lady of shallot wrote:Yesterday I was speaking to one of my Catholic sisters and since I had recently written in a post about transubstantiation (which Dawn thoroughly scoffs at) I asked my sister if she literally believed the wine was turned into Christs blood because of some murmured words said by a man in a long garment. She answered "absolutely" Like Randall with his relative, I was tempted to ask her what she thought a DNA analysis of such wine would reveal. But I didn't. One thing I find interesting about this particular sister is her extreme confidence in her own certainty , not only about religion but about all her opinions, attitudes.
Anyway before I fell asleep last night I was thinking about how many gallons of Jesus' blood have been consumed over the centuries. Isn't it rather ghoulish when you think about it? Here is the blood we have been told was shed for us (actually does one bleed to death in crucifixion or die of strain and exposure?) and then we want to drink it? If you had a beloved one who died would you want to honor him by symbolically drinking his blood? I think most people would be appalled at such an idea.
Lady of shallot, we Christians have the notion that the church is the body of Christ. One of the ways that metaphor was constituted was in turning the eucharistic meal into one in which Christ is present. As raw imagery, it has unpleasant aspects. But that is appropriate - their beloved one had just been martyred by the authorities. Is is so strange that the early church would carry on with a meal at which he probably said the bread represented his body and the wine represented his blood? Re-constituting the Passover meal, celebrating freedom from tyranny, as given by the mighty hand of God. My point is that they didn't shed the blood, but had good reason to remember it. Not as a glorious or a ghoulish thing, but as clear recognition that the way he died mattered.
