was a little goofy, I rather enjoyed it. I was initially unconvinced by the subsequent TV adaptation, but I soon grew to like it. Throughout university, my housemate Andy and I would always set aside time to watch the latest episodes, as well as those of Buffy’s companion show, Angel. It’s therefore not much surprise that I decided to heed iTunes’ recommendation and give the podcast a go…
TEA: Worship In The Early Church (Drinks with Dominicans)
Last week I gave a talk on “Worship In The Early Church” at a local Seattle Young Adult event. I’ll be converting this talk into a series of posts later, but in case you wanted to have a listen, I recorded the first half of my talk on my phone:
Worship In The Early Church (Download)
In the latter portion of the talk we were going through some of the texts of the Early Church and the recording was a little too faint. I’ll put together a better recording at some point over the next few months.
A little bit on the Eucharist
I was looking through some old emails I wrote several years ago to a friend who was leaving the Catholic Church. Here’s the short section I wrote about the Eucharist…
The Eucharist
From the conversation we had, I’m not particularly sure whether or not you still believe in Jesus’ Real Presence in the Eucharist, so in case you do, I’ll be brief. Denial of Jesus’ Real Presence in the Eucharist is a very common teaching among many Protestant denominations (but as always, not universally).
Scripture
The Eucharist was a central part of life for the Apostles (Acts 2:42) yet in most Protestant churches Holy Communion is pretty rare. If the Eucharist is only symbolic, why is unworthy reception of the Eucharist (1 Cor 11:27-30) spoken of in such strong, sacrilegious, life-and-death terms? Scripture records Jesus saying in John 6:35-70 that we must eat His body and drink His blood. If he was only speaking symbolically why did he lose so many followers that day?
Church History
Outside of Scripture, something that you will find without exception among the Early Church Fathers is the belief that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is one of the central topics examined in the Didache (70-90 AD), probably the earliest Christian writing not to be included in the canon of the Bible. This First Century document calls the Eucharist a “sacrifice”.
As you may have now read, St. Ignatius of Antioch (96 AD) described the Eucharist as “the medicine of immortality” and described the Gnostics as those who “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
The historical witness for this doctrine is undeniable. Absolutely undeniable.
Whilst I was still in my rather anti-Catholic phase I heard someone say “If you say you’re not being fed in the Catholic Church then you clearly don’t know who you’re eating”. As much as this sounded arrogant and as much as it irritated me, it did prompt me to really examine the teaching of the Eucharist because, if it was true, to miss out would be a tragedy.
