Prayer

            Prayer is our primary way of communication with God. Keeping in good contact with our Father is one of the most important things we can do. Whether we are on the way to school, or we are just waking up in the morning, or going to bed at night, praying can happen at any time. God is always there for us and ready to listen to our problems, hopes and dreams, and wants. Although God may not always answer our prayers with the answer we are looking for or expect, He does always answer our prayers no matter what we ask for. His answer may be no, and what we asked for does not happen. Or he may also disguise he answer into something we cannot see at the moment but will become visible down the road. I always try to pray and thank God for everything He has given me. I know I am blessed to be where I am today and who I am today and know that everything I am and everything I have comes from God. 

The Sacrament of Matrimony

When Jesus came he raised the power of matrimony almost to where it was when Adam and Eve were on Earth. The difference now is that the marriage is built off of grace going through our sins rather that grace without sins which is how it was in the beginning. He made it a sacrament which is the way through which humans on Earth are able to have their sins after baptism forgiven. This means that a marriage between two baptized Catholics is a sacramental marriage and will never go away. This means that if a baptized Christian divorces another baptized Christian and they divorce if one of the two is remarried then they, according to Jesus, will be living in a state of perpetual adultery and mortal sin.

This is shown when Luke writes, "Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another   commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery" (Luke 16:18; cf. Mark 10:11–12). Paul is also insistent about this point too. He says, "Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives. . . . Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive" (Rom. 7:2–3). 

This only applies to a marriage between two people for there is a different rule for an unbaptized person’s marriage. In Greco-Roman culture it is easy to divorce and remarry which led the Church Fathers to proclaim Jesus’ teaching about the matter to them. Other Church denominations have modified this rule to accommodate the new and modern culture’s thought on divorce and remarriage. These changes lead the Catholic Church to be one of the few denominations that still preserves Jesus’ and the early Christian’ view on divorce.

    This means that a marriage between two people who have been baptized can not remarry unless the spouse has died or there was a never an actual valid sacramental marriage. It’s like this, a marriage has to be contracted for it to be official, for it to be contracted the bride and groom have to share matrimonial consent. If there is no consent the marriage is null and the two are allowed to remarry.

    This because without the consent there is no need for a divorce.

This is a commandment that comes from Jesus through Paul when he writes, "To the married I give charge, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, let her remain single or else be reconciled to her husband)—and that the husband should not divorce his wife" (1 Cor. 7:10-11). This is why Jesus established matrimony as a sacrament so that God’s grace will pour into us in times of trial when our marriages are in trouble.

The Real Presence

This blog post is a summary of this

article.

In scripture about the Real Presence it says that Jesus is literally and fully in the body, kind, soul, divinity in the Eucharist through the bread and wine. This doctrine is often attacked by Evangelical and Fundamentalists because they feel that it is unbiblical.

The early Church Father interpreted these reading literally. A summary stated by J. N. D. Kelly about Christ’s real presence said,  "Eucharistic teaching, it should be understood at the outset, was in general unquestioningly realist, i.e., the consecrated bread and wine were taken to be, and were treated and designated as, the Savior’s body and blood.”

From the beginning of the Church the Church Fathers discussed and taught about Christ's presence in the Holy Eucharist. Kelly wrote also wrote, "Ignatius roundly declares that . . . [t]he bread is the flesh of Jesus, the cup his blood. Clearly he intends this realism to be taken strictly, for he makes it the basis of his argument against the Docetists’ denial of the reality of Christ’s body. . . . Irenaeus teaches that the bread and wine are really the Lord’s body and blood. His witness is, indeed, all the more impressive because he produces it quite incidentally while refuting the Gnostic and Docetic rejection of the Lord’s real humanity."

He then states, "Hippolytus speaks of ‘the body and the blood’ through which the Church is saved, and Tertullian regularly describes the bread as ‘the Lord’s body.’ The converted pagan, he remarks, ‘feeds on the richness of the Lord’s body, that is, on the Eucharist.’ The realism of his theology comes to light in the argument, based on the intimate relation of body and soul, that just as in baptism the body is washed with water so that the soul may be cleansed, so in the Eucharist ‘the flesh feeds upon Christ’s body and blood so that the soul may be filled with God.’ Clearly his assumption is that the Savior’s body and blood are as real as the baptismal water. Cyprian’s attitude is similar. Lapsed Christians who claim communion without doing penance, he declares, ‘do violence to his body and blood, a sin more heinous against the Lord with their hands and mouths than when they denied him.’ Later he expatiates on the terrifying consequences of profaning the sacrament, and the stories he tells confirm that he took the Real Presence literally"

Also big people and events that defined The Real Presence were Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, Cyprian of Carthage, Council of Nicaea I, Aphraahat the Persian Sage, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose of Milan, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Augustine, Council of Ephesus.

Baptism

     Baptism is the first out of the seven sacrament of the Church. Together with charism it incorporates a person with the Mystical Body of Christ which is the best representation of the Church. There is argument by some people who feel that the only real type of baptism is a person who believes in Christ first. They feel that there is no point to baptize a human being who does not know about Christ and is not able to believe. So why baptize a baby when it doesn't know yet what is happening and not wait for him to understand the lord? If we follow this we wouldn’t protect the baby from sin and until he grows up. Baptizing babies before they know what we are doing is a sign of God’s love for us. It shows that God loves us and accepts us before we can ever know and love Him. It also shows us that God loves from the moment we are born and continues to love us until the end of time. Baptism of an infant is the ultimate sign of God's grace. The Church does not frown upon a personal faith in an adult who wants baptism but says that the whole point in baptism is not what the baby, parents, godparents, or grandparents do but instead what God does in the baptism. The reason we are Chrisitians has nothing to do with us but instead the trinity. We are Christians because of the works of Christ, God, and the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that the human does not have to do anything because he is still called to respond to the call once he becomes the appropriate age. The person must be able to accept God and what he did for us in baptism. Baptism is not a pass that will get us into Heaven automatically. It must be followed by an acknowledgement of God's love and gifts that we obtain through baptism.

The Seven Sacraments

The seven sacraments are there to be signs of grace and to bring us closer to God and Christ. It is what the Catholic Church revolves around. they are meant to make us holy and build us into the Mystical Body of Christ. Through the sacraments and prayer we as a group of people are formed into a Church. The seven sacraments are baptism, confirmation, reconciliation, eucharist, matrimony, holy orders, and anointing of the sick. Baptism is the first sacrament and the one that opens the gate to every other sacrament which makes have names such as the purifying and sanctifying sacrament of rebirth. It brings the person who receives is brought into the sacramental bond of unity. Confirmation is the sacrament that binds them more tightly to the Church and strengthens them to Christ and his word. Eucharist is to accept Christ and his offering to us for which we must accept Christ for heaven. The Penance sacrament is how the humans have their sins forgiven by God through confession. Anointing of the Sick is made to call humans to help the sick and to witness the faith and devotion of those being anointed. The sacrament of marriage or matrimony is the one that uses God’s grace to be alike Adam and Eve at the beginning of time and to look over the marriage and make sure the the problems don’t ruin it. Holy orders is the way the heirarchy receives the power and grace to perform the called upon duties.