Category Archives: Immortality Medicine

VII. The Eucharist Pledge of the Glory to Come

1402 In an ancient prayer the Church acclaims the mystery of the Eucharist: O sacred banquet in which Christ is received as food, the memory of his Passion is renewed, the soul is filled with grace and a pledge of the life to come is given to us. If the Eucharist is the memorial of the Passover of the Lord Jesus, if by our communion at the altar we are filled with every heavenly blessing and grace,[1]then the Eucharist is also an anticipation of the heavenly glory.

1403 At the Last Supper the Lord himself directed his disciples attention toward the fulfillment of the Passover in the kingdom of God: I tell you I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Fathers kingdom.[2]Whenever the Church celebrates the Eucharist she remembers this promise and turns her gaze to him who is to come. In her prayer she calls for his coming:Marana tha!Come, Lord Jesus![3]May your grace come and this world pass away![4]

1404 The Church knows that the Lord comes even now in his Eucharist and that he is there in our midst. However, his presence is veiled. Therefore we celebrate the Eucharist awaiting the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ,[5]asking to share in your glory when every tear will be wiped away. On that day we shall see you, our God, as you are. We shall become like you and praise you for ever through Christ our Lord.[6]

1405 There is no surer pledge or clearer sign of this great hope in the new heavens and new earth in which righteousness dwells,[7]than the Eucharist. Every time this mystery is celebrated, the work of our redemption is carried on and we break the one bread that provides the medicine of immortality, the antidote for death, and the food that makes us live for ever in Jesus Christ.[8]

To read more from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, clickhere.

[1] Roman Missal, EP I (Roman Canon) 96: Supplices te rogamus

[2] Mt 26:29; cf. Lk 22:18; Mk 14:25

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The Medicine of Immortality My Year Of Faith

A prominent Canadian politician was recently alleged to have received a Communion wafer at a Catholic mass, put it into his pocket, and returned to his pew, to the horror of parishioners and media alike. Presumably he was a Calvinist, because the liturgical churches (Eastern Orthodox, Armenians, Ethiopian Orthodox, Episcopalians, Lutheran, and Roman Catholics) hold the bread and wine of the Eucharist in great reverence and maintain strict regulations as to how Communion elements are to be treated and to whom they may be distributed, if only to prevent disrespectful handling. These regulations are not modern inventions nor did they originate with superstitious monks in the Dark Ages. The present article looks at Christian regard for the Eucharist before AD 250 to show how the earliest believers shared the same practices as liturgical denominations today. The ancient writings are the common heritage of all Christians because they date from before the division into present-day denominations, even before the division separating Armenians and Ethiopians from the rest of Christendom in AD 451.

In the earliest Christian centuries, extremely respectful treatment was shown toward the bread and wine, which many denominations regard as the body and blood of Christ. The reason for this reverence appears in Justin, a Christian writer in the mid-second century who was later martyred for the Faith:

not as common bread and common drink do we receive these. . .we have been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.

Half a century earlier another martyr, Bishop Ignatius of Antioch, described the Eucharist as the medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying but which causes that we should live forever in Jesus Christ. This was not the better-known Ignatius Loyola but his namesake fifteen centuries earlier, who legend has it was the little child whom Jesus said we must be like in order to see the kingdom of heaven.

In AD 217 Bishop Hippolytus in central Italy set out existing church practice as to how clergy were to continue to conduct worship services. He also intended it as a guide for laity to detect and complain when clergy departed from the liturgical heritage passed down from the time of the apostles. He wrote that the consecrated elements are not to be allowed to fall to the floor or be lost or treated carelessly; this is corroborated in the same era in Tunisia by the church father Tertullian. Nor were church mice and other animals permitted to consume them. The bread and wine were to be consecrated only according to a prescribed rite, which must be in an orderly manner, without unnecessary talking or arguing, and such that Christians preserve their good reputation and their worship practices not be ridiculed by non-Christians. Shortly afterward, Origen wrote that people are not to receive them in haphazard fashion. These, of course, are echoes of the Apostle Paul that church services must be conducted decently and in order (1 Corinthians 14.40).

This same Origen illustrated better than anyone else the great reverence Christians in the AD 240s held the sacramental elements. Unlike Ignatius or Hippolytus, he was not urging his hearers to show respect but was using one existing church practice as the grounds or analogy for other spiritual exercises. Origen was taking the example of the treatment of the Eucharist as an entrenched standard practice on which to build his argument for adopting an additional soul-building activity. Both he and his congregations took high respect for the sacramental elements for granted and as well-established:

You who are accustomed to take part in divine mysteries know, when you receive the body of the Lord, how you protect it with all caution and veneration lest any small part fall from it, lest anything of the consecrated gift be lost. For you believe, and correctly, that you are answerable if anything falls from there by neglect.

Because he traveled much throughout the eastern Mediterranean at the request of local bishops, and once to Rome, his statements probably described universal practice.

Partly because outsiders might not know how to demonstrate proper respect, it was forbidden to give Holy Communion to themas witness the allegations about the Canadian politician. From the earliest times, it was considered sinful to consume the sacrament in any unworthy manner. According to the Apostle Paul, whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord and he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lords body. (1 Corinthians 11. 27, 29). This thought was repeated almost two centuries later by the church father Origen when he warned that Christians who partake unworthily will receive the Lords judgment, again as a proposition accepted as a given by all his hearers.

The Didache was a church manual and guide to the Christian life written in the late first century, when some apostles were still living. It limited participation in the Eucharist to people who had been baptized, citing Jesus command that we must not give what is holy to the dogs. Half a century or more later, Justin similarly confined Communion to people who believe Christian doctrine, had been baptized, and live as Christ had taught. Another sixty years later Hippolytus church manual would also admit to the Eucharist only people that had received Christian baptism. One of his charges against the leadership of a rival denomination within Christianity was that they accepted into membership people rejected by other sects and indiscriminately gave Communion to everybody.

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The Medicine of Immortality - Spectrum Magazine

Another year, another sack of books.

This was the autumn that saw the long-anticipated arrival of Brian ODriscolls autobiography, as well as another volume in Roy Keanes life story.

Big hitters, but the quality wasnt confined to names that are usually picked out in the bright lights on Broadway.

If your tastes run to the less illuminated sports, then 2014 served you pretty well, too.

The traditional complaint about sports books is that they favour those headline-setters rather than the niche interests, though publishers are fond of pointing out just how popular those big names can be (the first instalment of Keanes autobiography, for instance, was for some time, the biggest-selling book in Ireland. Note the absence of the word sports in that sentence).

Were not book publishers, though, so we had a broader sweep this year. Dont be shy about picking up one or two of the recommendations here when youre on that last-minute blitz through the shops.

Big names or not, you wont regret it.

GAA

Hell for Leather: A Journey Through Hurling in 100 Games

Authors: Ronnie Bellew and Dermot Crowe

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The final chapter in sports books for the festive season

Another year, another sack of books.

This was the autumn that saw the long-anticipated arrival of Brian ODriscolls autobiography, as well as another volume in Roy Keanes life story.

Big hitters, but the quality wasnt confined to names that are usually picked out in the bright lights on Broadway.

If your tastes run to the less illuminated sports, then 2014 served you pretty well, too.

The traditional complaint about sports books is that they favour those headline-setters rather than the niche interests, though publishers are fond of pointing out just how popular those big names can be (the first instalment of Keanes autobiography, for instance, was for some time, the biggest-selling book in Ireland. Note the absence of the word sports in that sentence).

Were not book publishers, though, so we had a broader sweep this year. Dont be shy about picking up one or two of the recommendations here when youre on that last-minute blitz through the shops.

Big names or not, you wont regret it.

GAA

Hell for Leather: A Journey Through Hurling in 100 Games

Authors: Ronnie Bellew and Dermot Crowe

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The final chapter on the festive season

Photo by taviphoto/shutterstock.com

When last I spoke to my teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel, he asked if he could borrow my kittel. He was not at home in New York but here in California and it was before the High Holidays. "You know, he explained "the kittel is part of the tachrichim -- the shrouds in which the dead are clothed for the funeral. You know on Yom Kippur I face my mortality." When, more than on Yom Kippur, must we face our mortality?

One must be alive to one's death. Soren Kierkegaard, the 19th century Danish theologian, would tell the story of an absent minded scholar so abstracted from his own life that he half knew that he existed, until one fine morning he awakened to find himself dead. We dare not be so abstract.

You, I, and ours are living older now and equally important we have it in our hands to prolong longevity. We have the powers to extend our lives and the lives of those we love.

In the Garden of Eden the serpent seduced the human being and whispered "On the day that you eat this fruit your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as gods." We have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge. We have become as gods. And it is revolutionizing our lives. Listen to the radical changes.

The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. But we can give and we can take life. During the services of the first day of Rosh Hashanah, we heard the lament of Hannah the woman angry at her husband, Elkanah, because of her childlessness and embittered toward God because of her barrenness was heard. "I am a woman of sorrowful spirit. I pour out my soul before the Lord. Lord, look upon my plight."

That was Hanna's cry yesterday. Today, doctors and geneticists have become active partners in the creation of human life. Through artificial insemination, sex pre-selection, host mothers, test tube babies, recombinant DNA technology, Hannah need not despair. Cry no more, Hannah! You are given a child. The first successful laboratory fertilization of a human egg by a human sperm -- in vitro fertilization was reported as recently as 1969.

Science has radicalized our idea of ourselves and our prayers. The meaning of liturgy has changed. "How many shall pass away and how many shall be born? Who shall live and who shall die? Who shall be at ease and who shall be afflicted?" Yesterday, the prayer was bothersome to some because it smacked of fatalism. We resented God's decrees. But God has shared His powers with us. More than ever in history we are God's partners.

Who shall live and who shall die is in our hands.

"Who by injection and who by withdrawal of medication? Who by morphine and who by hydration? Who by renal dialysis and who by halting alimentation? Who by omission and who by tubulation?"

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Dying we live [1995]

Ocala, FL (PRWEB) December 13, 2014

In Pallamarys debut novel, The Vampire Preservation Society, determined immortal leaders representing the four races of man come together to help cherished members of their own race fight an unknown enemy threatening their very existence.

Wealthy art dealer Lucien LaPierre is safely ensconced in his castle home, Nightshade Manor, nestled amidst the rocks and coastline of New England. The townspeople are unaware that their art expert actually studied and painted alongside Monet and other great artists centuries ago.

Savanna Martin, a highly respected architect and graphic designer, nurtured her love of design in Africa when she helped the women and children of her village hide from traders hunting human prey to sell as slaves. Her ability to construct shelters and hiding places with leaves and branches served her years later as a leader in the Underground Railroad in the United States.

Wolf Who Waits, proud Native American medicine man and shaman, mingles amongst mortals working as a consultant for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. His immortality enables him to return his brethrens sacred remains to their proper resting places and because he lied with them centuries ago, he knows how to honor his ancestors in their respective Native traditions.

Best-selling author Jade Lee, leader of the Asian sector, honed her writing skills during the California Gold Rush when she immigrated to San Francisco with her parents to eke out a living. Her mystery novels, a source of entertainment to mortals, doubles as how-to guides for readers of the immortal persuasion.

Together the group known as The Vampire Preservation Society begins a quest and their shared love for family and each other lead them on a quest to find a solution to the problem menacing their community.

Colleen Pallamary is also the author of Scammunition: How To Protect Yourself From Con Artists: A Guide For Baby Boomers And Beyond. She frequently gives scam prevention presentations and has a Scam of the Month feature on her popular website.The Vampire Preservation Society is her first novel.

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The Vampire Preservation Society Stands Out From The Pack As A Distinctive Narrative Of Brotherhood, Compassion, And ...

Features Published 8 hours ago By Amanda Silberling

What better way to escape reading days(and reality)than by randomly choosing aselected stack in VP and mining for its gems? While you tried to cram an entire semester of Math 104 into an afternoon, we took a leisurely stroll down the R 644 S15 N3 RA 1025 L43 A3 stack. We hope you've gotten throughour last reading list, but in case you haven't, we'velisted call numbers so that youcan join uson this journey through greatliterature.

Bottoms Up!: A Pathologists Essays on Medicine and the Humanities (call no. R 702 024): The end of finals got us like...

Wine in Samskrita Literature (call no. R 605 D45): Were going to assume that Bottoms Up! is a close cousin of Wine in Samskrita Literature...and like any stressed college student, we'll be feverishly studying both.

Napoleons Glands (call no. R 702 K37): Everything you could ever possibly want to know about Napoleons Endocrine System! What a true gem!

Physician Humor Thyself: An Analysis of Doctor Jokes (call no. R 705 P73): A perfect holiday gift for that nurse at SHS who took a week to get you an appointment while you had mono.

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VP Gems: Medicine For Finals

QUEZON CITY (MindaNews/30 Nov) There is no denying that modern man has become very sophisticated as he tries to reach the pinnacle of securing and sustaining life with his fervent desire to attain near immortality status or experience. Compared to other species, man has mastered his condition and the environment he lives in as he is able to break from state of nature making him an almost independent, self-preserving being.

Whereas animals and other creatures have not left their primitive stage so much so that there is obviously no development let alone sophistication and innovation in their existence; if you look at trends why many animals become endangered, it is because they have not persisted to live with what Charles Darwin refers to as survival of the fittest. They thus fail to fit, to live with the demand of an evolving and increasingly constricted global ecosystem. It is not so with man; he is resolute in looking for ways to secure and sustain life.

This is the frame of my reflections after visiting a number of hospitals recently where I was diagnosed, according to the doctor, with nerve impingement at my back. After undergoing Electromyography or EMG and other tests, doctors recommended me to have Magnetic Resonance Imaging or MRI, to undergo physical therapy, and to wear a corset, which is an iron brace to support the lower portion of my back.

Due to my rather unease on medical cost and physical encumbrances to wear a corset as if my condition is so serious to merit that; and as a believer on Tausug hilot that I previously learned from my late grandfather; given, too, my being discriminatingly rebellious on anything conventional, my wife and I thought of exploring alternative ways to relieve my nerve impairment.

Perhaps, our advantage these days is that there is an array of medical institutions and health facilities with varied therapeutic approaches easily accessible ranging from those available in conventional hospitals to traditional hilot, Chinese medicine, herbal medicine, food supplements including physical therapy and techniques like reflexology. Easy access to information allows us to know their efficacy as we can easily compare each other while providing us varied choices so we can make better decisions.

After trying and experiencing these interventions, I realized up close how far todays marvels in medical and health science and technology have become. It includes my observation on growing trends and increasing consciousness of people in availing highly consumerist package of health and wellbeing techniques and physical treatment that have now reached enormous proportion that we could even hardly cope with its fast pace development.

All of these are, in my view, geared towards securing and prolonging life, while maximizing the optimum potential of ones wellbeing, which is generally accepted and mostly patronized by the haves as their universal notion of good life. Whereas, have-nots and those with aversion on post-modern lifestyle could only relish with their own self-definition of good by appreciating and resorting to what is essentially basic and simpler ways in attending to their health issues.

Yet, a deeper insight has to be advanced given the fact that while the thrust of medical institutions and health related methods are all geared toward securing or prolonging life, on the contrary, we might also have to unravel the question where that dogged desire for maintaining healthy lifestyle and wellbeing is coming from as it is possibly based on prevailing and dominant worldview about life a life that is atomistic and segmented and possibly detached from what Dr. Henry Lindlarh refers to as evocation of Creative intelligence that permeates in all beings.

So that the impression created is that, when we get sick, such an experience is viewed totally negative as we immediately resort to some medical interventions even reflexively without us realizing that sickness or diseases are part of natural order of things with our body having that innate ability to do its self-healing process.

The implications on too much reliance on medical interventions are enormous not only affecting us medically, emotionally, and financially, at times, even creating in us a kind of dependent psychology that our salvation lies in the hands of doctors and medicines, therapists, beauticians, spas, yoga centers, and so on. And for good reasons indeed. The importance of doctors and the marvel in todays medical sciences and health related technology and methods is undeniable.

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CRUCIBLE: Hilot and Wellbeing (1) Julkipli Wadi

Choosing a soundtrack for the operating theatre is not easy. It has to be the kind of music that the nurses and the other doctors go along with, the American surgeon Atul Gawande explains. Country tends to be out, and most hip-hop, too. He usually goes for indie. A journalist once told him that his problem was that he was too old for his iPod (hes 49), which amused him. Gawande, sharply suited and drinking orange juice in aLondon caf, lists his current surgery favourites: Alt J, the National and Weezer.

His musical taste is just one way in which Gawande defies convention as a surgeon. He is also a bestselling author who has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1998, and hell be giving this years Reith Lectures. He has a knack for identifying grand themes how checklists can save millions of lives lost through medical mistakes, why some ideas (such as anaesthetic) catch on quickly and others (such as antiseptic) dont, what hospitals can learn from the fast-food industry and exploring these ideas through the stories of the patients he has treated. His writing is often moving sometimes in a stomach-churning way: his account of the woman with anunstoppable itch who scratched all the way through to her brain is, perhaps regrettably, unforgettable.

Gawandes latest book, Being Mortal, explores how the medical profession, and modern society, approach the end of life. What should doctors do when the drugs wont work? Often its easier to push one more treatment an operation, another round of chemo than to acknowledge that people have priorities other than living longer.

This is a book about the good life and even though often sad, it is uplifting, too. We are wrong to assume that in order to be happy you need to be independent and healthy: elderly people dependent on help often report higher levelsof happiness than the rest of us. As we age, we care less about wealth and public recognition, valuing close friends and family more.

Gawande admires those thinking imaginatively about geriatric care: the man who introduced cats, dogs and birds into a nursing home, or the staff who make sure an 85-year-old dementia patient can go out drinking margaritas every Friday. I have nothing against the tech entrepreneur who wants to discover the immortality pill, he says, butadds that it is wrong thatwe dont think there canbe innovation in what happens in the last five years of your life that can make it incredibly better.

The tenderest passages are those in which Gawande writes about his fathers death from cancer. Atmaram Gawande died before the book was published, but Atuls research helped him support his father better. Both were surgeons, but initially they couldnt even wrap [their] minds around how to talk about the tumour that was advancing.

For Atmaram Gawande, medicine was a path out of poverty. He grew up in India and decided to become a doctor although hed never met one after his mother died of malaria. He met Gawandes mother in the US and settled in rural Ohio, where Atul grew up. Im the son of two Indian immigrant physicians. Which means you practically have You are going to be a doctor stamped on your head at birth, Gawande jokes. He initially resisted this pressure: starting a rock band, winning a Rhodes scholarship to study philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford, working in the Clinton administration and for Al Gores presidential campaign. But then he realised he was good at certain things in medicine, better than I was as a philosopher. He seems pretty successful at both.

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What should doctors do when the drugs wont work? Often its easier to push one more treatment than to acknowledge ...

Redp-Belted Polypore

image credit: Daniel Chauvin

Anyone acquainted with J.R.R. Tolkiens Lord of the Rings knows that Hobbits are especially fond of mushrooms. In the bookThe Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo had a run-in with Farmer Maggot after trespassing on his mushroom-abundant land as a child. Chased away by his hounds all the way to Bucklebury Ferry, Frodo quivers at the thought of stepping foot on old Maggots land again. Long since over his grudge, Farmer Maggot gifts the hobbits with an ample supply of his famous mushrooms for their journey.

Anyone who has experienced the mushroom madness has probably ventured forth beyond the pale of borders and fences to hunt the meaty mushrooms, which always seems to entail some kind of adventure or occasionally, misadventure.

Mushroom hunting gets us out of our comfort zone, when the gnarly wet weather hits full-tilt in the fall, and opens us toward exploring our home rain forests and streambeds in anticipation of bounty!

A pan of butter fried wild mushrooms is hard for the inner-Hobbit to resist. Edible mushrooms should always be cooked to make them digestible, palatable and safe. They have thick cell walls that our digestive systems cannot easily break down in raw form. Cooking also releases their beneficial nutrients and destroys potentially harmful bacteria or toxic components that may be lurking in the mushroom or from the forest floor. Pan-frying poisonous mushrooms does not make them any more palatable and should be left well-alone.

Imagine where human culture would be without the fungi kingdom, which includes the yeasts that give us wines, beers and breads, the molds that we craft our cheeses with, and medicines like penicillin. Beyond edibility, we have some of the most potent forms of natural, wild medicine available to us in the apothecary of a dying tree. tzi the Iceman, Europes oldest preserved mummy, was found with twospecies of bracket or Polypore mushroomsstrung together with leather. One of them was a tinder fungus which was part of a sophisticated fire making kit. The other was a birch fungus which is known for its antibacterial properties. One especially powerful Polypore, the Reishi or Ganoderma Lucidum, known as Lingzhiin Asian medicine is considered the King of Herbs. It also goes by the praiseworthy names ofMushroom of Immortality and Elixir of Life. The author of an old 1596 Taoist herbal medicine book claimed that itpositively affects the life-energy, orQiof the heart, repairing the chest area and benefiting those with a knotted and tight chest. Taken over a long period of time, agility of the body will not cease, and the years are lengthened to those of the Immortal Fairies.

Some of our own local medicinal polypores include our reishi, Ganoderma oregonense, Turkey Tails, Artist Conks and Red-Belted Polypores. These bracket funguses are said to be anti-bacterial, anti-

A few species of the polypores are edible, such as the meaty sounding Hen of the Woods, Sheep Polypore, andChicken of the Woods, which grows in stacks of luminescent orange shelves that gather droplets of dew that taste like lemon juice. Dyers Polypore has been used to dye wool and other fabrics for centuries, in a wide range of rich colours.

One strange fact is that fungi are more closely related to us and other species of the animal kingdom than plants. At some point in our collective evolutionary history, plants split from the path before fungi did. This can be seen in the chitin, the fibrous substance that composes the cell walls of fungi, and the exoskeletons of anthropods.

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Part 2: Mushrooms for health and wealth