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The Power of Prayer

 

We all know people who struggle with their health - some at the end of their lives,

others throughout their lives battle pain or decreasing mobility.

To be close to individuals saddled with illness is to understand the desperation

that often surrounds the hope of a cure or a relief from pain, as well as the

strengths the sick sometimes acquire.

 

Nancy Lusignan Schultz has plucked such a story out of the past, placed it in

a historical context, and given the reader much to ponder in her latest book,

Mrs. Mattingly’s Miracle.

 

At the heart of Mrs. Mattingly’s Miracle: The Prince, The Widow, and

The Cure That Shocked Washington City, published this spring by Yale University

Press, is Mary Carbery Mattingly, sister of Thomas Carbery, mayor of

Washington DC.

In March 1824, racked by breast cancer for 7 years, Mattingly’s body was a

stinking mass of sores and pain and she was close to death when local priests

and friends launched a plan to save her life.

 

Inspired by reports of his healing powers, they had written Prince Hohenlohe,

a German nobleman and priest, who prescribed a precise plan involving nine

days of novenas and a Mass in Washington timed with a Mass in Germany.

 

On March 9, 1824, when the Eucharist was brought from the Mass in DC to

Mrs. Mattingly’s bedside, by all accounts she ate the wafer and within minutes

was up and about and putting on her stockings

all signs of disease vanished, the stench of sickness now replaced by the sweet

“odor of sanctity.”

Within days of her cure, thousands of people flocked to Mary Mattingly’s door.

 

What followed had little to do with the woman Mrs. Mary Mattingly and everything

to do with the power that is associated with controlling such a story, and with

how nascent Catholicism developed in a still new country and how that

Catholicism was received by the status quo Protestant culture. 

And like most stories set in the antebellum south, slavery, race, and gender also

played major and surprising roles.

 

Schultz, who lives in Swampscott with her husband and two sons, is the

chairperson of the English Department and professor of English at

Salem State  University, where she has taught for 23 years.

 

She begins each chapter with a ghost story placed in the time and place of the

narrative, and Schultz never loses sight of the woman at the center of the

controversy. In the years that followed her healing Mattingly, a devout woman

before her cure, yearned for the quiet life of a nun, but more valuable to the

church as a laywoman, she was never granted permission,

ending her days 31 years after her miraculous cure on her brother’s estate,

which is now the grounds of Walter Reed Hospital.

 

While we may never know exactly what happened on that March evening in 1824,

Schultz would argue that what questions we ask and what we are willing to

believe is a fascinating examination as well.

 

Engrossing and written in an easy, accessible style, the book will appeal to those

who love American history, or have an interest in faith healing,

the Catholic Church, and issues of race and gender in the antebellum south.

Mrs. Mattingly’s Miracle can be found at the bookstore of the

House of the Seven Gables in Salem, and on Amazon.

For more information on this and Schultz’s other books, visit: http://www.mrsmattinglysmiracle.com/

 

The latest book by Swampscott author Nancy Lusignan Schultz investigates a nineteenth century faith healing.

 

http://swampscott.patch.com/ar...he-power-of-prayer-2

 

Invictus

Original Post

Replies sorted oldest to newest

Originally Posted by House of David:
Invic, Your post reflects why I'm catholic. Eucharist ! <3

-------------------------------------

I'm sure the forum people here have read - John 6: 41-72

 

So, for the "just readers" the reason for the Eucharist.

 

Why was it so important to Jesus to teach this massage, knowing he was going

to lose many followers from that day forward to our present day.

Jesus wasn't joking when he revealed this gift to us.

The gift of his presents for a time when he was no longer on earth.

This isn't symbolic, or he wouldn't have been that insistent about it.

If symbolic, he would've made that clear.

 

[41] The Jews therefore murmured at him, because he had said:

I am the living bread which came down from heaven. [42] And they said:

Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?

How then saith he, I came down from heaven?

[43] Jesus therefore answered, and said to them: Murmur not among yourselves.

[44] No man can come to me, except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him;

and I will raise him up in the last day. [45] It is written in the prophets:

And they shall all be taught of God. Every one that hath heard of the Father,

and hath learned, cometh to me.

 

[44] "Draw him"... Not by compulsion, nor by laying the free will under any

necessity, but by the strong and sweet motions of his heavenly grace.

 

[46] Not that any man hath seen the Father; but he who is of God, he hath

seen the Father. [47] Amen, amen I say unto you: He that believeth in me,

hath everlasting life. [48] I am the bread of life. [49] Your fathers did eat

manna in the desert, and are dead. [50]This is the bread which cometh

down from heaven; that if any man eat of it, he may not die.

 

[51] I am the living bread which came down from heaven. [52] If any man eat

of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh,

for the life of the world. [53] The Jews therefore strove among themselves,

saying: How can this man give us his flesh to eat? [54] Then Jesus said to them:

Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man,

and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. [55]He that eateth my flesh,

and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day.

 

[54]"Eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood"... To receive the body

and blood of Christ, is a divine precept, insinuated in this text; which the faithful

fulfil, though they receive but in one kind; because in one kind they receive both

body and blood, which cannot be separated from each other. Hence, life eternal

is here promised to the worthy receiving, though but in one kind. Ver. 52. If any

man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give,

is my flesh for the life of the world. Ver. 58. He that eateth me, the same also

shall live by me. Ver. 59. He that eateth this bread, shall live for ever.

 

[56] For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed.

[57] He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him.

[58] As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father;

so he that eateth me,the same also shall live by me.

[59] This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not as your fathers

did eat manna, and are dead. He that eateth this bread, shall live for ever.

[60]These things he said, teaching in the synagogue, in Capharnaum.

[61] Many therefore of his disciples, hearing it, said: This saying is hard,

and who can hear it? [62] But Jesus, knowing in himself, that his disciples

murmured at this, said to them: Doth this scandalize you?

[63] If then you shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?

[64] It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I

have spoken to you, are spirit and life. [65]But there are some of you that

believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning, who they were that did not

believe, and who he was, that would betray him.

 

[63] "If then you shall see"... Christ by mentioning his ascension, by this

instance of his power and divinity, would confirm the truth of what he had

before asserted; and at the same time correct their gross apprehension of

eating his flesh, and drinking his blood, in a vulgar and carnal manner, by

letting them know he should take his whole body living with him to heaven;

and consequently not suffer it to be as they supposed, divided, mangled,

and consumed upon earth.

[64] "The flesh profiteth nothing"... Dead flesh separated from the spirit, in the

gross manner they supposed they were to eat his flesh, would profit nothing.

Neither doth man's flesh, that is to say, man's natural and carnal apprehension,

(which refuses to be subject to the spirit, and words of Christ,) profit any thing.

But it would be the height of blasphemy, to say the living flesh of Christ (which

we receive in the blessed sacrament, with his spirit, that is, with his soul and

divinity) profiteth nothing. For if Christ's flesh had profited us nothing, he would

 never have taken flesh for us, nor died in the flesh for us.

[64]"Are spirit and life"... By proposing to you a heavenly sacrament, in which

you shall receive, in a wonderful manner, spirit, grace, and life,

in its very fountain.

 

[66] And he said: Therefore did I say to you, that no man can come to me,

unless it be given him by my Father.

[67] After this many of his disciples went back; and walked no more with him.

 [68] Then Jesus said to the twelve:Will you also go away?

 [69] And Simon Peter answered him: Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the

 words of eternal life. [70]And we have believed and have known, that thou art

the Christ, the Son of God.

[71] Jesus answered them: Have not I chosen you twelve;

and one of you is a devil?

[72] Now he meant Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon: for this same was about

 to betray him, whereas he was one of the twelve.

 

.

 

Originally Posted by Bill Gray:

Something to consider. Let's say that the wine and unleavened bread did turn into the blood and flesh of Jesus Christ every time a priest prayed over them -- and then, the millions and millions of gullible Roman Catholics ate his body and drank his blood. Do you realize that, over the 1700 or so years the Roman Catholic church has been in existence -- how many tons of flesh and how many tanks of blood this would require? I don't think there would be a warehouse big enough to hold all that flesh -- nor a tanker large enough to hold all that blood.

And, keep in mind that we are talking about Jesus Christ's human body -- maybe 5'8" tall, possibly 150 to 180 pounds. How do we get all those millions of tons of human flesh and all those millions of gallons of human blood -- from such a human size body?

================================================================

 

Billie----------I'm still absolutely amazed at the stupidity of your above thinking.

If thats all the faith you have in the power of God, then I can understand your

complete lack of reverence, your utter disrespect for Jesus and the things

he taught us. You have no respect for Jesus, the family of God or what Jesus

planned for us before he left.

Until you rid yourself of the overwhelming hate, you'll be blind to the truth as

God has shown it. The transubstantiation is beyond your pay grade, too bad.

 

The Catholic church is Two thousand years old, not 1700 as you would

want people to believe, All the bogus wiki--google or whatever can't

change the true history of the church.

Jesus didn't die on the cross to have his church start 300 yrs. later.

 

Iv

 

 

 

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