vrish88

Joined 16 years ago

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Comment · 3 years ago

Beautiful! Yes, Jesus did give us the prime directive. However unlike the Pharisees he willing “to lift a finger” to help with them. He gave us his teaching. He gave us his Church. He gave us the Holy Spirit to live out the prime directive.

He also gave us the Eucharist. The body of Christ doesn’t distract us from our work - it allows us to do our work better. So to debate about the Eucharist is how athletes debate about training regimens or diets. If we can improve how we prepare ourselves for the work that need to be done, we can do the will of God better.

Comment · 3 years ago

You are right, Jesus hated those Pharisaic formalities that prevented people from actual loving others. However Jesus did participate in other Jewish “formalities”. He celebrated the Passover, the festival of tents, he was presented at the temple, and so on.

To say Jesus believes all formalities are bad is not true.

For this partially question, what is wine, I don’t think it is preventing us from loving God and neighbor. I do think it is important because of the centrality of wine in the Gospels. T he miracle of the wedding feast at Cana, image of the vine and branches, and with the culmination of the last supper.

Comment · 3 years ago

I don’t see how this is Pharisaic in nature. The way I read it, the issue is: what is wine? The definition of a thing and debate around the definition is something that everybody does. Just remember the hot dog/sandwich war which took the lives of so many… Pharisaic concerns would be about nonessential things like the color of the bottle the wine is in, the cork or bottle cap, etc.

What materialists and some scientists forget is that matter matters. What materialists, some scientists, gnostics, and some Protestants forget is that matter has spiritual matters. God became man so that man could become God - Athanasius [1]

Jews (and thus Jesus) followed particular instructions by to obtain material effects (think Passover or Jericho). Similar to preparing a meal, particular ingredients and particular processes yield a particular result. Change some of the ingredients and you get a different result.

What Jesus did in the Last Supper was to elevate material behaviors to produce spiritual effects. He takes the Passover meal and uses it to share his divinity.

If wine and bread is needed to share his divinity, then the questions of what is wine and what is bread are of the utmost importance for a Catholic.