Eucharist Adoration: Worship or Idolatry?
| By: Mike Gendron; ©2002 |
| Eucharist adoration has increased dramatically in Roman Catholic Churches. There is a “shrine” to the Eucharist in Toledo, Spain. Or you can go on the Internet where you can worship the Eucharist via web-cam. All this to worship what Catholics call “the greatest miracle of all”—God himself, transformed into a lifeless, inanimate wafer. |
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Eucharistic Adoration: Worship or Idolatry?
Eucharistic adoration has increased dramatically in Roman Catholic Churches throughout America due to the urging of Pope John Paul II. Chapels have been set up in churches where Catholics can worship the real presence of Jesus. Some chapels offer Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration whereby the consecrated host is exposed and adored in a monstrance without interruption 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Parishioners commit themselves to a specific day, and time (one hour) every week. When they look upon the Sacred Host, they believe they are looking upon Jesus, the almighty God, who created heaven and earth.
The monstrance is a silver or gold stand with rays depicting a sunburst and a circular window where the Eucharist is placed. It comes from the Latin word “monstrare” to show or to expose to view. They vary in sizes, but one of the largest is the Monstrance of Toledo, Spain. It measures over 8 feet, has 15 kilos of pure gold, 183 kg. of silver, many precious jewels and 260 small statues. The total weight is 218 kg. The words of Paul reflect how ungodly this practice of idolatry has become within the Roman Catholic Church. He wrote: “We ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man” (Acts 17:29). The prophet Jeremiah, speaking for God, also renounced this practice by saying: “Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols; For his molten images are deceitful, and there is no breath in them. They are worthless, a work of mockery; in the time of their punishment they will perish (Jer. 10:14-15).
Benefits of Adoring the Eucharist
Pope Pius XI associated the worship of Christ in The Blessed Sacrament with expiation for sin. The Angel at Fatima and the Blessed Mother taught us to adore the Blessed Sacrament and make reparation for our sins.[1] John Paul II said “all the evils of the world could be overcome through the great power of Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration. The devil is put to flight wherever Jesus is adored in the Most Blessed Sacrament.”[2] He asked, “How will young people be able to know the Lord if they are not introduced to the mystery of his presence?”[3] Pope Paul VI proclaimed, “How great is the value of conversation with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, for there is nothing more efficacious for advancing along the road of holiness!”[4]
Catholics can now enjoy all these benefits by adoring the Eucharist on the Internet. A site has been set up using a “web cam”.
Catholics view transubstantiation as the greatest of all miracles. Almighty God, who once humbled Himself to become man, now transforms Himself into lifeless, inanimate wafers. “Every consecration, is a miracle, greater by far than any other, really: for God to come into matter and transform it into himself is far greater than His creating that matter in the first place.”[5] “The body and blood…soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ…is truly, really and substantially contained” in the Eucharist.[6] Since each Eucharist contains the whole Christ, and since upwards of hundreds of wafers are consecrated during each mass, hundreds of Jesus Christs become physically present. Although the Vatican would never acknowledge it, this is a form of polytheism, the worship of many gods.
God Is Worshipped In Spirit
Jesus said, “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit [which is invisible] and truth” (John 4:24). After Jesus ascended into heaven, Paul said true worshippers are those “who worship in the Spirit of God” (Phil. 3:3). The eternal, immortal King is invisible to those on earth until He returns (1 Tim. 1:17). Christians are called to look on “the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18). The Eucharistic god of the Catholic Church is thus a temporal god and a false Christ. Jesus warned us not to believe anyone who says, “Here is the Christ” (Mat. 24:23). Jesus Christ, the Eternal God, is now physically present at the right hand of the Father (Luke 22:69). He will not return to the earth until after the tribulation (Mat. 24:29-30). Clearly, the worship of the Eucharist is idolatry. To worship any image in the place of God provokes Him to anger. God has this to say to idolaters: “they have made Me jealous with what is not God; they have provoked Me to anger with their idols” (Deut. 32:21). The Roman Catholic Church has “exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image “ and “exchanged the truth of God for a lie” (Rom. 1:23-25).
To teach that the incorruptible, almighty and holy God is contained in a corruptible wafer that can be handled, eaten, digested and expelled is indeed the most irreverent, desecrating and profane form of idolatry. When Isaiah was confronted with God’s holiness he cried out, “Woe is me, I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips…” (Isaiah 6:5). When asked what happens to Jesus after the Eucharist is consumed, priests try to explain the unexplainable by suggesting the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus departs from the Eucharist as it is being digested.
Idolatry’s Punishment Is Death
Worshipping the Eucharist is a violation of the 2nd commandment: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God…” (Exod. 20:1-5). Catholics who worship the Eucharist can be closely compared to the Israelites who worshiped the golden calf as their true God (Exod. 32:4). Their punishment imposed by God for this most serious sin was death (Exod. 32:27-28).
God is too awesome and glorious to be captured in any image, let alone a wafer. The prophet Isaiah declares God’s immeasurable greatness and then asks, “To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare with Him?” (Isaiah 40:18). Any image of God is therefore an insult to His glorious holiness and majestic perfection.
Idolatry Is A Pagan Practice
From ancient times only pagan religions used images in the worship of their deities. This type of idolatry is just one of many pagan practices that crept into the Roman Catholic Church over time. Catholics must know that the Lord God does not dwell in the inner substance of a wafer but in the very bodies of born-again Christians. The Apostle Paul asked: “What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people’” (2 Cor. 6:16). Paul warned us that those who practice idolatry will not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal. 5:21). Yet Pope John Paul II proclaims: “We will show the Sacrament of Christ’s presence to all. In this bread the Almighty, the Eternal, the thrice Holy has made Himself close to us.”[7]
What Should Roman Catholics Do?
“Flee from idolatry” (1 Cor. 10:14). “Hear the word of God and observe it” (Luke 11:28). Take heed of God’s warnings! “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs” (Jonah 2:8, NIV). God’s elect are commanded to come out of any religion that practices the sin of idolatry. “Come out of her, my people, that you may not participate in her sins” (Rev. 18:4). Those who remain will also participate in her punishment. Those who come out and turn to Jesus Christ, as He is so gloriously revealed in Scripture, will be set free. They will no longer be slaves to the Eucharist which by nature is not God (Gal. 4:8). Roman Catholics must do as the Thessalonians did—turn from idols to serve the living and true God and wait for His Son from heaven (1 Thes. 1:9-10). May God help them to do so! And may Christians everywhere, be moved with compassion, to speak the truth in love to Roman Catholics, in the hopes of rescuing some from God’s punishment.
Thank you so much for this article which I know is also a life saver and an encouragement to those like me who are facing so much contention for leaving the Catholic Church. I recently lost my job and am facing serious financial problems so I sought help from my siblings who said I should go and worship that Eucharist for God to settle my problems. But I will never do so, neither will I go back to the Catholic church. I am born again and have also led my 5 children to Christ. I earnestly believe that God will not leave us nor abandon us, because that is His word. Thank you so much.
My Dear Jesus, I love you with all my heart. For these insults against you, I offer you my reparation. I am sorry that you were called an idol.
My Lord, I am amazed by your Eucharist. You are the light of the world, and your Eucharist shines its light all over me, and I am safe from evil. Your Eucharist is light and love. Your Eucharist is my hope and peace. I dedicate everything about me to your Eucharist.
You’re so awesome, God, because you have not made yourself invisible to us. I have seen God in the flesh, yes, you still give yourself human flesh for us, over and over again, every day, at every Mass. I want to forget myself, and forget all my needs, and live for this reason: to adore and glorify you in your body and blood, in your tabernacle, and on your altar. Let me be given over to you alone in such a radical way that I no longer have any life outside of life for God.
Unfathomable love – you are God, and you stay among us in the flesh, even when we don’t recognize you. You are God, and you hide yourself among us, disguised as bread and wine, but your beauty shines through the disguise just enough for me to see as much of your glory as I can see without dying. Eradicate my sins and weaknesses with your Eucharist. Make me one with you, Jesus my God. I want to be united with you. Kill my weaknesses with your divine power and drown me with a desire to be completely filled with you. You died for me, so I want the sin in me to die for love of you. Jesus, my heart longs only for your Eucharist. I cannot live without you, Jesus.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.
Rebecca, The article is not an insult against Jesus. The Bible Teaches that the holy spirit is with the Born again believer. Are you saying if you were stranded on an island and did not have access to take communion from a priest you would not have Jesus. I may not want to call the Eucharistic Adoration pure idolatry like the article but you do have to realize That No where in Scripture were the disciples commanded to adore the Brad in communion. They were taught to take and eat in remembrance of him. Now it is a sacred act set apart of the church. So God definitely uses communion to strengthen our faith and to have communion with him Spiritually. But never were we called to worship the elements.
May God bless you abundantly. You’re a strong Catholic and do stand for Christ.
“No weapon formed against us shall prosper!”
St. Augustine taught that the Eucharist is the spiritual, not literal, body and blood of Christ.
How might the Eucharist be the spiritual body and blood of Christ while excluding His presence?
Jesus became God-made-Man. Fully human and fully God.
We came from the Earth, creatures both body and soul, made in the likeness of God whose divinity was present when God breathed unto Adam and when Jesus breathed unto His Apostles.
Was not Jesus spiritually and divinely present, as flesh and blood, during the entire Incarnation?
St. Augustine: What you see is the bread and the chalice. That is what your own eyes report to you, but what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the Body of Christ, and the chalice is the blood of Christ.
Do we regard these words to be true?
The Apostles witnessed the Son of God walk the Earth. Is it less credulous that they witnessed the presence of Jesus in the upper room as they ate of His flesh and blood before His Resurrection? And also when they witnessed Jesus with them at the open tomb, on the road, in the upper room?
Did their eyes see and their ears hear the God-made-Man or a spiritual being not of flesh and blood?
At first, the Apostle Thomas was not there to witness for himself but he rejoined the others in the upper room, remaining in communion with them and faithful to Jesus, with whom Thomas had previously declared himself ready to die. He doubted the witness of the others and said so; Jesus came into their presence and invited Thomas to see and to touch His flesh and his blood.
Thomas may or may not have put his hands in the wounds, but he was filled with the Mercy of Jesus and professed his adoration. He worshipped. His doubt resolved by the presence of Jesus in flesh and blood. And in soul and divinity.
When Jesus appeared on the shore and the other Apostles did not speak out loud what they knew, it was Thomas who declared: There is the Lord.
The real presence of Jesus may take different forms in Scripture from the beginning. Was the Word present at creation? In the Garden of Eden?
Moses climbed the mountain to received the Word of God; God was present in the flames of a burning bush that was not consumed. Moses acted and spoke reverently in the presence of The Word. For example, he removed his shoes on Holy ground. He received Commandments, words written in stone.
And later the Incarnation fulfilled Scripture and changed the world.
Was Jesus present in the upper room during the Last Supper? In that room after Crucifixion? And after Resurrection?
The Apostles consecrated the bread and wine and then ate the bread and blood of Jesus in remembrance of Him; they continued to do so after they had witnessed Jesus Reincarnated; even after they had witnessed Jesus Transfigured and lifted into Heaven; and long after they continued to consecrate bread and wine, in His name, and in His presence, and they passed this onto us.
When we enter consecrated ground, a Church, or stand before the Altar, do we not do so in reverence of the House of God? There dwells Jesus?
If Jesus is present spiritually at Creation, in Paradise, in a burning bush, or even within the brick and mortar of a Church, on consecrated ground, or in a repentant heart of a sinner, how much more must He be present in His own flesh and blood?
How reverently do we handle the Eucharist? Why?
Is this not adoration of Jesus, in our thoughts, actions, and souls? When we received and eat of the Eucharist, do we receive His flesh and his blood, as He instructed?
Do we approach The Eucharist with adoration?
With reverence and worship that is inseparable from the presence of Jesus in His own flesh and blood?
That’s beautiful PJ
I was inspired by your comment
Plain and simple. The Eucharist IS Jesus. Not idolatry. Pure worship.