Being a People of the Eucharist
By the Reverend Brian Durham
The Eucharist: in the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it is the “source and summit” of the Christian Life. The question is- why? What makes the Eucharist more important than Baptism, more important than Reconciliation, or even Confirmation? What marks the Eucharist as the Sacramental fountain from which the graces of the whole Christian life flows? Let us examine the nature of the Eucharist. There are very, very many aspects of what the Eucharist is. Some stress that it is a simply a memorial service to commemorate Christ’s death with appropriate signs. Others believe it is, in some way, a symbol and means of unity in a Christian community, as a sign of Christ’s covenant with His Church. Others believe it is a partaking of the Divine Nature by consuming elements of bread and wine made holy, consecrated, by the power of the Holy Spirit acting through the ministry of the Church. Others believe it is a re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross, as well as His resurrection and ascension. The truth of the matter is, that it is all those things, and more.
1. Firstly, I would like to focus on the most common aspect stressed, that of memorial meal. This element is heavily stressed in some churches due to the command of Christ to “Do this in remembrance of me.” In this command, churches see it as a commandment of a perpetual memorial of the death and resurrection of Christ, the salvation of the world from the slavery of sin and death, the way the Passover was a continual remembrance of the salvation of the Hebrews from the slavery of the Egyptians. The question is, what does it mean to ‘remember’ something? Does it mean to simply bring something that happened in the past to one’s mind for a period of time, in order to remember the things learned from that event?
In a Christian context, yes and no. To ‘remember’, in the Greek sense of the term, was Anamnesis. This word had a considerably more nuanced meaning than the simple Latin commemorationem in the Vulgate, or “remember” in the English Bible. It meant to make present the events of the past. Make present before whom? Man or God? God cannot possibly forget something, yet the Scriptures often contain prayers that ask God to remember his mercy or his kindness. These are not simply statements asking Him to call to mind his mercy and kindness, as if He has a defective sense of memory and needs to be reminded. These are asking Him to make present his kindness and mercy to His people as he has shown in the past, here in the present. When Christ commanded his disciples to “Do this is remembrance of me”, he was asking them to recall the events of His precious death and resurrection, and to make them present in a mystical way, in order that the faithful might receive the merits, graces and benefits thereof, and take to heart the lessons of those events. This aspect of the Eucharist is stressed by the Anamnesis portion of the Eucharistic Prayer common to those of the Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions, in which the priest says in some form or another, “Therefore, O Lord and heavenly father, we celebrate the memorial which your son has commanded us to make, remembering his blessed passion, mighty resurrection, and glorious ascension, rendering unto you most hearty thanks, for the innumerable benefits given to us by the same.”
Now what does this mean in the context of being a ‘Eucharistic’ people? If to remember something, in the religious sense, is to make present the events of the past, then our duty as Eucharistic people is clear; we must walk in the footsteps of the Christians gone before us, who may have worshiped in the same church as us, sat in the same pew, read the same bible, and said the same prayers. What I mean by this, is we must make manifest in the present life the strength of virtue and devotion of those who have gone before us. We must not only think about the acts of goodness and charity of the Christians, great and small, whose footsteps we tread in; we must make manifest to the world that same strength, that same holiness, as spurred on by the same Spirit of God that inspired them. We must make a solemn anamnesis of our own in our everyday lives, before God and man, of the graces and virtues bestowed on mankind by God throughout the centuries, by using them for the benefit of mankind. This is what it means to be a Eucharistic people, when speaking of the memorial aspect of the Eucharist.
2. Secondly, I will focus on the aspect of the Eucharist as the fellowship meal of a community bound in a common covenant with God. This view also follows from the Jewish Passover tradition. In the Passover, the sharing of the paschal meal was not only a memorial, but a renewal of the covenant God had made with the Jewish people. The blood of the paschal lamb sprinkled on the doorposts was the seal of this covenant, renewed every Passover with the slaying of the new paschal lamb. In a similar way, the Eucharist is also our new Passover. Christ, our Paschal Lamb, was sacrificed for us on the cross to deliver the whole world from spiritual death, as the slaying of the Passover lamb was to deliver the Hebrews from bodily death. In this also, Christ’s Blood shed on the cross is the blood that sealed the New Covenant with the whole of God’s people, as Christ himself indicates when he says in the Gospels “This is my blood of the New Covenant.” Whenever the Eucharist is celebrated, the Church as a whole, and every individual believer, is renewing the covenant made with Christ with the whole world at the Cross, and each individual at their baptism. This part is most strongly emphasised by the second part of the Institution Narrative, in which Christ says “This is the Cup of my Blood, the Blood of the new and eternal covenant; which will be poured out for you and for many for the remission of sins.”
In this, the true unity of the Church is shown when partaking of the Eucharist. Each member who is baptised has entered into an individual covenant with God as binding as any contract. But when these baptised faithful receive the Eucharist, not only do they renew and make fresh once more their own individual covenants, but they renew the covenant between God and the Church as part of a larger whole. They are all unified perfectly by their participation of the universal Covenant, sealed by the Blood of Christ. The minister or priest renews this Greater covenant in the name of the whole Church when they say the Eucharistic Prayers, and the people renew their own covenants in the partaking of the elements of bread and wine consecrated to God. The many small lights are made one shining beacon in the darkness, the many members are made one Body in Christ, the many branches are grafted onto the True Vine, the hundreds or thousands of glittering fragments of diamond, beautiful but incomplete on their own, are made a perfect, seamless, beautiful whole.
It is this unity which is necessary to be a Eucharistic people; not to share all the same opinions and ideas, but to be united in purpose; to honour God and our neighbours by keeping the covenant we have made with Him and them. As we renew the covenant and covenants we have made, we must keep them as diligently as we can to retain that glorious unity. We must love God, we must love our neighbours, we must worship God and keep holy His day, we must not covet our neighbour’s spouse and possessions, we must not commit adultery, we must not lie, we must not murder, we must not steal, we must honour our parents, and we must not blaspheme God’s name. But also, we must be merciful, we must be poor in spirit, we must be meek, we must hunger and thirst for righteousness, we must be peacemakers, and we must be pure of heart. This is what it means to not only renew the covenant we have made in our baptism as a sign of our unity, but to truly live that unity by keeping the covenant God made to his Church. This is what it means to be a people of the Eucharist.
3. Thirdly, I will focus on the Holy Communion aspect of the Eucharist. This view derives from the words of Paul, saying, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.” Paul said this to address the issue of the Corinthians partaking of the sacrifices offered to the pagan gods, which was considered to be communing with the deity to which said sacrifices were offered. Likewise, Christians who adhere to this view believe that, in some way, they partake of the Body and Blood of Christ in a true, mystical way when they celebrate the Eucharist. There are numerous ways of which this is suggested to be, but I will only cover the most traditional one, the Real Presence. In this view, the faithful receive the Body and Blood of Christ through, with, and in the consecrated elements of bread and wine in an objective way, not merely dependent on the faith of the individual believer. And by receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, they partake of Christ’s divine nature, uniting their body, blood, soul and humanity to Christ’s Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in an intimate, holy, and profound way, that mirrors the mystical union of Christ and His Church. In this, Christ is truly, really and essentially present, first in the consecrated elements, and secondly in the soul of the communicant once they have received Communion. This is most strongly emphasised by the Epiclesis of the Eucharistic Prayer in the Anglican tradition, in which we pray,
“Hear us (0 merciful father) we beseech thee; and with thy holy spirit and word, vouchsafe to bless and sanctify these thy gifts, and creatures of bread and wine, that they may be unto us the body and blood of thy most dearly beloved son Jesus Christ.”
This view is likewise backed by the 6th Chapter of the Gospel of John, in which Christ says in the Greek; O trogo̱n mou ti̱n sarka kai pino̱n mou to aima en emoi menei kago̱ en af̱to, or “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abideth in me and I in him̱.” The interesting thing about this passage is the word choice; to eat flesh and drink blood was a Jewish metaphor for hating, reviling and harming. Almost certainly, the Jews must have been horrified at both the literal implications of eating flesh and drinking blood, and the metaphorical. However, instead of backtracking, Jesus used even more literal imagery to hammer His point home, using the word trogon, which means to munch or gnaw. Needless to say, the idea that Christ meant for his followers to eat his flesh and drink his blood in a mystical, spiritual way, in order that he might dwell in them and unite himself to them in love, is one of the oldest-stressed aspects of the Eucharist.
On a practical level, outside of Church, it is hard to know how to practise this aspect of the Eucharist. But there is a way. To truly live in Communion with Christ, one must bring Christ to everyone they see by acting in imitation of Him. In the words of St. John Chrysostom, “If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the Church door, you will not find him in the Chalice.” Likewise, if we do not act in imitation of Christ, and recognise His divine presence dwelling in all people, tall and short, black and white, young and old, we are not living a Eucharistic life. We must live out the responsibilities of being in union with Christ as well as receiving the benefits thereof of the remission of our sins, for the good of one’s soul. After all, what is the point in wanting to enjoy the holy presence of Christ when kneeling to receive Him from the altar, but not when a homeless man is asking for a loaf of bread? While in both ways we come into the presence of Christ, in only one way do we truly unite ourselves to Him, in His essence and fullness. However, that does not mean we are allowed to neglect the other, as to do so is to fall out of communion with each other, and to receive Christ in the Eucharist when not truly in true communion with our fellow communicants as well is at best, a thoughtless act of ignorance, at worst, a sacrilege of the highest order. To be a true people of the Eucharist, we must remain in communion with God, and with our fellow man.
4. Finally, I will focus on the sacrificial aspect of the Eucharist. This view is strongly connected to the concept of Anamnesis as well. If in the Eucharist, the events of Christ’s death, Resurrection, and ascension are made manifest in the present time, by the consecrated elements upon the altar, then Christ’s once for all sacrifice is made present as well. This does not mean that Christ is being re-sacrified again and again at every Eucharist by the priest or minister, by any means. It means that Christ, present mystically under the consecrated elements of bread and wine, offers Himself to the Father in love as a perpetual oblation for mankind, always pleading His Sacrifice as the perfect atonement for the sins of the past and present through the ministry of the Church, in order that the Church might receive the merits and benefits of that sacrifice. The Passion and Death of Christ, and also his Resurrection, Ascension, and the sending of the Holy Spirit, are made present in the Eucharist, that the merits of those events might be always and at all times accessible to the faithful. To put it in a simpler way, the Cross was the shedding of the saving blood of Christ for the sins of the world, but the Eucharist is the continual sprinkling of that same blood upon the faithful for the remission of their sins. It is the way through which the graces of that sacrifice are applied to ours lives in the here and now, rather than just being an event two-thousand years in the past which no longer literally effects our lives today; a new participation in the old sacrifice.
A good way to put it is that while the Sacrifice of Calvary is the fountain from which all graces spring, the Eucharist is actually refreshing ourselves in the here and now from that same fount of grace. It is the application of those merits and graces to ourselves and the whole Church today. It is a continual participation in the great, once-and-for-all drama of the Cross, standing at its foot, only able to gaze in awe and wonder as the Lamb of God offers Himself as our Passover Lamb to be slain for our sake. In this, we offer ourselves, our praises and thanksgivings to the Father in union with Christ’s offering; we join together with Christ, praying for ourselves, our neighbours and the whole Church as Christ prayed for us upon the Cross; and we prepare to hand our souls over to God at the moment of our deaths, hoping we will rise with Christ on the Last Day. This is shown most strongly in the oblation and intercession of the Eucharistic Prayer, in which the priest or minister sets before the sight of God the consecrated Gifts of the Body and Blood of Christ, as Christ offers himself to the Father, in the words of the Byzantine Rite: “Your own of Your own we offer unto you, for all and in all!.” And of course there is secondary oblation, that of the faithful who offer themselves, their praises, prayers and thanksgivings, as best expressed in the prayer of the Rite I Eucharist; “And we earnestly desire thy fatherly goodness, mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; most humbly beseeching thee to grant that, by the merits and death of thy Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in his blood, we, and all thy whole Church, may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of his passion. And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee, that we, and all others who shall be partakers of this Holy Communion, may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction.”
It is not enough to merely offer ourselves, our prayers and thanksgivings to God at the Eucharist alone. To be a people of the Eucharist, we must every day offer ourselves, our souls and bodies, to God, by submitting to the will of the Father the way Christ did and continually does. We must imitate the sacred mystery which we participate in, by continually offering to the Father through the Son, the time, prayers, praise and thanksgivings that we can, to show our steadfast love for Him. We must make of ourselves an eternal offering to God, no matter how small or insignificant our gifts to give might seem to be. Instead, we must always pray with a humble spirit and contrite heart that our sacrifices might be acceptable to God. In the words of the Book of Common Prayer: “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; Therefore let us keep the Feast. Allelluia.”