To catholics....and anyone else that can help me out?

Question

What is EUCHARIST? Do catholics seriously think that what they eat and drink during EUCHARIST becomes Jesus' flesh and blood?Isn't that a cannabilistic concept? Where doeas the name EUcharist come from anyways coz its sound like something from the MITHRAS cult/religion?

Answer 1

The word "Eucharist" comes from the Greek noun εὐχαριστία (transliterated, "eucharistia"), meaning thanksgiving.

Joh 6:48 "I am the bread of life.
Joh 6:49 "Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.
Joh 6:50 "This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.
Joh 6:51 "I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh."
Joh 6:52 Then the Jews began to argue with one another, saying, "How can this man give us His flesh to eat?"
Joh 6:53 So Jesus said to them, "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 yourselves.
Joh 6:54 "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
Joh 6:55 "For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink.
Joh 6:56 "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.
Joh 6:57 "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me.
Joh 6:58 "This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever."
Joh 6:59 These things He said in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum.
Joh 6:60 Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, "This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?"
Joh 6:61 But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this, said to them, "Does this cause you to stumble?
Joh 6:62 "What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?
Joh 6:63 "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.
Joh 6:64 "But there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him.

Notice that Jesus made no attempt to soften what he said, no attempt to correct "misunderstandings," for there were none. Our Lord’s listeners understood him perfectly well. They no longer thought he was speaking metaphorically. If they had, if they mistook what he said, why no correction?

On other occasions when there was confusion, Christ explained just what he meant in Matt. 16:5–12. Here, where any misunderstanding would be fatal, there was no effort by Jesus to correct. Instead, he repeated himself for greater emphasis.

In John 6:60 we read: "Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’" These were his disciples, people used to his remarkable ways. He warned them not to think carnally, but spiritually: "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" (John 6:63, and again in 1 Cor. 2:12–14).

But he knew some did not believe. (It is here, in the rejection of the Eucharist, that Judas fell away; look at John 6:64.) "After this, many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him" (John 6:66).

This is the only record we have of any of Christ’s followers forsaking him for purely doctrinal reasons. If it had all been a misunderstanding, if they were wrong in taking a metaphor in a literal sense, why didn’t he call them back and straighten things out? Both the Jews, who were suspicious of him, and his disciples, who had accepted everything up to this point, would have remained with him had he said he was speaking only symbolically.

But he did not correct any of them. Twelve times he said he was the bread that came down from heaven; four times he said they would have "to eat my flesh and drink my blood." John 6 was an extended promise of what would be instituted at the Last Supper—and it was a promise that could not be more explicit.

Or so it would seem to a Catholic.

Answer 2

"Isn't that a cannabilistic concept?"

Cannibalism is about absorbing someone else's power into your unity, whereas in the Eucharist Christians are incorporated into the unity of Christ's body, the Church.


"Where doeas the name EUcharist come from anyways coz its sound like something from the MITHRAS cult/religion?"

Eucharist is from the Greek word for thanksgiving. The practice is derived from the Jewish passover feast which included unleavened bread, and is thus Hebrew in origin rather than Mithraic. Whatever pagan elements there might be in Passover(and I doubt there are any) would be Egyptian.

Answer 3

This may be a bit long. Please bear with me.

Yes, we truly believe that that is Jesus Christ--body, blood, soul, and divinity. Eucharist is derived from a Greek word "Eucharist" that means "thanksgiving." It is not cannibalism for these reasons:

Canables eat and drink for physical nourishment, but we eat and drink for spiritual nourishment.

Canables eat only part of the body, we eat Jesus' body, blood, soul, and divinity.

Read 1 Cor. 11: 27, 29

"Whoever therefore eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of PROFANING the BODY and BLOOD of the Lord...For anyone who etas and drinks without first discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself." Profaning the body and blood of the Lord sounds pretty serious to me. If they are just symbols, why would Paul say this?

Plus, Jesus TOLD us to eat His body and drink his blood, and that the bread He would give is His flesh for the life of the world. If this is symbolic, so also was His flesh on the cross.
Please read Jn. 6 and the Last Supper with a heart and mind open to the Holy Spirit.
My God is powerful enough to do this. Why don't you believe He could do that? If there is something lacking, it is your faith.

God Bless you. I am praying for you.

With love in Christ Jesus,

a Catholic Christian teen

Answer 4

At the Last Supper, Jesus said, “Take this bread. It is my body.” Then he said, “Take this and drink. This is my blood. Do this in memory of me.”

Catholics believe this was the First Eucharist, that through some miracle the bread and wine actually became the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

Catholics reenact the Last Supper during every Mass, where God, acting through the priest, changes the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

This is a great sacrament of thanksgiving and unity of Catholics.

Eating humans is cannibalism, eating God when commanded by God to do so is not.

Eucharist means thanksgiving in Greek: http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/Eucharist;_ylt=A0geuonvEFRFSaIA8mZXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTBzNW9vNzc0BGNvbG8DZQRzZWMDc2MEdnRpZANZUzEyN18xMDQ-

With love in Christ.

Answer 5

Wikipedia could probably give you the most impartial answer to that question.

The truth as best I can express it though is that its like a game of chinese whispers (or "rumours") applied to some old tradition that has now warped over the centuries and become something wholly odd.

Its something to do with the "last supper" .... Of Jesus chowing down with his mates... and making some cryptic comment about the food being his flesh and the wine his blood (probably a metaphor for the knowledge that he was going to die and his body return to the earth to nourish it)..... and unsurprisingly a few folks took it a bit too literally (as tends to be the trend throughout the bible).

The word itself...
Sounds like something the Romans came up with....

Answer 6

eucharist is the fellowshipping of God and man and with others...

Catholics tend to take Jesus words 'this is my body' and 'this is my blood' in the most literal way from the last supper...
some say they overexplain things going beyond the language the Bible warrents and borrowed concepts from greek philosophy about appearance and substance to do this... not mystery religion

In some sense God does spiritiually fellowship with the redeemed as well as remind the redeemed of Jesus death and resurrection during communion, I would not seek to overexplain it.

The communion is from the last supper which was the passover meal which initially repressented the suffereings and bitterness of the Jews and their freedom from bondage. When Jesus said this is my body and this is my blood literally all Chrstians would agree he gave the tokens new meaning about a new exodus from sin through his death and resurection although Chrsitians disagree on some of the details of explanation

Answer 7

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05584a.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05572c.htm
http://www.americancatholic.org/features/Sacraments/Eucharist.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation

What we believe, in a nutshell, is that while the shape and taste and molecules of the wafer and wine remain the same, the spirit of it, the essance of it, changes to that of Christ's holy body and blood (not one of flesh, but of spirit). What we eat is spiritual. It is physically still a wafer, and science will say it's a wafer, but the very spirit of the eucharist has been changed.

Answer 8

Whatever is that concept that you have the eating of the bread and drinking of wine is the commemoration of Jesus legacy to His apostle. Jesus said to His apostle do this in memory of Me.

Answer 9

I think that it is the wafer taken during communion. As far as literally being the body, I don't believe it. I believe the elements represent Jesus. But I am protestant, and don't have a Catholic background, or teaching.

Answer 10

I am Jewish but this is not cannablistic at all. They drink the wine and eat the wafer so that the true spirit of Jesus is with them. It is a lovely tradition