I would love to know why people believe in the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Is it for the sole reason that it is part of Church teachings, or has anyone had a confirming experience?
For me, St. Thomas Aquinas' words are very apropos: To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” I am very grateful for the years of catechism I received which taught me ABOUT the Real Presence. To read the great saints treatise on the Eucharist is very helpful. But still in the end, all the reading ABOUT the Eucharist can in my mind ever really explain why I believe because it is a mystery, it is something that touches deep into my soul that I don't even know if I understand. But God does understand. He knew me before He formed me. He knows more than I do about what I need. The Eucharist is how He touches me, feeds me, and keeps me spiritual alive. I can't see oxygen or air, but I know it there. The same is true for The Eucharist- my senses tell me that I'm seeing and tasting bread, but I know Jesus is there. I've never had an experience like a vision or locution, but I have had great moments of complete peace where a physical sense of warmth fills my body after receiving Jesus. It does not happen all the time. Mostly it happens when I have prepared well for receiving HIM. I have been blessed as a Eucharistic Minister to look people in their eyes as they receive Jesus and I can tell you with some people I'm almost moved to tears as their faces reveal how much they long for and truly understand who they are receiving. It us quite a privilege to witness.
I believe in the Real Presence because Jesus said "This is my body, this is my blood" and "Unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you will not have life within you." The effect of receiving Holy Communion is another factor. So is the difference between walking into a Catholic Church and a non-Catholic church. The difference is tangible. The evidence from eucharistic miracles is also pretty convincing.
Because right after my conversion I read the whole Bible, and learning of first; the Hebrew sacrifice of the Lamb, and what it meant, I wanted all the benefits of the sacrifice, and then when I got to the New Testament I was filled with joy at Jesus words in John :6! Then I just had to figure out the true Church He put on earth because I knew only they had the authority to do the sacrifice. Yes I grew up Catholic but fell away in my teens and I didn't want to be Catholic just because the Catholics said THEY were the true Church, I wanted the TRUTH because I wanted the Eucharist so I searched history and, yes Mom, you were right, LOL! I had asked her "who is the Church of Peter? I have to go there" and she said"it's the CATHOLIC CHURCH! DUMMY!!"
I grew up Catholic also but fell away during college. I was 24 years old and was walking into my bedroom one day when I felt these 11 words BURNED (yes, burned) onto my heart "The Catholic Church is the one, true Church of Jesus Christ". It felt like a lightning bolt hit my heart! I sat down right there and one after another, the truths of the Church "sunk in" I guess you could say. My life did an aboutface from that moment on. I tell my husband if a doctor ever has to do an autopsy on me he will freak out when he sees the 11 words inscribed on my heart. I have no doubt they are there, I felt them burned on!
There is no greater feeling of His presence and a feeling of being enveloped with His love than to be in prayer, meditation or even spiritual reading in front of the Holy Tabernacle. My heart is so close to His during these times. I don't have to see Him to know Him or touch Him to feel Him or even speak to Him to know that His presence is upon me. My trouble is to be able to take this love with me when I leave and pass it on to others. This is still a work in progress!
I agree with Bella. To me it is so sensible and huge - Jesus is here right now. We are really really lucky. I try not to think to much about the times I took him for granted and went to Communion when I should not have gone near him. More sins I have to ask his forgiveness for. Carmel333 - Mothers are great. They are so down to earth. I can almost hear your Mother say that to you....
The Holy Trinity is the God of the Impossible I copied that from the Deacon John Martinez thread. That the Real Presence for me - it is impossible but true.
You've heard of the song "Jesus take the wheel"...well my song goes "Jesus fixed my heater". My wife was a Eucharistic minister and was taking the sacrament to the elderly and sick. Well...my heater had gone out in my car some time back and I often drove with frozen windows, I could hardly see out of it at times. I just so happened to drive my wife this day and was conversing with Jesus under my voice. I inadvertently went to turn on the broken car heater and...Wha Lah!...heat! Never had any trouble with it again. Jesus is a true friend...this is a Eucharistic miracle and even though many people think I'm crazy...just get in my car and see how warm that heater gets!
All I can say is as a convert I walked into Adoration before I was officially in the Church but as a very committed Christian and His presence literally knocked my socks off! I could not stop crying like a Baptist at an altar call I still cry in Adoration and also still sometimes after Communion. It is a bit embarrassing but the Morning Mass crowd is used to me by now
One of the things I'm thankful for, is that the Nuns were my teachers in gradeschool, and I had it pounded into me that the Eucharist is HOLY (I still don't remember understanding it) and that we could never take communion unless we were holy ourselves and had confession first. So when I fell away, I never took communion if I happened to go for a wedding or something. I was later very thankful for that! Yes my Mom was also fallen away but she kept asking why I was "reading the bible and searching for the right Church when everyone KNEW it was the Catholic Church." But I kept searching, because Mom couldn't explain HOW she knew, she just said so. She also thought the Protestants wrote the bible and we didn't need it because we had the Catholic Church. So I already knew she was a little misinformed herself! I've never known a more faithful Catholic who never went to Church! Anyway, my mom DID go back to confession and mass several years before she died, and was so devout until the end. I even got her to start reading her bible instead of just sticking newspaper obituaries in it
About a week before it happened I remember asking the holy spirit to enter my heart. My neighbor had been talking about her doing it and I thought "hmm, I've never done that before". I also credit the hundreds upon hundreds of rosaries said by my parents, my grandparents and my great grandparents. It was the greatest gift and grace of my life. I don't have the slightest doubt about the Church and her teachings and that has helped me in teaching my 5 children.
At His Ascension, Jesus promised to be with us until the end of the age. Since the Word became flesh at the Incarnation, it makes perfect sense to me that Jesus would remain among us in some tangible way. From John 6: He who eats my flesh and drink my blood, abides in me and I in him, and I will raise him up on the last day! This abiding presence of Christ is so real and intimate that when Jesus confronted Saul on the road to Damascus, He did not ask why Saul was persecuting His Church, but.."Why are you persecuting Me?" How awesome and mind-blowing this is! When Jesus enters my soul at Holy Communion, He initiates it with a tangible touch! "The Body of Christ." "Amen!" Alleluia! Thank you, my Lord! Forward in the Flames of the Sacred Heart!
I grew up a Catholic and did not know about adoration as it was post conciliar and so many things just were not available nor mentioned. Then one time it was asked if someone would take over the scheduling for adoration and I thought that sounded like an easy job, should take about an hour but I thought I should check out what it was. I went for 15 minutes. Then a little longer the next time and longer still the next and then an hour and then I fell in love and the rest is history! Thanks be to God and Our Lady.
I did have a personal encounter with the Eucharistic Lord in 1997 which I have written about on my blog. It was the year leading up to the millennium that the Holy Father, John Paul II, had dedicated to Jesus. That dedication inspired me to ask for a closer relationship with Jesus. I could not have imagined how intimately God would answer that prayer. That summer I was given a book to read that came highly recommended, He and I, by Gabriel Bossis. As I read the author’s personal conversations with our Lord, my heart was deeply moved. The book captivated me with its intimate tone. I read and re-read that book, eventually giving away dozens of copies. Beyond deeply moving me, reading He and I opened my heart to the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit. That summer marked the beginning of a new phase in my life as I entered into a personal relationship with the risen Jesus. As Scripture says: “Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.” (2 Corinthians 5: 17) After having been given a taste of the Lord’s nearness, I craved more. I decided during Advent of that year to spend a few evenings a week alone at the church with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament—that was when all heaven broke loose! The first time I went, I heard these words interiorly: “I’m so glad you came!” The words pierced me to the core. In addition to words, during those visits the Lord poured his love into my heart, a sliver at a time, and believe me, a sliver was all I could take. These encounters were overwhelming and often left me in tears, tears that I later realized served to cleanse and heal me in many ways. That was the beginning of the journey that led to my blog. God gave me that experience for his purposes not mine, so that I would be encouraged to accept the mission he had for me. Gradually, the "feeling" of his presence faded. Now I rarely have any sensation at communion or adoration. I walk by faith and not by "sight". But really, that is when our faith means the most, so I am happy with that. Take heart if you have not had an experience like this. As Jesus said, "Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe!" God's will alone suffices. Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who have come into the world!
My parents joined the Catholic Church because they were barren and it was the best place to get babies. So I was raised "Catholic" but not by actual Catholics! Being good Germans, they held up their part of the bargain, taking us to Mass every Sunday and Holy day and making sure we went to religion classes once a week, but the practice of faith was compartmentalized to the Church building. I felt the real presence at my first communion. I wanted to stay in my room and lay on my bed and just bask in the love. My dad gave me a white fishing pole (such a strange gift!) - and I wonder now if he was inspired by the Holy Spirit - that one day I would be a fisher of men. Sometime in my childhood until my conversion at age 30, I drifted away from that first communion experience and thought the Eucharist was a symbol. My religious education was in those goofy 60's and 70's, but I'm sure they taught the real presence, I just didn't get it. I do remember in each of my four pregnancies thinking how good it was for the baby when I received communion. Striving to live in the Divine Will over the past 10 months has had the marvelous effect of an attentiveness to the presence of the Holy Trinity in me. Receiving communion now is a refreshing of His constant presence that I receive in the heart of Mary and offer in the Divine Will for all of my brothers and sisters, past, present and future. Those years of blindness to the real presence of Jesus in the most blessed sacrament make me patient with all my blind brothers and sisters today. Everything serves!
When the ways of the world just make no sense this impossible Teaching given us by Jesus is the only thing that does make sense.
For your discernment: I had just come into the Catholic Church after receiving many spiritual Gifts and Graces from Our Lord and Blessed Mother, but even after receiving many lights, I still had little faith. After I told a Priest what I had experienced, he told me that I needed to come immediately into the Church, which was in Jan. 12, 1993, which happened to me my dad's birthday (he was a fallen away Catholic at the time). In June, 1993, I was in an Adoration Chapel alone, and while looking at the Host (which happened to be very large), a faint red cross appeared in the lower left corner of the Host (it was not there when I first came into the Chapel). In my interior I head Jesus say, "By my cross and resurrection, I have saved you." Several months later, I was at Mass at this same Church and as I did not feel the interior peace I had experienced so many times at Mass, I thought to myself that perhaps God was not there in that Church. As soon as the Priest elevated the Host, very bright lights shot out of it and also from the Chalice. Another time, a few years after this at a different Church, during the elevation of the Host, lights were shooting out from it but not as before, they were going towards the Priest and everything between the Host and the Priest became incredibly bright. I have had many other experiences, but will not go into them now. Please do not doubt the presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist - He is truly there!
