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Eucharist
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The Eucharist according to Pauline teaching is Proclamation of the Death of the Lord until He comes again. “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.”(1 Corinthians 11, 26). The proclamation indicated by the Greek word, ”kerygma”, is not mere preaching, but a life- witness to what one preaches. In other words, he who takes part in the Eucharist ought to make the self-emptying death of Lord for the salvation of mankind a reality in his own life. It means that he must empty himself for the welfare of others. This dying to oneself is the beginning of one’s salvation when it is linked with the Death of the Lord, which continues to bring about salvation of mankind, till his second coming.
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Debate ... began in the late Middle Ages, developed in the Reformation, and continues to this day on the extent to which the Eucharist is a sacrifice. In part this debate is about the nature of priestly and lay power, for the notion of sacrifice in the Eucharist suggests that the priest is exercising a particular kind of spiritual power and authority in the re-enactment of the events of the Passion, in which the body of Christ is broken and his blood shed, and in effecting the transformation of the elements from bread and wine to the body and blood of Christ. This spiritual authority is often signified by the bodily gestures of the priest while he or she is consecrating the elements while presiding at the Eucharist. On the whole Protestants have rejected this notion of sacrifice in the Eucharist, partly because it might be seen to detract from Christ's once-and-for-all act of self-giving on the Cross (in which singular act they believe he redeemed humanity from sin), by suggesting that humans constantly have to petition God to act for our salvation, and partly because of their understanding of the priesthood of all believers by which the authority of their ministers lies in their proclamation of the Word and leading of congregations rather than in any form of sacramental ministry. In the West, Roman Catholics and ‘high’ Anglicans have continued to debate the notion of sacrifice in the Eucharist, while the Liturgical movement of the twentieth century emphasized the importance of the Eucharist for the corporate life of the Church, thereby reaffirming the notion of the Church as the body of Christ and the active participation of the laity in the Eucharist. Vatican II also stressed these points.
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The liturgy of the Eucharist comes from Jesus’ words and deeds at the Last Supper. They were within the framework of the celebration of the Jewish Passover and possibly Jewish ritual meals. The central element in the liturgy of the Eucharist is the Eucharistic Prayer which, in an early Greek ecclesiastical context, was called “Anaphora”. The first Eucharistic Prayer, because of its exclusive use for a long period of time, in the Western Church (Latin Church), was called Canon (norm or measure)of the Mass, until the liturgical reforms were effected by the Second Vatican Council which was represented by all the bishops conferences of the whole world. There were indeed very ancient Eucharistic Prayers such as Eucharistic Prayer II attributed to St. Hyppolitus. Thus the Second Vatican Council brought richness and meaning to the catholic liturgy.
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Eucharistic doctrine ... concerns the sacrificial character of the sacrament—how the Eucharist is related to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Anglican Churches have traditionally taught that the Eucharist is a means by which believers can partake of Christ’s sacrifice and the new covenant with God that it inaugurated. In popular belief this idea was sometimes interpreted to mean that each celebration of the Eucharist is a new sacrifice, rather than a partaking of the original sacrifice of Christ as officially taught by the Church. Protestants in general have been hesitant to apply sacrificial categories to celebrations of the Eucharist.
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During the Middle Ages a more elaborate doctrine of the Eucharist was developed by Scholastic philosophers under the influence of Aristotle (see Scholasticism). Aristotle taught that earthly things possessed accidents (size, shape, color, texture) perceptible to the senses, and substance, their essential reality, known by the mind. According to Scholastic speculation, the substance of the Eucharistic bread is, by the power of God, wholly transformed into the body of Christ. This view of the presence of Christ, called transubstantiation, was most elaborately formulated by the 13th-century Italian theologian St. Thomas Aquinas. It has been the official teaching of the Roman Catholic church since the Middle Ages, although the Council of Trent, which reasserted the doctrine against the Protestant reformers in the 16th century, did not include any philosophical speculation in its statement, asserting simply that an actual change occurred in the bread and wine (see Trent, Council of).
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The doctrine of the Eucharist has been held from the very earliest days of the Church. For the first 800 years of Christianity, there was no doubt regarding the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Here is a sample of writings from the fathers of the early Church illustrating this.
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Eucharist