What Are You Looking For? Part 2: The Liturgy and the Sacraments

The Eucharist: Form Matters

The Eucharist- Form Matters

                We have now come to the third and final sacrament in the Sacraments of Christian Initiation.  To Catholics, the Eucharist is the “source and summit of Christian life.” (CCC 1324)  To many people it may appear to be the same as Protestant Holy Communion, but in reality it is very different.

                First of all, the basic form of the elements is different.  Depending on the Protestant church, the bread and wine may be bread and wine, or it may be some form of bread, and grape juice.  Or purple punch.  In my life, I have had Holy Communion where the bread was everything from a loaf of bread, cubed or pulled apart, to oyster crackers, soda crackers, or little wafers that look like the pillow mints served at weddings.  The “wine” was usually grape juice, but purple punch did make an appearance a time or two.  (I know any Catholics reading this will be scandalized by that, but it’s just the way it was.)  To some Protestants, it didn’t really matter what you used as long as it was some form of a bread like substance and liquid and you offered it to God as Communion.  You could even celebrate Holy Communion alone in your own home all by yourself.

                Like everything else in the Christian life, form does matter.  Our God created us to be liturgical people.  One look at the Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) shows that very clearly.  God didn’t just give Moses the 10 Commandments, he also gave him very special instructions for how to build the Tent of Meeting and how the Israelites were to worship him. 

                When Jesus instituted the Eucharist, it was at the time of the Jewish Passover.  He was celebrating the Passover in the manner given by God to Moses and the Israelites centuries before.  The bread he broke was unleavened bread.  No yeast was allowed in the Passover meal.  It wasn’t flatbread or a cracker.  More than likely, only three ingredients were used in preparing the bread: flour, water and salt.  That’s the bread he was holding in his hands when he, “took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.’”  In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood.  Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’  For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.” (1 Corinthians 11:24-26 NABRE) 

                As the good Jewish boy that he was, it is unthinkable that he would have used anything other than unleavened bread and wine.  Not grape juice.  Not purple punch.  He used wine.  But why is it so important that we use the same things today?  The Eucharist has its roots in the Jewish Passover.  It would be considered unthinkable to any 21st century Jew celebrating the Passover to use anything other than unleavened bread and wine because God said it should be celebrated with unleavened bread and wine.  As simple as that.  God said, “This is how you do it.”  And that’s how they do it.  It’s how they have always done it.  As the Body of Christ, should we do anything less?

                Jesus told us in John 6:53-56: “Amen, amen I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.  For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” (NABRE)

                I’m sure the disciples were more than a little puzzled by that.  After all, how could they do that?  How could they eat Jesus flesh and drink his blood?  It wasn’t until the Last Supper that they understood how it would happen.  Their eyes were opened when Jesus broke the bread and consecrated it so that it became his body, his flesh, that had not yet been broken, but soon would be, and when he consecrated the wine and lifted the chalice declaring that it was “the cup of the new covenant in my blood.”  Blood that hadn’t yet been shed, but soon would be.  That’s when they understood.  And that is what has been handed down to us.  The form matters because the bread and wine aren’t just bread and wine.  Every time the priest consecrates the bread and wine, they become for us the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ.  Unleavened bread and wine are the forms he chose to use.  It would be just plain disrespectful to use anything else.