The Eucharist in the Scripture #2

Fr. Joachim Trytania

The language of the Church's documents regarding the Eucharist is usually measured and calm. The attempts to interpret the words of the institution of the Eucharist in a figurative sense would only obscure the meaning of the words of Christ. It is difficult to see how the literal meaning of the words of Christ can be evaded. The solemnity of the occasion when Jesus spoke these words, the absence of any warning that a metaphor was intended, conspire to exclude the figurative sense of the words "this is my body."

It is true that Christ had often used figures of speech, but they had either been so obvious, such as to need no explanation, or else Christ had carefully explained them lest the Apostles, simpleminded men, should be misled or confused (Matt. 16:11; John 4:32). Jesus spoke plainly. It was, however, necessary for him in the early days of his ministry to shroud the meaning of his teaching under the form of parables and metaphor, both to adapt himself to the minds of his hearers and in order to give an opportunity to men of goodwill to come to him to explain. But he was now at the last evening of his life on earth. He was surrounded, not by suspicious Pharisees and Sadducees, but by his own Apostles whom he trusted, to whom he spoke no more in parables, but plainly. If they failed to grasp his meaning now, they would not learn it from him on the morrow, for then he would be no more with them. He spoke plainly because he was instituting a new Testament, a new Law. It was a covenant not formulated in figurative language. The New Testament was ratified by the blood of Christ. It was, therefore, the real blood of Christ which the Apostles reverently drank, the blood which was shed for the remission of sins. It was the true body of Christ which they ate, the body which was given for them, the flesh that was given for the life of the world.

The letters of the Apostles were written to meet the various demands of the moment. It happened on two occasions that St. Paul made reference to the Eucharist: once in connection with idolatry and again in connection with the behavior of certain converts at Corinth during the Eucharistic assemblies. How, St. Paul asks, can Christians dare to take to take part in the sacrificial banquets of the pagans, when in the Eucharist they have a sacrificial banquet wherein they are made partakers of the body and blood of Christ (1Cor 10-11)? St. Paul took the opportunity of impressing upon the Corinthians the reverence with which this most holy sacrament should be received, and of warning them of the dire penalties attending a sacrilegious reception. The solemnity of the terms with which this admonition is expressed can hardly be understood except in the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. He says in 1Corinthians 11:26-27: "Until the Lord comes, therefore, every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are proclaiming his death, and so anyone who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be behaving unworthily toward the body and blood of the Lord." The sacrilegious communicant is not only said to be guilty of irreverence to the person of Christ who instituted the sacrament, but is said to be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. One who fails to discern in this sacrament the body and blood of the Lord will be punished....If the Eucharist is nothing else but a symbol of the body and blood of Christ, surely the words of St. Paul are excessively severe.

It may be well to remember that what St. John wrote in the 6th chapter of his gospel, he had been thinking about for seventy years. About what Jesus had said at the Last Supper, it is not the words that he reports. It is the essential meaning of the words that is under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.