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The Eucharist: "The source and summit of the Christian life.
The Eucharist: "The source and summit of the Christian life.
The Eucharist: "The source and summit of the Christian life.
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The Eucharist in Fellowship of the Ring, Return of the King, and Two Towers
J.R.R. Tolkien's use of waybread takes on the properties of the Catholic Eucharist in The Lord of the Rings. He creates lembas, a special kind of dried bread and made it the primary food source for the main characters. This special food is, in certain ways, a type of Eucharist, as defined by the Catholic church. Specifically, the parralells can be found in the outward similarities and the surrounding effects.
Lembas are a special kind of waybread. Waybread is meant to be taken on long trips, so it must be easily preservable, nutritious, light and with no preparation necessary. Lembas are made in the form of light dried cakes, wrapped in leaves to preserve freshness. It is very tasty and seems to have a special quality of instilling energy when the eater has great need of it. Lembas are made by the elves of Lothlorien, a secret and unearthly race who gift the traveling band of heroes with the waybread to help them on their journey (Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring 478). Similarily, the Eucharist is in wafer form, and has the spiritual quality of instilling grace in the soul. It is created in a special ceremony and is a major part of the sacrament of theExtreme Unction. The Eucharist is considered by CatholicChristians to be the actual body of Christ.
It is interesting to note that both lembas and the Eucharist share the title of "Food for the Journey"(Nicolas 90). In the case of the Eucharist, this is derived from the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. When a person is on the verge of death, a priest is usually summoned to give the person communion to prepare him or her spiritually for death. Since, for the Christian, death is not final, but a door to heaven, it is considered more like a journey, and not an ending. The Eucharist is given to the dying person much as an athlete is given high energy food just before a race. Lembas are, from their very name, a kind of food for the journey. Both these light wafers have similar purposes, to feed the traveler during a physical or spiritual journey.
After accepting Suzy’s offer to dinner, Thomas and Victor sit down to watch cowboys vs. Indians on TV while Suzy serves them fry bread. Thomas tells Victor it’s almost as good as Arlene’s. Victor says that’s impossible and that his mother cooks the best fry bread in the world. Then Thomas starts to tell a story about how there was a huge feast on the reservation with over 100 Indians. They had deer meat and a lot of mashed potatoes and some fry bread. But Thomas goes on to say that the fry bread made all the difference in the world. And that “a good piece of fry bread turned any meal into a feast”. The problem was that there were only 50 pieces of fry bread. So Arlene ripped each piece in half to feed everyone. The story ends up being untrue but it shows just exactly how important fry bread is to this film. Suzy is able to relate to Thomas and Victor simply by feeding them fry bread and talking about it. It breaks down the tension between these strangers. Thomas’s story shows how important fry bread is among the people at the reservation. It can change a regular meal into a feast. The idea of feast seems so much grander than a meal, it means people coming together to celebrate. For Native Americans fry bread, a symbol of their culture, is reason enough to celebrate. They may have been persecuted for centuries, but they can hold onto their heritage through fry bread. The filmmakers make Thomas’s story especially memorable through lighting and framing. When Thomas is telling his story we are watching images of Arlene preparing the bread. At one point she holds the fry bread over her head to tear it. The image seems almost Christ like. During the last supper Jesus breaks bread in a similar way. The lights are directed towards the bread which makes it pop on screen. Arlene is standing at the head of the table and is perfectly centered in the shot. The combination of lighting and framing makes the fry bread
The increase of wealth during the twelfth century allowed artists to showcase their talents in churches. The apse titled Christ in Majesty with Symbols of the Four Evangelists in the church of Santa Maria de Mur displays the representation of divinity through its subject matter, technique, and style. In the apse, the main subjects revolve around scenes from the Old and New Testament with Christ as the focal point. For technique, the artist employed fresco painting instead of mosaics to show the images. The style of the apse avoids a sense of realism by hiding the bodies of the figures in the drapery and using the hierarchy of scale.
I have always found communion to be an important sacrament to the Christian faith, but sometimes its meaning can be lost in repetitiveness. Sara Miles, in her book Take This Bread, has shed a new light on what it means to take communion as she writes about her transformation into being a Christian by receiving bread and wine. Hunger is the main theme of the book, whether it be spiritually or physically, all humans are linked by that common need. This transformation goes beyond her and pours into the souls and bodies of the San Francisco community, by sharing not only food but the body of Christ. This book has pushed me to get past my comfort zone and heavily consider the way in which food can be an important aspect of my faith and how I share
Analysis of a Major Sacramental Prayer - Option 1: Blessing and Invocation of God over Baptismal Water (Rite of Baptism for One Child)
In his work Torture and Eucharist, William Cavanaugh traces the Catholic Church’s responses to the use of state-sanctioned torture by the mid-twentieth century Pinochet regime in Chile. In doing so, Cavanaugh confronts various ecclesiologies concerning church-state relations and the Church’s role within civil society, lending theological support to a Eucharistic ecclesiology in the process. However, Cavanaugh is highly critical of ecclesiologies that make a distinction between the political and social planes, such as Jacque Maritain’s New Christendom model. Cavanaugh argues that by exclusively circumscribing the Church within the social, or spiritual, realm, such ecclesiologies facilitate the Church’s disappearance as a societal body and strip
United States versus Microsoft Corporation case was a set of combined civil engagements filed against Microsoft relating to the Sherman Antitrust Act by the Department of Justice. In the case, the Department of Justice purported that Microsoft abused monopoly supremacy on PCs in its control of OS sales and web browser software sales (Lohr& Brinkley, 2001). The conflict evolved around the integration of the internet explorer browser software in Microsoft’s Windows OS; a move that was argued to restrict web browser competitors like Opera and Netscape from accessing the browser market. Microsoft argued that it did not have a case to answer and stated the misfortune was the result of the fierce competition and innovation strategies in its industry (Glader, 2006). The following paper aims at analyzing the merits generated from the final settlement of the case and outlines the parties that benefited and those whose interests were harmed.
The Spiritual and Moral Journeys in The Quest of the Holy Grail. The Quest of the Holy Grail is an exciting tale that follows the adventures of King Arthur's knights as they scour the countryside for the legendary Holy Grail. Throughout their journeys, the knights engage in many exciting jousts and sword fights with a variety of enemies. The author of The Quest of the Holy Grail intends for the story to be more than just entertainment: the knights' search for the Holy Grail is analogous to the pursuit of morality and spiritual chivalry, showing success through asceticism, confession, chastity, and faith.
of merely a few pieces of bread sprinkled in salt or dipped in wine, and with a
One of the most controversial topics in Christianity is sacraments. Scholars define the word “sacrament” many ways. A common definition is that a sacrament is an outward, visible sign of an inward, spiritual reality. It would be inaccurate to say that a sacrament is just a sign. It should be viewed as an encounter or something that brings something else about. In other words, a sacrament is something that points beyond itself and has meaning in a spiritual sense. Sacraments compile a range of imagery which all have deeper meanings than meet the eye. It is not just a ritual enactment of something else going on; it has objective order.
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church recognizes two sacraments only. They are the Sacrament of Baptism and The Lord’s Supper. “Sacraments, ordained of Christ, are not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession, but rather they are certain signs of grace and God’s good will toward us, by . . . invisibly in us, and . . . quicken, but also . . . confirm, our faith in, Him.” Baptism is not only a flag of declaration and stamp of separation by which Christians
meal. He knew that it was now time for him to return to his father.
The medieval mind was schematic in nature. From the Great Chain of Being to the orders of angels, medieval thinkers were fond of organizing and classifying the physical and spiritual worlds. One of the schema that has endured in some form to the present day appears in the notion of the Seven Deadly Sins. As Morton Bloomfield observed in 1952, an understanding of the sins might provide a means of understanding the quality and “absolute worth” of the “medieval fabric” (243).
What are the three or four most important drivers of Microsoft’s business model over the past 10 to 15 years that have accounted for the company’s spectacular results?
Microsoft has always been known as a software company, and not well known for its hardware. In fact, the only hardware that Microsoft sells to the retail market is branded peripherals. In its heyday, Microsoft was a market leader, bring an operating system to the masses, and leading in internet search. In recent years, however, most of the moves that Microsoft has made have not been in a market leader position, but have been in response to competitors threatening Microsoft’s positions.
As of now, there are other companies with enough market power to give Microsoft competition, so splitting it up now would be a lot less beneficial than it would have been in 1999 or 2000, when it was the main competitor. There is a metaphorical saying that two heads are better than one, so if the computer industry had two heads then it would be much better off. In other words, more firms mean more competition and more competition means that each company will strive to be better than the other companies. If each company strives to be better than the other companies, then this means a better product will be produced for the consumer and new technological advances will be made and more innovation will take place. If Microsoft was broken up back in 1999 then it could have given rise for many different competing companies to exist in the computer industry today, and the industry would look very different, perhaps even