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Filling in the Gaps about the Eucharist We read of Jesus instituting the Eucharist in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as in St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. John gives us something different, which is not surprising: John wrote his Gospel long after the other three, and he assumes you’ve read them already. His Gospel is meant as a sort of “gap-filler,” covering important moments in the life of Jesus that nobody else had written down yet. He offers us the “t …

The Role of Sacred Tradition in Early Christianity The first Christians didn’t learn their faith from the Bible because none of the books of the New Testament had been written yet. This is evident in Paul thanking the Corinthians for “maintain[ing] the traditions even as I have delivered them to you” (1 Cor. 11:2), and instructing his disciple Timothy,“what you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2). Paul thanked the …

Understanding the Eucharist How can you tell if you have the right understanding—the biblical interpretation, Jesus’ interpretation—of the Eucharist? I’d suggest five things to look for: your beliefs should be strange,sacrificial,serious,sacramental, and shocking. First, as we’ve already seen, the proper Christian understanding of the Eucharist must be strange, and hard to accept. That’s how it was initially received, and Jesus did nothing to dispel this impression. Why, he was trying to p …

As the number of Christian books grew, so did the need for the Catholic Church to discern which were truly authoritative, which were merely helpful, and which were positively harmful. This resulted in a process that gradually clarified which books did and didn’t count as Scripture.The guiding principle for Christians was Jesus Christ himself, so the question became which books he would consider authoritative. Since he presented his ministry as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, this …

Throughout my priestly ministry, I have always heavily preached the importance of frequent confession. In my homiletics, I stress the spiritual goods of the sacrament and their effects on our souls. Regrettably, many of the faithful dismiss the invitation and settle for the oftentimes tragic minimum of once a year. Every once in a while, however, someone will be stirred by the Holy Spirit and will start going to regular confession.On one such occasion, a middle-aged woman (not from my current pa …