American readers will know that Andrew Napolitano is Fox News Channel’s Senior Judicial Analyst. Prior to that he served a distinguished eight-year term as Judge of the New Jersey Superior Court and pursued a writing, teaching and television career.
Last week, he wrote a thoughtful article on the meaning of Easter for Fox. He explains the meaning of the events of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter with concise clarity. Parents, Sunday School teachers and anyone working with converts may find the following excerpts useful. Emphases mine below:
On the first Holy Thursday, Jesus attended a traditional Jewish Passover Seder. Catholics believe that at His last supper, Jesus performed two miracles so that we could stay united to Him. He transformed ordinary bread and wine into His own body, blood, soul and divinity, and He empowered His disciples and their successors to do the same.
On the first Good Friday, the government executed Jesus because it was convinced that by claiming to be the Son of God, He might foment a revolution against it. He did foment a revolution, but it was in the hearts of men and women. The Roman government had not heard of a revolution of the heart, so it condemned Him to death by crucifixion.
Jesus had the freedom to reject this horrific event, but He exercised His free will so that we might know the truth. The truth is that He would rise from the dead.
On Easter, three days after He died, that manifestation was completed when He did rise from the dead. By doing that, He demonstrated to us that while living, we can liberate our souls from the slavery of sin … and after death, we can rise to be with Him.
Easter — which manifests our own immortality — is the linchpin of human existence. With it, life is worth living, no matter its costs or pains. Without it, life is meaningless, no matter its fleeting joys or triumphs. Easter has a meaning that is both incomprehensible and simple. It is incomprehensible that a human being had the freedom to rise from the dead. It is simple because that human being was and is God.
Jesus is the hypostatic union — not half God and half man and not just a godly good man but truly and fully God and, at the same time, truly and fully man …
What does Easter mean? Easter means that there’s hope for the dead. If there’s hope for the dead, there’s hope for the living …
The last three paragraphs really express the meaning of Easter. I spent a goodly amount of time yesterday — Easter Day — giving thanks for our Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection in hope and peace. It was a beautiful day in every way.
As we are in Easter Week, may we continue to reflect on the meaning of hope and salvation through Christ Jesus.
Churchmouse Campanologist 
2 comments
March 29, 2016 at 8:05 am
Hannah Vilares
Interesting. It’s clear that he believes in the Mass. The bread and wine actually becoming the actual body and blood of Jesus requiring a priest to perform that ‘miracle’. However they are symbols representing his body broken in payment for our sin. Wounded for our transgressions, by his stripes we are healed, his precious blood poured out his life poured out onto the ground, his life for ours. Expiation and propitiation. In remembrance of me!! Of his cross works and sacrifice for us. We don’t est him physically. We feed on him in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving!! Bless you. Han.
LikeLike
March 29, 2016 at 9:26 am
churchmouse
Thanks, Hannah. I hope you had a blessed Easter.
You are correct: Napolitano is Catholic.
However, the consecrated elements of the Lord’s Supper are more than symbolic for many Protestants: Lutherans, Reformed (Calvinist), Anglicans and Methodists. These might be of interest:
http://christianityinview.com/eucharist.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_presence_of_Christ_in_the_Eucharist
Martin Luther and Zwingli had a huge disagreement about the Sacrament:
‘Luther for his part was harsher in his judgment of Zwingli. He regarded Zwingli as a Schwrmer, a fanatic, because of his rejection of the bodily presence of Christ in the Eucharist …
‘Although Luther attacked the medieval Catholic doctrine of transsubstantiation (which holds that the bread and the wine are changed into the very body and blood of Christ), he continued to maintain that the body and blood are present “in, with and under” the bread and the wine, a view called later “consubstantiation.” Luther rests his argument on a literal reading of the words of institution: “This is my body.”‘
Consubstantiation is the wrong term there; it should be ‘sacramental union’.
Luther was so appalled by Zwingli’s ‘symbol’ perspective that he said, ‘Another spirit moves through him’.
John Calvin also disagreed with Zwingli:
‘According to Calvin the sacraments are signs. The signs and the things signified must be distinguished without being separated. Calvin rejects the idea that the sacramental signs are merely symbols (for example, Zwingli). But he also rejects the idea that the signs are transformed into the things they signify (for example, Rome). Calvin argues that when Christ uses the words, “This is my body,” the name of the thing signified (“body”) is applied to the sign (the bread).
‘Calvin repeatedly stated that his argument with the Roman Catholics and with Luther was not over the fact of Christ’s presence, but only over the mode of that presence … The Holy Spirit is the bond of the believer’s union with Christ. Therefore that which the minister does on the earthly plane, the Holy Spirit accomplishes on the spiritual plane. In other words, those who partake of the bread and wine in faith are also, by the power of the Holy Spirit, being nourished by the body and blood of Christ.’
Elizabeth I presented an Anglican view whereby the prayer of consecration gave the bread and the cup a Real Presence:
‘Twas God the Word that spake it,
He took the Bread and brake it:
And what that Word did make it,
That I believe and take it.’
Therefore, whilst mainline Protestants do not believe in transubstantiation, there is for them a divine, mysterious transformation of the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood, making it more than a symbol.
LikeLike