{"id":78,"date":"2012-04-22T13:45:57","date_gmt":"2012-04-22T13:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/theroadyoureon\/?p=78"},"modified":"2012-04-22T13:48:47","modified_gmt":"2012-04-22T13:48:47","slug":"for-spiritual-power-eat-lion-meat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/2012\/04\/for-spiritual-power-eat-lion-meat.html","title":{"rendered":"For Spiritual Power, Eat Lion Meat"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI was introduced to dog meat,\u201d President Obama recalls in his memoir, Dreams from My Father<\/a><\/span>, recounting his experiences as a young child in Indonesia under the tutelage of his Islamic stepfather, whose \u201cknowledge of the world seemed inexhaustible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s stepfather fed the boy dog meat and other delicacies (snake, grasshopper) and promised to \u201cbring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share,\u201d explaining that \u201ca man took on the powers of whatever he ate.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the saying goes, you are what you eat.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him,\u201d Christ says in John\u2019s Gospel. \u201cHe who eats me will live because of me.\u201d Hence, the Catholic Church teaches that the Eucharist brings \u201can intimate union with Christ Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine becomes Christ\u2019s body and blood. Monsignor Peter Vaghi explains this doctrine of \u201ctransubstantiation\u201d in The Sacraments We Celebrate: A Catholic Guide to the Seven Mysteries of Faith<\/a><\/span>, the second book in his series on the Catholic faith.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is always good to spend some time meditating and focusing on what happens in the Eucharist,\u201d Vaghi says. \u201cIt is, after all, the principal mystery of our Faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Catholics, when they consume the Blessed Sacrament, they are truly eating Jesus\u2019 flesh and drinking his blood. Not symbolically, but really. How? \u201cIt takes faith to recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread,\u201d Vaghi explains.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not so hard to swallow when you think about the fact that it takes another sort of faith to believe in (say) quarks, dark matter, or subatomic particles. Reality is so much more than what our five senses can perceive.<\/p>\n

Catholics believe that they take on the power of Christ, in a real sense, through the Eucharist. Christ promised<\/a><\/span> that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will have eternal life (John 6:54).<\/p>\n

For many of Christ\u2019s disciples, this teaching was too hard to accept. \u201cHow can he give us his flesh to eat?\u201d they asked. Many of his disciples broke away from that time on, John\u2019s Gospel tells us.<\/p>\n

Granted, the outward appearance of the elements remains the same as before the consecration by the priest. Yet, with the eyes of faith, Catholics can see that in eating the Eucharist, we become like Christ, and we remain in him and Christ in us.<\/p>\n

Rather than eating tiger meat to gain power, we should consume the Lion of Judah<\/a><\/span>. Through our faith in this mystery, we gain an intimate union with Christ Jesus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI was introduced to dog meat,\u201d President Obama recalls in his memoir, Dreams from My Father, recounting his experiences as a young child in Indonesia under the tutelage of his Islamic stepfather, whose \u201cknowledge of the world seemed inexhaustible.\u201d Obama\u2019s stepfather fed the boy dog meat and other delicacies (snake, grasshopper) and promised to \u201cbring…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":448,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[59,56,57,58,52,60,54,51,55,53,61],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bread","tag-catholic-church","tag-catholicism","tag-dog","tag-dreams-from-my-father","tag-eucharist","tag-peter-vaghi","tag-president-obama","tag-sacraments","tag-transubstantiation","tag-wine"],"yoast_head":"\nFor Spiritual Power, Eat Lion Meat - The Road You're On<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/2012\/04\/for-spiritual-power-eat-lion-meat.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"For Spiritual Power, Eat Lion Meat - The Road You're On\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cI was introduced to dog meat,\u201d President Obama recalls in his memoir, Dreams from My Father, recounting his experiences as a young child in Indonesia under the tutelage of his Islamic stepfather, whose \u201cknowledge of the world seemed inexhaustible.\u201d Obama\u2019s stepfather fed the boy dog meat and other delicacies (snake, grasshopper) and promised to \u201cbring…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/2012\/04\/for-spiritual-power-eat-lion-meat.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Road You're On\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-04-22T13:45:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-04-22T13:48:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gayle Trotter\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"For Spiritual Power, Eat Lion Meat - The Road You're On","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/2012\/04\/for-spiritual-power-eat-lion-meat.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"For Spiritual Power, Eat Lion Meat - The Road You're On","og_description":"\u201cI was introduced to dog meat,\u201d President Obama recalls in his memoir, Dreams from My Father, recounting his experiences as a young child in Indonesia under the tutelage of his Islamic stepfather, whose \u201cknowledge of the world seemed inexhaustible.\u201d Obama\u2019s stepfather fed the boy dog meat and other delicacies (snake, grasshopper) and promised to \u201cbring…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/2012\/04\/for-spiritual-power-eat-lion-meat.html","og_site_name":"The Road You're On","article_published_time":"2012-04-22T13:45:57+00:00","article_modified_time":"2012-04-22T13:48:47+00:00","author":"Gayle Trotter","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/2012\/04\/for-spiritual-power-eat-lion-meat.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/2012\/04\/for-spiritual-power-eat-lion-meat.html","name":"For Spiritual Power, Eat Lion Meat - The Road You're On","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/#website"},"datePublished":"2012-04-22T13:45:57+00:00","dateModified":"2012-04-22T13:48:47+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/#\/schema\/person\/a743a577b3738adf05c99b4d156fcd60"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/2012\/04\/for-spiritual-power-eat-lion-meat.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/2012\/04\/for-spiritual-power-eat-lion-meat.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/2012\/04\/for-spiritual-power-eat-lion-meat.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"For Spiritual Power, Eat Lion Meat"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/","name":"The Road You're On","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/#\/schema\/person\/a743a577b3738adf05c99b4d156fcd60","name":"Gayle Trotter","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/author\/gayletrotter"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/448"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/81"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/theroadyoureon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}