10/23/2022 0 Comments What is jesus and john wayne about![]() ![]() James says that “even the demons believe-and shudder” ( James 2:19). Nevertheless, while evidence like that is helpful, it is not living faith. Seeing unquestionable evidence of such miracles. Doctors and scientists, sometimes hardened atheists, convert to Catholicism after It may not come from a miracle, though well-documented stories of Eucharistic miracles abound in our own day. It may not come through a voice as it did for Mary Elizabeth. She whispered to herself, “Before You alone, Lord, I kneel not here!”Īt that moment, she writes in her notes, “My anxious soul was suddenly filled with gentleness and I heard a voice, which seemed to come at the same time from outside and from the bottom of my heart, tell me, ‘I am the One you seek.’ I fell to my knees.There, behind the church door, I made my first adoration before our Divine Lord present in the Blessed Sacrament.” That is the moment of recognition, of penetrating and humble faith, that we each need. As the bishop was approaching with the Blessed Sacrament, every one began to kneel and Mary Elizabeth moved back so as not to offend others by not kneeling. Once when visiting some friends in Brussels, she accompanied them to a Corpus Christi procession at St. Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad was born into a Swedish Lutheran family. If the Eucharist is true, everything is different-how we worship God, how we treat each other, how we brush our teeth. At that moment, they had a choice to make, just like us. And then Jesus turns to his apostles and asks quietly, insistently, “Will you also go away?” (John 6:67). “This is a hard saying who can listen to it?” ( John 6:60). John’s Gospel drives the point home by reporting that the disciples of Jesus deserted him after his Eucharistic sermon in the synagogue of Capernaum. Reflecting on one of the great Cathedrals of Europe, Mary Eberstadt pointed out that “nobody builds this for a piece of bread.” Unless the Eucharist is purely symbolic-which does obvious violence to the words of Jesus-then it is Jesus himself. The teaching is a direct challenge to the dogmatic materialism of our age since there is no room to wriggle out of the choice. The sacred Host cannot be almost Jesus’ Body and Blood, any more than your physical presence is almost you. The doctrine of the Real Presence does not admit of any middle ground. But if it is true, then it is insanity not to order our lives around it. If that is not true, then our whole religion is a sham. Did he mean it or not? Do we believe him or not? An impartial reading of that text shows that Jesus emphatically meant what every Christian for fifteen centuries understood he meant: that the Eucharist truly is his Body and Blood. Jesus said, “My flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed” ( John 6:55). Holy Mass is an opportunity every day to make a decisive act of faith. ![]()
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