/lit/ - Literature

>>22648135
>>22648152
trust is Christ anon

>>20934573
conquest of bread my nigga gotta earn that dough, eat those KKKrackas, and praise Jesus, my brother in Christ fr fr

>being
>becoming
>ousia
>energeia
>essence
>hypostasis
>substance
It is very difficult for me to make heads or tails of Christian trinitarian theology, nor understand the conflicts between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, knowing that all their terminology is derived from repeatedly recycling the Aristotelian terms for "Being" and "Becoming" between Latin and Greek.

>>20640653
That's perfectly logical, as far as it goes, but you end up excluding yourself from pic related, "the source and summit of the Christian life."

>>20400009
No, it is not only a symbol.

As Flannery O'Connor once said, if it's just a symbol, to hell with it.

>>19395050
>>19395106
Not him, but I'll pray for you both to come to the light of the one true Church.

>>19263669

>>17448838
>To me its the strangest idea out of the whole faith.

That's a fair point.

It comes down to a matter of faith. If Christ is the Messiah, the incarnate Son of God, then we must trust His teaching, and He teaches the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist very clearly, in John 6 and the Last Supper accounts in the synoptic gospels. And via Paul in 1 Cor 10 and 11.

Here is my advice: 1. Strengthen your faith in Christ by reading McDowell, More than a Carpenter, a short book that lays out the evidence for the Resurrection, which is much stronger than most people realize. Style-wise, the book is not great. But it has great information, and the argument is set forward concisely and cogently.

2. Listen to two Scott Hahn presentations: his conversion story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-bz4kRtCQI.. In this, he explains how he was persuaded, by scripture, to go from a Zwinglian to a more Catholic understanding of the Eucharist (eventually, he converted to Catholicism).

And "The Fourth Cup," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1yAvrVoYzo.. This is a fascinating talk in which he describes his insight into the connection between the Last Supper (a Passover meal) and the Crucifixion.

3. Pray. Ask God to enlighten your mind.

Do step 3 first. Do it repeatedly.

There are other books and articles, but the above is a good overview of the basics, and if you're not persuaded by the basics, I'm not sure that a more elaborate or detailed analysis would persuade you.

>>16556089
Actually, Catholics mostly default to the obvious, surface meaning of the text, e.g., "This is my body" means what it says.