In the hope that I may help at least one of you to adore God more perfectly and warn you of a certain grievous error, I'm writing on the heresy of consubstantiation. It can happen that such a notion lingers, cloaked amongst many abstract thoughts, and subverts your faith, loyalty and fidelity to the holy flesh and precious blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ, which is present in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist. The subject does not demand long words, and so, very concisely, I hope to give you good reason against this error which has distracted, however implicitly, a great many of the people from a truer and purer adoration.
Consubstantiation is a heresy, because it is a contradiction. It states that bread and wine occupy the same space as the body and blood of Jesus Christ. But we all know that no two things can occupy the same space, in the same way, at the same time. This cannot be, for the same reason that there are no men who are women, bachelors who are married, square circles, things which are green all over and red all over, or universes in which it is possible for there to be an immovable object and an unstoppable force. God cannot make a contradiction. It has been said famously by G.K. Chesterton that," Orthodoxy abides in paradoxy." Paradox in the sense that there is a seeming contradiction, but not one in fact, as that would constitute a true and philosophical paradox, a fallacy, a lie. Consubstantiation is a contradiction, and therefore a lie, and is necessarily a heresy, because lying belongs to Satan.
Therefore, to the sole end that you may be evermore resolved in giving assent in faith to the most holy sacrament, and understanding more perfectly the object of your adoration, know that after the consecration of the bread and the wine, they exist no more, but that only the true body and true blood of the Lord Jesus Christ endure. The work of human hands, which is bread and wine, no longer remains, but only the work of the Holy Spirit, which is the Eucharist. The doctrine of transubstantiation does not err by saying that two things occupy the same space at the same time; it does not say that the sacrament is as truly wine and bread as it is the body and blood. Rather, this most holy and sacred doctrine, handed down from Christ in the upper chamber at the Last Supper to the present through his holy apostles and their successors the bishops, gives unwavering assent to the words of Christ," This IS my body...," and again," This IS my blood..." Hereby, the Churches of the Apostles, headed by the successor of St. Peter, the Roman Pontiff, propound without guile to all the faithful the mystery of faith. Namely, that God is with us in fact, that the old has passed away, and that he is offered up for our sins and for our salvation.
When you adore Christ, and when you receive him in the sacrament, do not regard mere appearances, but instead, having selected the path of faith in the words of Christ and his apostles, reason with what your faith has given assent to as a fact and know that you are adoring and receiving the ineffable gift of God's only begotten Son. For, if you say," Amen." when the priest says," The body of Christ!" and only believe your eyes, but also allow that it is by some mystically vague and abstract means that the priest tells the truth, then you have not said," Amen." in spirit and in truth. And the time has come upon us which Christ spoke of to the Samaritan woman, that all who worship God must do so in spirit and in truth. Do not eat and drink unto condemnation.
"Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim." ~Aristotle~
No comments:
Post a Comment