After the death of Adam, sin reigned.  Between Noah and Moses it proliferated.  God gave Moses the law, but the law only showed man that man was bad because he continued to break the law.  God’s attempt at justifying us by the law failed because no one was righteous except Abraham.  Humans could not shed this badness because sin still reigned with the law.  Since the death of Christ, we are no longer justified by the law of the prophets but by the obedience of Christ.  We were once slaves to sin, because the law was given to be broken; now we are justified by the grace that God bestows through faith in Christ.  Now we must become slaves of doing right, not sin.  With God’s grace of the Holy Spirit, we can do right all the time and the reward for doing right is sanctification and eternal life.  We must now live in the Spirit of Christ, not the letter of the law. Sin dished out by the evil one is at war within us against the Spirit of God within us by faith.  Your natural self lives in this earthly existence with worldly pursuits but your spiritual self lives in heaven with the protection of the Holy Spirit issued by God and Christ.  Who do you let control your life, thoughts and actions: the Spirit of God that wants to come in and invade your soul or the evil gained from original sin, a sin that you perpetuate or continue?  If you live and think like nature with these earthly desires, you will continue a life of death and destruction; live with the Spirit of Christ in control of your natural, animalistic desires and you will live the life God calls you to live.  Nature’s laws are at war with God’s wisdom only because we participate in it and let it fester; spiritual wisdom is a gift and produces peace with God, a peace that sustains you in God’s natural world.  You must live by the power of the Holy Spirit that can reside in you.  That Spirit is a gift from Christ and God.  Nature no longer has a claim on you, only if you let the Holy Spirit in.  One caveat:  if we live in the Spirit of Christ, we must also share in the sufferings He experienced on the cross.    We must overcome our yokes and serve others so they can overcome their yokes. (Yokes: covetness, pride, adultery, love of money, porn, etc.)  Thus we wait in hope of salvation battling against ourselves and the pursuits of the animalistic, natural world in which we currently live.  This salvation is now offered to all Gentiles, not just the Jews, God’s elect.

When Jesus Christ appeared on earth, God was present in human form.  Emmanuel literally means “God with us.”  Let’s look at the three natures of God:  Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The Greeks and Romans attempted to define God in three natures because they regarded a son as an extension of his father.  But that definition may create confusion.  Another way to define God would be to compare Him to the United States government.  The U.S. government is divided into three branches, the executive, the legislative and the judicial.  But the United States does not have three forms of government, but one single government in three branches.  God is not three distinct persons.  What God did 2000 years ago was send a part of himself into the world at the conception of Mary.  He grew himself in her womb into human form.  God did this through the power of the Holy Spirit, which is also part of God.  The Holy Spirit is the soul of God the Father and God the Son.  And the Trinity existed from the beginning of time.  The three forms of God that emerged 2000 years ago all came from a single God who existed from eternity.  The three forms are all one and the same God.

Who, then, do Catholics receive at Mass?  They receive God.  And how do they receive God?  In the form of the Son.  And how is bread and wine transformed into God?  Through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Just as God created himself by his spoken word with the aid of the Spirit to fashion Christ in the womb of Mary, so a priest is given authority from God to call down the Holy Spirit to change ordinary, unleavened bread and ordinary wine into the body and blood of Christ.  This happens with the prayer of the Epiklesis:  "thou, the God who lacks nothing, being pleased with our Offerings for the honour of Christ, and sending down Thy Holy Spirit on this sacrifice, the witness of the Passion of the Lord Jesus, to manifest (opos apophene) this bread as the Body of Christ and this chalice as the Blood of Christ..." Transubstantiation is a wonderful gift from God to mankind. The Holy Spirit literally transforms bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.  Do not receive this gift without due consideration of its origin.  A casual participation in Mass is worthless to you and God.  This transubstantiation only becomes complete when the recipient believes just as the priest believes.  Participate with faith, hope and charity in this mystery God has offered us.