A curious legal situation

An archbishop recently filed a successful lawsuit, to stop a satanic black mass from happening using a consecrated host. But what I found interesting, is that the lawsuit was on the basis that the consecrated host was Church property, and so must have been stolen.
The consecrated host is the body and blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and so if anything, the Church is the property of the stolen host. Really, it wasn’t a case of theft, but kidnapping.
But, would this case work legally? Would the real presence have to be proven? Would Jesus be asked to testify?
This reminds me of the plot of a film (I’ve only seen the end) starring Billy Connolly, where after an accident deemed by the insurance company as an “act of God”, the main character decides to sue God Himself.
It is clear, whether or not there is the real presence, that there was a crime, but the Archbishop, theologically, can’t claim it was theft, and, legally, would have great difficulty proving it’s kidnapping. But he did call it theft, and won the return of the Sacred Host.

What do you think? Should the Archbishop have claimed the Eucharist as property to win its return? Could he have won, without calling Jesus property? Is it the Church’s property?

God bless you.

Culture of death; Society of Zombies

We live in a culture, where people are seen as separate autonomous beings, made to do whatever they may want, and to provide pleasure. A culture that encourages me to view you as a lifeless tool to achieve my desires. A culture that has no time for people’s problems, but looks at them and suggests neglect to deal with the symptoms, and death as the cure. As St. John Paul II called it, a ‘culture of death’.

And what is more clear, than that to participate in the culture of death, is practically to be living as dead? Zombie fiction has provided the illustration perfectly.

The great masses, with cold, empty eyes, who wander aimlessly; who thoroughly ignore their undead brethren; whose only perverse desire is to consume the life of survivors, and so satisfy their empty hungers. To them, all is either nothing, or a prey. All paths are called the same, and so all worthless, and they fall under the ‘tyranny of relativism’, where meaning is not permitted, and man is reduced below the animals. Where a man is yet free, he is detested and hungered over, by those who wish to sustain their slavery. They desire life, but only to grasp and crush it. They do not touch, heart to heart and soul to soul, but corpse to corpse.

The useless or inconvenient are ignored until they wither and die. Or, if they should make any demands that all should come to life, and do something for others, they are attacked [do not make an appeal to a zombie’s humanity]. And when they are attacked, they are either slaughtered and consumed, or survive only to become another lifeless corpse roaming the world, seeking to consume.

In the hands of the living dead, the unborn, the elderly, the infirm, the unemployed, the criminal, and all in their grasping hands, are given only the options of death by destruction or (if they are able) death by corruption.

 

Thank God, few are yet so completely dead. The infection works slower than imagined, and can be resisted. But don’t be complacent, it is slower but tougher.

We must fight, and fight bravely. We must oppose death with life; violence with peace; hatred with love; darkness with light; destruction with creation; consumption with communion; those who eat flesh to corruption and destruction, with those who partake of the living body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, ‘the medicine of immortality’. When the dead are infecting the living, we must look to Jesus, who brings true life to the dead. While all seek to grasp all, we must strive to give all. For this, we must be nourished by the greatest gift of all time: the sacrifice of the Son of God upon the cross, present before us on the altar. Only his sacrifice gave the resurrection, and only by his sacrifice can we make any worthy, living and life-giving sacrifice/gift.

God bless you.

The presentation of the Lord

(Luke 2:22-38)
Here is something I have been shown while praying the holy rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary (I didn’t need to specify, but her name brings me joy), and meditating on the joyful mysteries.

The presentation of the baby Jesus in the temple is a lot like mass.
Mary goes before God, to offer her firstborn child, Jesus who is God-incarnate, to God. She does this both as a duty and a gift to God the Father, in obedience to and delight in the law. She only has her son, who is God, by the grace of God, and her great offering is only what God gave to her in the first place.
By her motherly love, she is so united to Jesus that she cannot give Jesus without giving herself with him.
Mary presents and gives Jesus to the Lord, and the Lord accepts, then presents and gives Jesus to the world, through the proclamation of His prophets. And with Jesus, comes Mary, and so her heart will be pierced with her son, and her life too will be given to all mankind.
Similarly, at each mass, we (especially priests) come before God, to offer Him Jesus, who is God-incarnate. This is both our duty and our gift, in obedience and in love. We only have Jesus in the Holy Eucharist by the grace of God, and we are only offering what God has given to us before.
We offer mass, and are offering God as a sacrifice to God, and He surely accepts, and then gives Himself to us, as our true food and true drink, and to the whole world through us.
And by our love, we ought to unite ourselves to Jesus at every mass, and offer ourselves with him as a sacrifice, and can expect to be sent out to live and suffer for the world with him.
We give to God, and He gives to the world, and gives perfectly.

God bless you!

Amateur theology on the Eucharist, Part 2

[I’d like to emphasise how amateur this is. I have much to learn. Wherever I’m mistaken, please correct me to the best of your ability or direct me to correction. And wherever I’m missing something, please show me.

Thanks in advance]

In Part 1, I suggested that the essence of a body is it having life in it (and something similar for the essence of blood), and that this is how Jesus is present in the Eucharist. After further reflection, I think this idea is greatly lacking. It seems like it could be expressed as

bread + life = body,

which seems terribly wrong to me. When I reread part 1, it seems to make perfect sense, but each time I think about it afterwards, it seems to come back to this ugly equation. I think part 1 was incomplete rather than incorrect.

Life is crucial for a body to be a body. But there’s more to bodyness than this. Or perhaps more to “life” than I’m considering. The point that seems to be lacking in the above equation, is life history (which is often meant by “life”, eg. ‘he had a good life’). My body has been with me since my beginning. It has rejoiced and worshipped and sinned and suffered. It has scars which tell stories. And even as my body replaces its cells, they too became a part of my life story, and take up my history.

Consider teleportation. If my body was disintegrated, and simultaneously a duplicate was assembled somewhere else, I would have a new body, rather than a continuation of the original body. Or perhaps consider a freaky friday style mind-swap instead.

And consider the resurrection. We will rise again on the last day and be transformed, rather than having new bodies created fresh. And when Jesus rose again, the tomb was empty, and he still bore the holes in his hands and side. He retained the flesh that suffered for our sake. God doesn’t want us to forget where we’re coming from, because it’s a part of us, and a part of our relationship with Him.

So, in the Eucharist also, the bread becomes Jesus’ living body, that suffered and died for us, and the wine becomes Jesus’ life-giving blood, that was shed and poured out for us. The most holy sacrament of the altar is somehow intimately involved in Jesus’ life story.

God bless you