Biblical Support for the Mass?

In the bible, before jesus gets taken, he has a last supper with his disciples. They eat bread, drink wine, and he says, ritualistically, this is my body and blood, do this in rememberance of me.


Whats up with that? Was he saying 'eat bread and drink wine to remember my sacrifice, and that wine and bread will represent (or miraculously become) me"? Was he outlining what a mass was supposed to be? But he doesn't say when or how often to do it or even who should do it, outside of that one time and outside of the disciples. So when did it become something all christians do?

It almost seems like something that was added to the gospels, to support the communal mass and the eucharist ritual, in the early development of christianity. It almost doesn't make sense for someone to do it as its presented.

It was an act that has truth and symbolism to it. When you ingest food and liquids they enter your body and become part of you and provide sustenance for your body and you can live.

Jesus took a physical act with real implications and transferred it's meanings to the spiritual realm.

The broken bread is symbolic for His broken body punished for sin.

The wine is symbolic for His blood, shed for the remission and forgiveness of sin.

If you "ingest" in your soul and spirit these 2 facts, then they will provide the sustenance needed to bring life eternal and everlasting to you.

My church does it on the first Sunday of each month. It is an act that you do the signifies that a person is choosing to identify Himself with Christ in front of others, but it is also is a reminder to us. We are saying by doing this that we agree with God, that this is the true way provided by God to be set right with Him. You are saying I am choosing to believe what God has said and done.

I'll say it now so I don't have to say it later, the elements do not become the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ. It is the acknowledgement/faith/trust/belief in Christ as Savior, and what He has done to remove sins, that saves us and changes us. It is a free will decision to accept Christ. You don't have to if you don't want to, it's everybodies own choice.

Jesus's body was never broken! I thought that was promised (no bones broken)? The broken bread represented his flesh, no? I suppose you could say his flesh was broken...
Maybe he was telling them to eat properly, and to be social?

Originally posted by babloyi
Jesus's body was never broken! I thought that was promised (no bones broken)? The broken bread represented his flesh, no? I suppose you could say his flesh was broken...
Maybe he was telling them to eat properly, and to be social?

You are right His bones weren't broken.
He was whipped, beaten, abused, spit on and mocked thats what I mean by saying broken.

Jesus Christ came to FULLFILL the Old Testament......The Lamb which was slain in the Old became Christ the Lamb........

The Orthodox Church believes that in the Eucharist the bread and wine become not only a symbol of Christ’s presence,
but the real Body and Blood of Christ.
This belief has been held in the Christian Church from the very beginning. Christ Himself says: ‘For My Flesh is food indeed, and My Blood is drink indeed. He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him’ (John 6:55-56).

Because of the Eucharist’s uniqueness the Church attaches to it a special significance in the cause of the salvation of humanity.
Beyond the Eucharist there can be no salvation,
no deification, no true life, no resurrection in eternity: ‘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’ (John 6:53-54).

‘For as many of you who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ’ (Gal.3:27). In Baptism the human person dies to his sinful life and rises again to new spiritual life.

The first to refer to the Church as the body of Christ was St Paul: ‘For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and all were made to drink of one Spirit... Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it’ (1 Cor.12:13; 27).
Through the sacraments, and especially the sacrament of communion in the Body and Blood of Christ through the eucharistic bread and wine, we are united with Him and we become one body in Him: ‘Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread’ (1 Cor.10:17)

www.geocities.com...

www.orthodoxphotos.com...

IX
helen

Originally posted by dbrandt
You are right His bones weren't broken.
He was whipped, beaten, abused, spit on and mocked thats what I mean by saying broken.

If that is what you were referring to, it would be his "spirit" that was broken. However, I see nothing in the supper parable about Jesus sharing his "peace pipe" to commemorate his broken spirit.

Perhaps I am reading too much into what you said, but your tone sounds mocking and sarcastic. Are you trying to make me feel pity, sorrow or embarrasment for what I said about Jesus? Unfortunately, it's not working. I don't believe any of that happened to him at all. I find something very suspicious about a God that demands someone be punished for something they did not do.

That is also the suspicious thing about many of the bible stories, such as the last supper and the crucifixion. So much emphasis on blood. It's very hard for me to believe that God could be so bloodthirsty that He requires the crucifixion of a completely innocent person for the sins of all humanity. What has God to gain from punishing innocents?

Which brings me to wonder, was there any "Blood religion" that required conversion by the Christians? Something that would justify all this emphasis on blood? What was the role of this religion once they converted to Christianity?

[edit on 17-6-2005 by babloyi]

babloyi.......your not understanding properly.

You said.......quote/Which brings me to wonder, was there any "Blood religion" that required conversion by the Christians? Something that would justify all this emphasis on blood? What was the role of this religion once they converted to Christianity?

What exactly do you mean by a 'blood religion''?

IX
helen

Originally posted by helen670
The Orthodox Church believes that in the Eucharist the bread and wine become not only a symbol of Christ’s presence,
but the real Body and Blood of Christ.

I have to disagree. I do so not to cause a fight but because it's not true. Receiving Christ is a spiritual decision that comes from your soul. That is how someone is saved and becomes a new creation. It's a conscience decision to accept what Chrsit has done on the cross to remove one's sins. Then when the Holy Spirit indwells that person, He guides us and our view toward sin is changed and we live a life that is different.

If someone thinks that the elements are changed and ingesting them are how one receives Christ, there is not a forgiveness of sins which must take place to be reconciled with God.

Originally posted by helen670
babloyi.......your not understanding properly.

You said.......quote/Which brings me to wonder, was there any "Blood religion" that required conversion by the Christians? Something that would justify all this emphasis on blood? What was the role of this religion once they converted to Christianity?

What exactly do you mean by a 'blood religion''?

IX
helen

Hey helen,
What I meant by blood religion was "a religion that held blood in importance". Some sort of cannibal religion or something.

For example (from what I've heard), when Christianity was brought to Britian, Germany etc, Christmas with the trees and such was added to help the druidic and wiccan people to convert more readily.

So I was asking, if the Church add all the blood stuff so as to make conversion easier for some other culture that relied heavily on blood- a blood religion.

Originally posted by babloyi
For example (from what I've heard), when Christianity was brought to Britian, Germany etc, Christmas with the trees and such was added to help the druidic and wiccan people to convert more readily.

I think things like this have happened also and what was meant to entice some to become christians actually backfired and once it was brought into christianity, the truth and simplicity of the gospel was lost. That is one of the reasons for the reformation. To bring back Christ as the focal point of salvation. Faith in Him alone saves.

Hey!

I gues you could say that ''Sacrifice'' has been in many religious systems....

The Blood is because of the Old Testament.......The Sacrificial Lamb for the Atonnement of sins........
In the New Testament, Jesus Christ offers Himself as the ''Sacrifice'' for the World.....
Quote/
Instead of the lamb, Jesus offered Himself as a sacrifice ‘like that of a lamb without blemish or spot’, ‘He was destined before the foundation of the world’ for the salvation of people (1 Peter 1:19-20).

Quote///In the Eucharist we become of the same body with Christ, Who enters us as He entered the womb of the Virgin Mary.
Our flesh in the Eucharist receives a leaven of incorruption,
it becomes deified,
and when it dies and becomes subject to corruption,
this leaven becomes the pledge of its future resurrection.(For the Final Judgement of the world....End of the World.....the Resurrection of mankind.)

Beyond the Eucharist there can be no salvation, no deification, no true life, no resurrection in eternity: ‘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’ (John 6:53-54).
AND
The words from the Lord’s prayer ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ (Matt.6:11)


The Church existed in the Old Testament.....
quote//
From apostolic times there existed in the Church a hierarchical priesthood: certain men chosen to celebrate the Eucharist and lead the people.
The Book of Acts (6:6) speaks of the election of seven deacons (Greek diakonos, ‘servant’, or ‘minister’) and their being set aside to serve. The apostles founded Christian communities in the various cities of the Roman Empire where they preached and ordained bishops and presbyters to lead these communities.

AND again...
The first to refer to the Church as the body of Christ was St Paul: ‘For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body - Jews or Greeks, slaves or free - and all were made to drink of one Spirit... Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it’ (1 Cor.12:13; 27).
Through the sacraments, and especially the sacrament of communion in the Body and Blood of Christ through the eucharistic bread and wine, we are united with Him and we become one body in Him: ‘Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread’ (1 Cor.10:17

The mystery of the Church was prefigured in the people of Israel, who was chosen and set apart from the other peoples.
According to its own understanding, the Christian Church is the only legitimate heir to the biblical religion of revelation.
This revelation is preserved and continued in the Church’s Tradition, which includes both the Old and the New Testaments,
the memory of Jesus Christ’s earthly life, of His miracles and teaching, His death and resurrection.
It also includes the experience of the primitive Church, the teachings of early Fathers and Ecumenical Councils,
the lives of Christian saints and martyrs, the liturgy, the sacraments, and the entirety of spiritual and mystical experience, transmitted from generation to generation.
In other words, Tradition in Orthodox understanding means the continuity of theological teaching and spiritual experience within the Church from Old Testament times up to the present.

All the sacraments which we perform in the Christian Church have reference to the Sacraments and rites of the Old Testament.
We can take the Sacrament of marriage as an example.
During the this ceremony, in the prayers which we address to God, we ask Him to bless the couple, as He blessed Abraham and Sarah, Jakob and Rebecca, etc.
www.pelagia.org...
The Church is the Body of Christ, which has Christ as its head, and the members of the Church are members of the Body of Christ.
Members of the Church exist in all the ages and will exist until the end of all time.
And when members of the Church cease to exist, the end of the world will come.
Thus we are living with many people.
The people of God manifest the true communion. As we said at the beginning, on the paten during the Liturgy there are many people.
They are the Panagia, the Angels, the Prophets, the holy Fathers, the great martyrs, and, in general, the witnesses of the faith, the saints and ascetics, the living and the dead who have a share in the purifying, illuminating and deifying uncreated energy of God. We are not alone.
We are not "foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God's household" (Eph. 2,19).
Im sorry too much info...but in order to understand you have to know the Old to the New....

does that help?

Dbrandt/////
you said / quote..........
Receiving Christ is a spiritual decision that comes from your soul.
That is how someone is saved and becomes a new creation.
It's a conscience decision to accept what Chrsit has done on the cross to remove one's sins.
Then when the Holy Spirit indwells that person,
He guides us and our view toward sin is changed and we live a life that is different.
................
Dbrandt why did Christ say ...And when they had communed of these, the Lord gave them the commandment to always perform this Mystery, Do this in remembrance of Me (Matt. 26:26-28, Lk. 22:19; I Cor. 11:24).

The Apostles celebrated Holy Communion according to the commandment and example of Jesus Christ and taught all Christians to perform this great and saving Mystery.
In the earliest times the order and form of celebrating the Liturgy was transmitted orally, and all the prayers and sacred hymns were memorized. Eventually, written explications of the apostolic Liturgy began to appear.
www.fatheralexander.org...


Jesus Christ said that the Holy Spirit blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes (Jn. 3:8). This means that a person cannot force the Holy Spirit to come to him or predict the time when He may decide to do so.
You can only feel His touch when this happens. Indeed, the book of Acts states that when the Holy Apostles and other Christians received the gifts of the Holy Spirit, it was always unexpectedly.
the Apostles did not bestow beneficial gifts upon newly baptized Christians immediately,
but only after a certain period of testing and affirmation in the true faith. That is why the Lord called the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Truth, and His Church, the beatified community of the faithful, is called in Scripture the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15).
www.orthodox.cn...

St. James the Apostle admonishes us to confess our sins to God before the elders, or priests, as they are called today (James 5:16). We are also exhorted to confess our sins directly to God (I John 1:9).

When Christians depart this life, they remain a vital part of the Church, the body of Christ. They are alive in the Lord and "registered in heaven" (Hebrews 12:23). They worship God (Revelation 4:10) and inhabit His heavenly dwelling places (John 14:2).
In the Eucharist we come "to the city of the living God" and join in communion with the saints in our worship of God (Hebrews 12:22).
They are that "great cloud of witnesses" which surrounds us, and we seek to imitate them in running "the race set before us" (Hebrews 12:1).
Rejecting or ignoring the communion of saints is a denial of the fact that those who have died in Christ are still part of his holy Church.

"Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God" (John 3:5). From its beginning, the Church has taught that the water is the baptismal water and the Spirit is the Holy Spirit..
Salvation demands faith in Jesus Christ.
People cannot save themselves by their own good works.
Salvation is "faith working through love."
It is an ongoing, life-long process.
Salvation is past tense in that, through the death and Resurrection of Christ, we have been saved.
It is present tense, for we are "being saved" by our active participation through faith in our union with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Salvation is also future, for we must yet be saved at His glorious Second Coming.

www.fatheralexander.org...

Dbrandt im not sure if your getting all this......but you are not SAVED by just beleiving in Jesus Christ.......even the devil believes in Christ.....
anyway....
take care..
IX
helen

Alsmot every Chrisitan religion interpets the Lords supper in differant ways. It is probly one of the most debated and dividing issue for any Church.

For what my Church believes (Lutheran):

What the Lord supper is, is a Sacrement (a Christian rite that is believed to have been ordained by Christ and that is held to be a means of divine grace or to be a sign or symbol of a spiritual reality) as with both Word above and below the object to be a reminded for Christs sacrifice for our sins. The wine and bread are not special, but the wine and bread used WITH the word is special. This is not a form canibalisum since there is not transmutation of the bread and wine into the Body and blood of christ.

In all it should be remembered and used as a reminder of the forgiveness of sins, and a way to strengthen belivers in thier faith.

Originally posted by babloyi
Hey helen,
What I meant by blood religion was "a religion that held blood in importance". Some sort of cannibal religion or something.

I don't think that there was any at the time, but the idea of the king dying, by design, and being consumed and reborn, is not uncommon. I don't know of any cults in the early ad years of the empire that specifically did this.

However lots of groups apparently had communal meals, and apparently the Elusian mysteries had a mass, in whcih the faithful gathered to pray or be talked to be a religious administrator or preist or whatever, and at the height of hte mass a shaft of wheat was raised before the crowd. This is very similar to raising the bread of the eucharist. But I don't think that we need to say that the christians, when they were an early cult, 'adopted' this from the elusians/isis mysteries, its something of a universal concept.

when Christianity was brought to Britian, Germany etc, Christmas with the trees and such was added to help the druidic and wiccan people to convert more readily.

Christmas trees and christmas don't come into play until much later. But undoubtedly things like this did happen.

So I was asking, if the Church add all the blood stuff so as to make conversion easier for some other culture that relied heavily on blood- a blood religion.

There doesn't seem to be any evidence to strongly support it. But, agian, we do know that lots of the mystery religions in the early years ad had a dead and ressurected god and communal meals as part of the ritual worship.

And of course, feasts in honour of saints, many of which are going on right now, could be seen as an 'adoption' of a pagan practice. A pretty harmless adoption I'd say, but one nonetheless.

helen670
The Apostles celebrated Holy Communion according to the commandment and example of Jesus Christ and taught all Christians to perform this great and saving Mystery.

This is my primary concern here. The communion as a rite.

from the site
The Liturgy is the most important divine service, for in it the most holy Mystery of Communion is celebrated, as established by our Lord Jesus Christ on Holy Thursday evening, the eve of His Passion. After He had washed the feet of His disciples, to give them an example of humility, the Lord gave praise to God the Father, took bread, blessed it and broke it, giving it to the Apostles, saying, Take, eat, this is My Body, which is broken for you. Then He took a cup with grape wine and also blessed it and gave it to them with the words, Drink of it all of you: for this is My Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins. And when they had communed of these, the Lord gave them the commandment to always perform this Mystery, Do this in remembrance of Me

This is the part that sticks for me. Does 'do this in remembrance of me' mean 'allways do this' or does it mean 'do it now, in my honour/memory, since I just told y'all I'm gonna die tomorrow'? I'd think that there is enough time for something like it to be incorporated into the gospels between the time we think the events happened and the time we first see copies of the gospels, but of course much more than that is required to say it was incorporated.

Also, I get the impression that the bread and wine, they were the actual meal itself. People back then had terribly poor diets, and you get a real good indication of what regular folk ate in the Loaves and Fish parable. Fish if they were even lucky, and stony bread and water, disinfected with wine, to drink.

Originally posted by helen670
Dbrandt im not sure if your getting all this......but you are not SAVED by just beleiving in Jesus Christ.......even the devil believes in Christ.....
anyway....
take care..
IX
helen

Alot of people believe there was a Jesus Christ. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying Jesus came and gave His life and shed His blood for my sins. My faith is in what HE HAS DONE ON THE CROSS.

I know what you are saying and I beleive it is a lie from satan.

Eph 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: [it is] the gift of God:

Eph 2:9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Originally posted by helen670.but you are not SAVED by just beleiving in Jesus Christ.......even the devil believes in Christ.....
anyway....
take care..
IX
helen

I highly doubt the Devil belives in Christ, not the way we do. The Devil KNOWS Christ, just as we know of the devil. But to say taht The Devil belives that the key to his salvation is beliving in the death and sacrifice on the cross.... I have to say your dead wrong.

To think that one can be saved by just doing good things, ignores the finality and burden of Orginal sin (Which Catholic churches love to get rid so easily for you, so you can claim your righteousness, independant of God)

The Lords supper/Mass/Sacrement reminds us (at least for Lutherans) that we cannot attain salvation by ourselves and need the help of a Savior, holy spirit and from God

look here.....

The word ‘tradition’ is in Greek, "Paradosis," which means, 'that which is handed down, delivered'. Thus we have the Apostolic "Paradosis," Tradition that is both oral and written:

*"Forasmuch as many took in hand to set in order a narrative concerning those things which have been fulfilled among us, even as they delivered them to us who from the beginning became eyewitnesses and servants of the Logos" [Lk. 1:1,2]

Our Savior "delivered" his Teachings and the commandments which include the rite of Baptism and Holy Communion Orally to the Apostles. The early church lived by these "Traditions" before any thing was written down much later, as in the above and Acts Chapter 2: "they continued in the doctrine of the Apostles and the breaking of bread.'

Throughout the NT, St. Paul speaks of those teachings and rites that he delivered orally to the Church. (Acts 15;30; 16:4;ROM 6:17;I Cor 11:23; 15:3; etc. (do a word study on the word, "delivered")

Much of the Apostolic Tradition remained unwritten:

*Now I praise you, brethren, that ye have remembered me in all things; and even as I delivered to you, ye are holding fast the traditions. [1 Cor. 11:2]

*So then, brethren, be standing firm and holding fast the traditions which ye were taught, whether by word or by our epistle. [2 Thess. 2:15]

*Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to withdraw yourselves from every brother who walketh disorderly, and not according to the tradition which they received from us. [2 Thess. 3:6]


IX
helen