First, I ask my readers to NOT get offended at this but to read with an open mind. I take very seriously the plain words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If I believe what Moses wrote when he said that God created man from the dust of the ground (i.e., man isn’t evolved from apes), then why would I reject the plain words of Christ when He says, “This is My Body….this is My Blood…?” Who is greater – Moses or Christ? Indeed, regarding this, I recently read an excellent article by Apologist Dave Armstrong at the National Catholic Register entitled:
“Transubstantiation, John 6, Faith and Rebellion.”
Yes, as a former Pentecostal I understand Evangelical Protestant teaching regarding Holy Communion, and I have nothing but love and respect for my Evangelical Protestant brothers and sisters, and yes, they are our baptized brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. Would that we all had their zeal! However, with that same love and respect for everyone, Christ is very clear about this topic in John 6:53-55:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, you have no life in you; he who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.”
Furthermore, Christ goes on to explain John 6:63:
“It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”
In other words, the flesh we eat at Holy Communion and the blood we drink is NOT from a dead cadaver, but from the living Christ. The flesh and blood is animated by the Holy Spirit just as God breathed into Adam the breath (or spirit) of life in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:7).
Do we partake in memory of His sacrifice on the Cross – “Do this in memory of Me (Luke 22:19)?” Yes! In fact, it is as though at Holy Mass a hole is ripped into the fabric of space-time and we enter into that one eternal event that happened 2000 years ago on Calvary. That single one-time event is made present to us again here and now – it is re-presented, NOT represented (and therein lays the difference). NOTHING that has happened in the Universe is erased – past, present or future – unless and until God decides to erase it at the Last Day when the New Heavens and New Earth are created (Isaiah 66:22, 2nd Peter 3:13). Therefore, the Holy Eucharist is NOT a mere symbol. In fact, Matthew 26:26-28 specifically states:
“Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’ And He took a cup, and when He had given thanks He gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink of it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins….’”
And if the Eucharist were just a symbol, then why does St. Paul say the following in 1st Corinthians 11:27-30?
“Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.”
If the Eucharist – Holy Communion – were just a symbol, then why does St. Paul say that eating and drinking unworthily can cause sickness and death? If Holy Communion is just a cracker and a drop of grape juice (fermented or otherwise), then it would have NO power to visit catastrophe on the person who eats and drinks while in a state of mortal sin (“There is a sin leading unto death….” – 1st John 5:16). Yet that is exactly what St. Paul writes happens. For this reason Christ asked His disciples in John 6:61 after the Bread of Life Discourse:
“Do you take offense at this?”
Thus, I believe in the Real Presence of Christ – Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity – at the Holy Eucharist because that’s what the Bible says, and that’s what the early Church Fathers who succeeded the Apostles in the 1st three centuries after Christ said. In fact, St. Ignatius who sat at the feet of St. John on the Isle of Patmos as he wrote the Book of Revelation to the Seven Churches in Asia Minor writes in his "Letter to the Smyrnaeans [the same church that was one of the seven to which St. John wrote Revelation]", paragraph 6. circa AD 80-110:
"They abstain from the Eucharist…..because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead."
And St. Justin Martyr writes in his "First Apology", Ch. 66, inter AD 148-155:
“This food we call the Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake except one who believes that the things we teach are true, and has received the washing for forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives as Christ handed down to us. For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate by God's Word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the Word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus.”
These things were all written immediately after the death of the last Apostle. This is what the New Testament Church believed, this is what 1.1 billion Catholics and 300 million Orthodox believe today, and it is what we must believe also. I write that while intending NO offense against anyone. This is simply plain Scripture and the real history of what happened.
Yes, as a former Pentecostal I understand Evangelical Protestant teaching regarding Holy Communion, and I have nothing but love and respect for my Evangelical Protestant brothers and sisters, and yes, they are our baptized brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. Would that we all had their zeal! However, with that same love and respect for everyone, Christ is very clear about this topic in John 6:53-55:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, you have no life in you; he who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.”
Furthermore, Christ goes on to explain John 6:63:
“It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”
In other words, the flesh we eat at Holy Communion and the blood we drink is NOT from a dead cadaver, but from the living Christ. The flesh and blood is animated by the Holy Spirit just as God breathed into Adam the breath (or spirit) of life in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:7).
Do we partake in memory of His sacrifice on the Cross – “Do this in memory of Me (Luke 22:19)?” Yes! In fact, it is as though at Holy Mass a hole is ripped into the fabric of space-time and we enter into that one eternal event that happened 2000 years ago on Calvary. That single one-time event is made present to us again here and now – it is re-presented, NOT represented (and therein lays the difference). NOTHING that has happened in the Universe is erased – past, present or future – unless and until God decides to erase it at the Last Day when the New Heavens and New Earth are created (Isaiah 66:22, 2nd Peter 3:13). Therefore, the Holy Eucharist is NOT a mere symbol. In fact, Matthew 26:26-28 specifically states:
“Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’ And He took a cup, and when He had given thanks He gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink of it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins….’”
And if the Eucharist were just a symbol, then why does St. Paul say the following in 1st Corinthians 11:27-30?
“Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.”
If the Eucharist – Holy Communion – were just a symbol, then why does St. Paul say that eating and drinking unworthily can cause sickness and death? If Holy Communion is just a cracker and a drop of grape juice (fermented or otherwise), then it would have NO power to visit catastrophe on the person who eats and drinks while in a state of mortal sin (“There is a sin leading unto death….” – 1st John 5:16). Yet that is exactly what St. Paul writes happens. For this reason Christ asked His disciples in John 6:61 after the Bread of Life Discourse:
“Do you take offense at this?”
Thus, I believe in the Real Presence of Christ – Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity – at the Holy Eucharist because that’s what the Bible says, and that’s what the early Church Fathers who succeeded the Apostles in the 1st three centuries after Christ said. In fact, St. Ignatius who sat at the feet of St. John on the Isle of Patmos as he wrote the Book of Revelation to the Seven Churches in Asia Minor writes in his "Letter to the Smyrnaeans [the same church that was one of the seven to which St. John wrote Revelation]", paragraph 6. circa AD 80-110:
"They abstain from the Eucharist…..because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead."
And St. Justin Martyr writes in his "First Apology", Ch. 66, inter AD 148-155:
“This food we call the Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake except one who believes that the things we teach are true, and has received the washing for forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives as Christ handed down to us. For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate by God's Word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the Word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus.”
These things were all written immediately after the death of the last Apostle. This is what the New Testament Church believed, this is what 1.1 billion Catholics and 300 million Orthodox believe today, and it is what we must believe also. I write that while intending NO offense against anyone. This is simply plain Scripture and the real history of what happened.
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