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460 The Word became flesh to make us partakers of the divine nature: (2 Peter 1:4)
For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.
795 Christ and his Church thus together make up the whole Christ (Christus totus). The Church is one with Christ. The saints are acutely aware of this unity:
Let us rejoice then and give thanks that we have become not only Christians, but Christ himself. Do you understand and grasp, brethren, God's grace toward us? Marvel and rejoice: we have become Christ. For if he is the head, we are the members; he and we together are the whole man. . . . The fullness of Christ then is the head and the members. But what does head and members mean? Christ and the Church.
A reply of St. Joan of Arc to her judges sums up the faith of the holy doctors and the good sense of the believer:
"About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they're just one thing, and we shouldn't complicate the matter."
— (Acts of the Trial of Joan of Arc)
It's not my intent to attribute implicit
ill will to you, in answering the
question, but many times people of
faith, both Catholic and Protestant,
will take a quote out of context,
without reading the text before and
after the quote itself. This is done
often with the Holy Scriptures, but
as a Catholic apologist, I've also
seen it done with Council documents,
like those from the Council of Trent.
If we look at the context of paragraph
460, we see it falls within the Chapter
heading:
Article 3
"HE WAS CONCEIVED BY THE
POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, AND
BORN OF THE VIRGIN MARY"
Paragraph 1. The Son of God Became
Man.
I. Why Did The Word Become Flesh?
If we look at the context of paragraph
795, we see it falls within the Chapter
heading:
Article 9
"I BELIEVE IN THE HOLY CATHOLIC
CHURCH"
Paragraph 2. The Church - People of God, Body of Christ, Temple of the Holy Spirit.
"Christ is the Head of this
Body".
Paragraph 460 states "For the
Son of God became man so
that we might become God," in reference to Article 3 of our
Creed because it is addressing the
question:
"Why did the Word become Flesh?" based
on what would happen in the future.
Article 9 of our Roman Catholic Creed
addresses what we believe now, after we
have vocally reaffirmed in the Creed,
that He:
"was conceived by the power
of the Holy Spirit, and born of
the Virgin Mary."
We believe that which has been passed
on by the Apostles:
Christ and His Church make up
the "whole Christ" (Christus
totus).
The Church is one with Christ.
Christ is the head; we are the
Mystical Body. We partake in Divine
nature, especially through the
Holy Eucharist, and
become divine in Christ,though
our nature remains human.
I hope this answers your question;
if not, just reply..
and tell others about our site :
)
Mike
John
replied:
Steve —
Mike is correct, but a little incomplete.
We are being transformed into the
very image and likeness of Christ.
Eastern Rite Catholics call this Deification and
have developed the doctrine more than
in the Western Rite.
In our resurrected bodies, our concupiscent
nature will no longer exist. Hence,
we will, by grace, have been transformed
into gods (small g). That is not
to say we will be free agents.
John DiMascio
Pastor
David Sisco commented:
Mike,
I was reading your response to Steve's
question.
While I found your answer to be most
intriguing, what really stood out
to me was the lack of Scriptural
support for your answer.
Can you explain this?
I have a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and I, too,
have struggled with understanding
this portion of Catholic doctrine.
What does the Bible say to this?
Pastor Sisco
Mike
replied:
Hi, Pastor Sisco —
The underlining Scriptural assumption
in what Catholics believe is based
on what Jesus told His Apostles and Disciples
in John 6:51-70.
Note that even His
Disciples (devoted followers) left
Him after He said that
they must eat
His Body and drink His Blood, and
Only St.
Peter says, No,we
won't leave. We have come
to believe!
After 2,000 years, with a few exceptions,
only Catholic and Orthodox Christians still
believe, and weekly they
eat His Body and drink His Blood
in order to nourish them as they
carry out their vocation. Without
a correct understanding of John 6,
many things on your faith journey
will always be confusing.
Through the Eucharist, we are
not divine nature, but we
partake in divine
nature. As St. Paul states:
Remember, specific Scriptural support is not
needed for a Christian teaching to
be true. It is there, but the non-Catholic Protestant has to accept the many biblical verses that support Oral Tradition and sadly, many of our brethren don't accept these biblical passages but ignore them.
All of the early era Christians did
not know what books made
up the Bible until 382 A.D. at the
Council of Rome.
Catholic bishops,
guided by the Holy Spirit, decided
which books would go in the Bible,
and which would not.
The Bible is the Sacred
Book written:
by Catholics and their
ancestors
for Catholics
for use
in the Catholic Church, specifically for Mass, our Divine worship.
I hope this and the Scripture references
below help.
Take care,
Mike
Sacrament of Eucharist
Catholic Note:
While most Protestants believe the Last Supper was significant and often
agree that communion is important, they don't believe that Jesus literally
meant, He wanted us to eat His Flesh and drink His Blood. They argue that
Jesus used many symbols to refer to Himself — He called Himself a door,
a vine, etc. And since eating human flesh is cannibalism, they argue
that Jesus could not have been speaking literally in John 6. The Eucharist,
however, is a unique and miraculous reality in which we consume the entirety
of the living Christ — although his natural condition is veiled by the
sacrament.
The Church has consistently understood Christ's Words to be
literally referring to His True Flesh and Blood, as is evident in the
writings of the early Church saints like:
Although all the faithful
in the Church have always believed this teaching of transubstantiation,
there was no need to formally define it until 1215, at the Fourth Lateran Council dogmatically which said: that while the outward appearances of bread and wine remain {the taste,
touch, smell and looks}, their inward realities or substance has become
the living Christ. Because Jesus is truly present — Body, Blood, Soul
and Divinity — we adore the Eucharist with profound reverence.
The Church is the extension of Christ's incarnation, and that
extension takes place through the sacraments. (Scott
Hahn , Swear to God, Page 22)
What Our Lord was calling the Jewish people to do is to die
to the Old Adam and Old Testament laws and rituals and enter the New
Covenant of his Body and Blood.
to symbolically eat and drink ones body and blood
back in Jesus' times means to assault. This would make our Lord promise
life everlasting to the culprit for slandering and hating Him, which
would reduce the whole passage to utter nonsense. Christ would be saying:
This is the bread that comes
down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living
bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live
forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life
of the world. The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, How
can this man give us (his) flesh to eat? Jesus said to them, Amen,
amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my
flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him
on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true
drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and
I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because
of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because
of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your
ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live
forever. These things he said while teaching in the synagogue
in Capernaum. Then many of his disciples who were listening said, This
saying is hard; who can accept it? Since Jesus knew that his
disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, Does
this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending
to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, while the
flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and
life. (See note 1.) But there are some of
you who do not believe. Jesus knew from the beginning the ones
who would not believe and the one who would betray him. And he said, For
this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it
is granted him by my Father. As a result of this, many (of)
his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer
accompanied him. Jesus then said to the Twelve, Do you also
want to leave? Simon Peter answered him, Master, to whom
shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to
believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.
Does this shock
you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was
before? It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no
avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
What Our Lord says here is not intended to be a Maldonatus thought, to increase
the scandal, but to rectify what was simply a cannibalistic interpretation
of what he has just said.
The Ascension will perhaps surprise the recalcitrants
more, but it will eliminate the chief difficulty about eating the flesh
of One who in celestial glory takes his place where he was from eternity. Also note that the close followers of Our Lord,
the disciplesleft Him because this was a hard saying. Then Our Lord asks Peter if he
will leave him too. Peter representing the 12 Apostles says:
Master, to whom
shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to
believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God. (John 6:69)
and:
The Eucharist must be worthily received.
If the Eucharist were just a symbol there would be no need to partake
of it worthily.
[heretics] abstain from the
Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist
is the Flesh of Our Savior Jesus Christ. (His Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6, 2)
not as common bread, nor
common drink do we receive these; but ... as we have been taught, the
food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer
set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh are
nourished, is both the flesh and blood of that Incarnated Jesus." (His First
Apology 66, 20)
He [ Jesus ] has declared
the cup, a part of his creation, to be His own Blood from
which causes our blood to flow; and the bread, a part of his creation,
He has established as His own Body from which He gives
increase to our bodies.
(His Against Heresies 5, 2, 2)
"He himself,
therefore, having declared and said of the Bread, 'This is My Body',
who will dare any longer to doubt? And when he himself has affirmed
and said, 'This is My Blood' who can ever hesitate and say it is not
His Blood."
(Catechetical Lectures: Mystagogic 4, 22, 1)
"Do not regard
the bread and wine as simply that, for they are, according to the Master's
declaration, the Body and Blood of Christ. Even though
the sense suggest to you other, let faith make you firm. Do not judge
in this manner by taste, but be fully assured by faith, not doubting
that you have been deemed worthy of the Body and Blood of Christ."
(Catechetical Lectures: Mystagogic 4,22,6)
You gave him a very good answer,
but didn't answer his question!
The question was about our participation
in the divine nature, the transformation
into the likeness of Christ, or as
the Eastern Church calls it, Deification.
Here are a few passages, off the
top of my head, that address the
pastor's question.
2 Grace
and peace be multiplied to you
in the knowledge of God and of
Jesus our Lord, 3 as
His divine power has given to
us all things that pertain to
life and godliness, through the
knowledge of Him who called us
by glory and virtue, 4 by
which have been given to us exceedingly
great and precious promises, that
through these you may be partakers
of the divine nature, having escaped
the corruption that is in the
world through lust. (NKJ)
18 But
we all, with unveiled face, beholding
as in a mirror the glory of the
Lord, are being transformed into
the same image from glory to glory,
just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
(NKJ)
17 Therefore,
if anyone is in Christ, he is
a new creation; old things have
passed away; behold, all things
have become new. 18 Now
all things are of God, who has
reconciled us to Himself through
Jesus Christ, and has given us
the ministry of reconciliation, 19 that
is, that God was in Christ reconciling
the world to Himself, not imputing
their trespasses to them, and
has committed to us the word of
reconciliation. 20 Now
then, we are ambassadors for Christ,
as though God were pleading through
us: we implore you on Christ's
behalf, be reconciled to God. 21 For He made Him who
knew no sin to be sin for us,
that we might become the righteousness
of God in Him. (NKJ)
