The Meeting Jesus In The Sacraments Book Free Pdf is a book that will help you learn more about the sacrament of Holy Communion. This book was written by Father Michael Gaitley, who is an American priest and author. Liguori Publications has published this book. This book has been written from the perspective of a Catholic priest and it tells us about what the sacrsacraments are how we can encounter Jesus in them.
This book tells us about how we can encounter Jesus in the sacraments of Confession, Eucharist, Reconciliation and Anointing of the Sick. It tells us about how we can encounter Jesus in the sacrament of Confession when we go for confession, it tells us about how we can encounter Jesus in Eucharist when we receive Holy Communion, it tells us about how we can encounter Jesus in Reconciliation when we go for confession; and it also tells us about how we can encounter Jesus in Anointing of the Sick when our loved ones are sick or dying.
This book is really helpful because it shows us how to encounter Jesus through these sacraments and how these sacraments affect our lives positively.
Meeting Jesus In The Sacraments Book Free Pdf
Meeting Jesus in the Sacraments (Second Edition) helps students recognize the living presence of God’s Incarnate Son in the Seven Sacraments, especially in the Eucharist. Organized around three dimensions of the sacraments—Understanding, Celebrating, and Grace—the text unpacks the origins, rites, and effects of the Seven Sacraments in a spiral design that follows a common structure from chapter to chapter.
The text provides a thorough coverage of core theological content listed in the Secondary Level Protocol of the USCCB curriculum framework for Course V in a pedagogically appealing way. The text is intellectually stimulating but also accessible to students of all types of learning styles and skills who enter this course with varying backgrounds in theology.
Meeting Jesus in the Sacraments (Second Edition) is part of the most complete and encompassing support package to aid teachers in presenting the material for Course V of the USCCB curriculum framework. This includes lesson materials and planning guides in an easy-to-follow Teacher’s Wraparound Edition and the most extensive and helpful collection of online teacher and student support resources available.
This is a textbook primarily for first-semester juniors enrolled in a Catholic high school. It serves as the core textbook for a course Sacraments as Privileged Encounters with Christ as specified by Course V of the USCCB’s doctrinal framework.
Developed in collaboration with experts in theology, catechesis, and pedagogy, Meeting Jesus in the Sacraments (Second Edition) includes a number of new features as part of an innovative design, including:
- Chapter Focus Questions: Each chapter’s main idea is posed as a question to the student to provide a broader context in which new ideas can be integrated and understood.
- Infographics: A wide variety of visual and interactive designs throughout the text help students understand theological concepts in ways they will remember.
- Currents Events: Each chapter opens with a story from the contemporary world that teens can relate to their own lives.
- Educational Photos: Images throughout the text have been carefully chosen not only to illustrate the chapter but for teachers and students to use as educational tools.
- Note-Taking Graphic Organizers: Designed to help students organize, summarize, and sequence the text, various types of organizers were customized for every section of the book.
- Section Assessments: Each section includes pedagogically designed assessment questions with labels that show how the questions serve a variety of different learning styles.
- Online Resources: As always, teachers can access a wide variety of online resources at the Ave Maria Press website, including videos, PowerPoints, handouts, crossword puzzles, reading guides, and tests.
What Is Grace
The gospel message is the good news of God’s grace, so it is important to know what grace is and to constantly seek to get a better view of what grace does in our lives.
Grace is an essential part of God’s character. Grace is closely related to God’s benevolence, love, and mercy. Grace can be variously defined as “God’s favor toward the unworthy” or “God’s benevolence on the undeserving.” In His grace, God is willing to forgive us and bless us abundantly, in spite of the fact that we don’t deserve to be treated so well or dealt with so generously.
To fully understand grace, we need to consider who we were without Christ and who we became with Christ. We were born in sin (Psalm 51:5), and we were guilty of breaking God’s holy laws (Romans 3:9–20, 23; 1 John 1:8–10). We were enemies of God (Romans 5:6, 10; 8:7; Colossians 1:21), deserving of death (Romans 6:23a). We were unrighteous (Romans 3:10) and without means of justifying ourselves (Romans 3:20). Spiritually, we were destitute, blind, unclean, and dead. Our souls were in peril of everlasting punishment.
But then came grace. God extended His favor to us. Grace is what saves us (Ephesians 2:8). Grace is the essence of the gospel (Acts 20:24). Grace gives us victory over sin (James 4:6). Grace gives us “eternal encouragement and good hope” (2 Thessalonians 2:16). Paul repeatedly identified grace as the basis of his calling as an apostle (Romans 15:15; 1 Corinthians 3:10; Ephesians 3:2, 7). Jesus Christ is the embodiment of grace, coupled with truth (John 1:14).
The Bible repeatedly calls grace a “gift” (e.g., Ephesians 4:7). This is an important analogy because it teaches us some key things about grace:
First, anyone who has ever received a gift understands that a gift is much different from a loan, which requires repayment or return by the recipient. The fact that grace is a gift means that nothing is owed in return.
Second, there is no cost to the person who receives a gift. A gift is free to the recipient, although it is not free to the giver, who bears the expense. The gift of salvation costs us sinners nothing. But the price of such an extravagant gift came at a great cost for our Lord Jesus, who died in our place.
Third, once a gift has been given, ownership of the gift has transferred and it is now ours to keep. There is permanence in a gift that does not exist with loans or advances. When a gift changes hands, the giver permanently relinquishes all rights to renege or take back the gift in the future. God’s grace is ours forever.
Fourth, in the giving of a gift, the giver voluntarily forfeits something he owns, willingly losing what belongs to him so that the recipient will profit from it. The giver becomes poorer so the recipient can become richer. This generous and voluntary exchange from the giver to the recipient is visible in 2 Corinthians 8:9: “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you, through his poverty, might become rich.”
Finally, the Bible teaches that grace is completely unmerited. The gift and the act of giving have nothing at all to do with our merit or innate quality (Romans 4:4; 11:5–6; 2 Timothy 1:9–10). In fact, the Bible says quite clearly that we don’t deserve God’s salvation. Romans 5:8–10 says, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. . . . While we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.”
Grace does not stop once we are saved; God is gracious to us for the rest of our lives, working within and upon us. The Bible encourages us with many additional benefits that grace secures for every believer:
• Grace justifies us before a holy God (Romans 3:24; Ephesians 1:6; Titus 3:7).
• Grace provides us access to God to communicate and fellowship with Him (Ephesians 1:6; Hebrews 4:16).
• Grace wins for us a new relationship of intimacy with God (Exodus 33:17).
• Grace disciplines and trains us to live in a way that honors God (Titus 2:11–14; 2 Corinthians 8:7).
• Grace grants us immeasurable spiritual riches (Proverbs 10:22; Ephesians 2:7).
• Grace helps us in our every need (Hebrews 4:16).
• Grace is the reason behind our every deliverance (Psalm 44:3–8; Hebrews 4:16).
• Grace preserves us and comforts, encourages, and strengthens us (2 Corinthians 13:14; 2 Thessalonians 2:16–17; 2 Timothy 2:1).
Grace is actively and continually working in the lives of God’s people. Paul credited the success of his ministry not to his own substantial labors but to “the grace of God that was with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). Grace is the ongoing, benevolent act of God working in us, without which we can do nothing (John 15:5). Grace is greater than our sin (Romans 5:20), more abundant than we expect (1 Timothy 1:14), and too wonderful for words (2 Corinthians 9:15).
As the recipients of God’s grace, Christians are to be gracious to others. Grace is given to us to serve others and to exercise our spiritual gifts for the building up of the church (Romans 12:6; Ephesians 3:2, 7; 4:7; 1 Peter 4:10).
What Are Eastern Catholic Churches
The Eastern Catholic Churches or Oriental Catholic Churches, also called the Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches, Eastern Rite Catholicism, or simply the Eastern Churches,[a] are 23 Eastern Christian autonomous (sui iuris) particular churches of the Catholic Church, in full communion with the Pope in Rome. Although they are distinct theologically, liturgically, and historically from the Latin Church, they are all in full communion with it and with each other. Eastern Catholics are a distinct minority within the Catholic Church; of the 1.3 billion Catholics in communion with the Pope, approximately 18 million are members of the eastern churches.
The majority of the Eastern Catholic Churches are groups that, at different points in the past, used to belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox churches, or the historic Church of the East; these churches had various schisms with the Catholic Church. The Eastern Catholics churches are communities of Eastern Christians that either returned to communion with the Pope, or, in some cases, had never broken communion. The Pope’s recognition of Eastern Catholics who returned to communion has been a point of controversy in ecumenical relations with the Eastern Orthodox and other churches.
The five historic liturgical traditions of eastern Christianity, comprising the Alexandrian Rite, the Armenian Rite, the Byzantine Rite, the East Syriac Rite, and the West Syriac Rite, are all represented in one or more of the Eastern Catholic Churches.[2] Consequently, the Catholic Church consists of six liturgical rites, the eastern rites, along with the liturgical rites of the Latin Church. On occasion, this leads to a conflation of the liturgical word “rite” and the institutional word “church.”. [3] Although there are some theological differences between the Eastern Catholic Churches and other eastern churches outside of the pope’s communion, some Eastern Catholic jurisdictions admit members of the latter to the Eucharist and other sacraments in accordance with applicable Eastern Catholic canon law. [b]
Full communion with the Bishop of Rome constitutes mutual sacramental sharing between the Eastern Catholic Church and the Latin Church, including Eucharistic intercommunion and recognition of papal supremacy. Provisions within the 1983 Latin canon law and the 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches govern the relationship between the Eastern and Latin Churches. Historically, pressure to conform to the norms of Western Christianity practiced by the majority Latin Church led to a degree of encroachment (Latinization) on some of the Eastern Catholic traditions. The Second Vatican Council document, Orientalium Ecclesiarum, built on previous reforms to reaffirm the right of Eastern Catholics to maintain their distinct liturgical practices, which reflect ancient theological and spiritual practices that developed within Eastern Christianity.[5]
The Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, promulgated in 1990, was the first codified body of canon law governing the Eastern Catholic Churches collectively, superseding a series of ad hoc papal documents issued in the late 20th century on the matter [6], although each church also has its own internal canons and laws on top of this. Members of Eastern Catholic churches are obliged to follow the norms of their particular church regarding the celebration of church feasts, marriage, and other customs.
Notable distinct norms include many Eastern Catholic Churches regularly allowing the ordination of married men to the priesthood (although not as bishops to the episcopacy), in contrast to the stricter clerical celibacy of Latin Church. Additionally, Eastern Catholics who seek marriage are obliged by Canon Law to have the union blessed by a priest, even when the marriage itself takes place at a Latin Church parish. The Latin Church, in contrast, allows both deacons and priests to witness a couple’s marriage vows on behalf of the Catholic Church. Both Latin and Eastern Catholics may, however, freely attend a Catholic liturgy celebrated in any rite.