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The
Holy Eucharist
"For I received from the Lord that
which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in
which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks [Gr.
eucharistesas], He broke it and said, 'Take, eat; this is My body which
is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.' In the same manner He
also took the cup after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in
My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me'" (1
Cor. 11:23-25).
With these words - quoting the same
words of Christ in Luke 22:19, 20 - St. Paul
instructs the Corinthians concerning the Eucharist, the giving of thanks.
Some two thousand years after Jesus gave Himself "for the life of the
world" (John 6:51), there are in Christendom
at least three different interpretations of His words.
How
do we view the Eucharist?
For the first thousand years of
Christian history, when the Church was visibly one and undivided, the holy
gifts of the Body and Blood of Christ were received as just that: His Body
and Blood. The Church confessed this was a mystery: The bread is truly
His Body, and that which is in the cup is truly His Blood, but one cannot
say how they become so.
The eleventh and twelfth centuries
brought on the scholastic era, the Age of Reason in the West. The Roman
Church, which had become separated from the Orthodox Church in A.D. 1054,
was pressed by the rationalists to define how the transformation takes
place. They answered with the word transubstantiation, meaning a change
of substance. The elements are no longer bread and wine; they are physically
changed into flesh and blood. The sacrament, which only faith can comprehend,
was subjected to a philosophical definition. This second view of the Eucharist
was unknown to the ancient Church.
Not surprisingly, one of the points
of disagreement between Rome and the sixteenth-century reformers was the
issue of transubstantiation. Unable to accept this explanation of the sacrament,
the radical reformers, who were rationalists themselves, took up the opposite
point of view: the gifts are nothing but bread and wine, period. They only
represent Christ's Body and Blood; they have no spiritual reality. This
third, symbol-only view helps explain the infrequency with which some Protestants
partake of the Eucharist.
The
Scriptures and the Eucharist
What do the Scriptures teach
concerning the Eucharist?
1.
Jesus said: "This is My body ... this is My blood"
(Luke 22:19, 20). There is never a statement
that these gifts merely symbolise His Body and Blood. Critics have charged
that Jesus also said of Himself, "I am the door" (John
10:7), and He certainly is not a seven-foot wooden plank. The flaw
in that argument is obvious: at no time has the Church ever believed He
was a literal door. But she has always believed the consecrated gifts of
bread and wine are truly His Body and Blood.
2.
In the New Testament, those who received Christ's Body and Blood unworthily
are said to bring condemnation upon themselves. "For this reason many
are weak and sick among you, and many sleep" (literally, "are dead";
1 Cor. 11:30). A mere symbol, a quarterly
reminder, could hardly have the power to cause sickness and death!
3.
Historically, from the New Testament days on, the central act of worship,
the new apex of spiritual sacrifice, took place "on the first day of
the week, when the disciples came together to break bread" (Acts
20:7). The Eucharist has always been that supreme act of thanksgiving
and praise to God in His Church.
from The
Orthodox Study Bible, p392
Copyright
© 1993 by St. Athanasius Orthodox Academy, Nelson ISBN 0-8407-8391-4
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Very Rev. Fr. George Konyev. Site designed and maintained by Fr. George
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