Coke Bear said:
Proud 1992 Alum said:
This thread has been very interesting to read. I really don't understand praying to Mary, saints or dead relatives. I also don't understand the concept that the communion wine and bread are the literal blood and body of Christ. It makes sense to me that the wine and bread are symbolic. If anyone has an article on either subject, I would be interested in reading it.
Thank you for asking an open and honest question. Here are two articles/audios on the Eucharist. You may not accept this, but these are frank explanations of the Catholic position:
Eucharist 1
Eucharist 2
Here's two short ones on Mary and the Saints:
Mary
Mary and the Saints
Thanks for the links. Will check them out. Honestly, though 40+ years a Southern Baptist, later in life I lean Catholic - just not Roman Catholic; too great a cultural leap for me. The Via Media of the Anglican church as essentially Reformed Catholic (though I know Rome cannot agree) is comforting and comfortable to me.
I've been blessed by the works of Thomas Cranmer, Richard Hooker, and especially Lancelot Andrewes over the last 20+ years. Here's an excerpt and link to an exposition of one of Andrewes' sermons on the Eucharist:
"By tying all of these things together; the Incarnation, Christ's partaking of our nature, our partaking of his body and blood, our partaking of his divine nature, with "the receiving of [the sacrament of communion with his Body and Blood] by us a means whereby He might 'dwell in us, and we in Him,'" Lancelot Andrewes unlocks the glorious mysteries of God's grace in the sacrament. He unlocks for modern readers, especially those who are not scholars, the deeper meaning of Cranmer and Hooker who were before him, who emphasized "the communion of the blood of Christ...the communion of the body of Christ."
Modern readers, especially those who have been unaware of the original Greek New Testament, have mistaken the word "communion" for something that places the Real Presence of Christ a step away from us, as it were. Instead, this same word that speaks of the fellowship of the Eternal Son with the flesh and blood he took into His own Person, brings us as close as possible; it puts us
in Christ and Christ
in us. We are joined to His Divine Nature as he joined His uncreated Person to our created nature. It cannot get closer than this.
That is Real presence in the sacrament.
Communion, fellowship, with His Body and Blood is all about the glorious hope of our calling and election: He took our created nature, so that we may take his body and blood, and so we partake of his Divine Nature."
http://anglicancontinuum.blogspot.com/2009/12/lancelot-andrewes-on-eucharisric.html