The Eucharist in Tradition

Fr. Joachim Trytania

The teaching of the Scripture regarding the Sacrament of Eucharist is very clear: Christ, having promised his disciples to give them his own flesh as food and his own blood as drink, at the Last Supper took bread and gave it to the disciples telling them that it was his body. Then he took wine and gave it to them, telling them that it was his blood. The Scripture's accounts regarding the promise of the institution of the Eucharist do not indicate that Christ spoke figuratively. On the contrary, the circumstances, the power and wisdom of Christ himself, the manner in which his words were understood by his hearers, all point to the literal meaning of those words as the only possible interpretation.

This interpretation is confirmed by the manner in which St. Paul speaks of the Eucharist and which appears in the constant teaching of the Church from the earliest times. St. Cyril of Jerusalem (4th century) writes: "When the Lord has said of the bread 'this is my body', who shall dare to doubt? And when he has asserted and said, 'this is my blood,' who shall ever doubt that it is indeed his blood?"

It is impossible to convey in this small space the entire teaching of the Fathers of the first three or four centuries on the Sacrament of the Eucharist. References to the Eucharist we find in great abundance, but very rarely treatises on the subject. The Eucharistic doctrine was well known among Christians, requiring no explanation. So accustomed were the early Christians to frequenting the Holy Sacrifice and to receiving Communion, so intimately did the Eucharist enter into their daily lives, that their pastors did not deem it necessary to write books to teach them what must have been so familiar to them from their daily practice.

Many passages might be quoted from the writings of the Fathers of the Church. We already find St. Ignatius of Antioch (+110) arguing: "See, that you use one Eucharist, for one is the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one is the chalice unto the communion of his blood; one is the altar, and one the bishop together with the priests and deacons." The argument for unity among Christians loses all its force unless the Eucharist is really and truly the one body and blood of Christ. Still more clearly is belief in the real presence implied in St. Ignatius' letter to the Smyrnaeans, where he says: "They abstain from the Eucharist and prayer because they do not believe that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ which suffered for our sins and which the Father in his bounty raised up again."

Very explicitly does St. Justin (+165) state the doctrine of the Real Presence when he presents his account of the celebration of the Eucharist in his work "The Eucharistic Sacrifice." St. Irenaeus (+203) writes: "The bread that is taken from the earth, perceiving the invocation of God, is no longer ordinary bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two things: an earthly and a heavenly."

St. Cyprian (+258), while he praises the fortitude of the many confessors of the faith, laments at the same time that many of those who had fallen into idolatry expected immediately, without having done penance, to be allowed to receive Communion: "Violence is done to the body and blood of the Lord, and greater violence now with their hands and with their lips than when they denied the Lord."