The Body and Blood of Christ

Immediately after the first Pentecost, the disciples of the Lord Jesus ‘continued steadfastly in the Apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers’ (Acts of the Apostles 2.42); from that day to this, the Church of Christ has never ceased to follow the teaching of the Apostles and to break bread in the divine Communion of our fraternal charity every Sunday. This action is what we now call the Holy Communion, or the Eucharist. The pattern we use for the celebration of the Eucharist is a part of Apostolic Tradition, and conforms to apostolic practice, the common source of all orthodox liturgical rites, including the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. This Apostolic Tradition of the Eucharist forms the core of our worship, and therefore, of our doctrine and saving faith. At the heart of the Gospel are found the Holy Mysteries of the Altar. The Blessed Sacrament is the quintessence of the Christian Religion. Holy Communion is the Gospel!

The Holy Communion is the supreme act of thanksgiving of the New Testament. It is the commemoration of all that God the Son did for us, beginning with His action on the eve of His Passion and Death at the Last Supper. The Prayer of Consecration, or Canon, possesses the account of the Institution of the Eucharist - it recapitulates the Words of Our Lord: THIS IS MY BODY, THIS IS MY BLOOD. We obey the command to ‘do this in remembrance of me,’ as we offer the anamnesis, the re-presentation, of Christ. We commemorate His blessed Passion and precious Death, His mighty Resurrection and glorious Ascension, until His coming again. The Eucharist is the ultimate sacramental manifestation of everything that Jesus Christ has done, is doing, and will do for us men and for our salvation. It was given by Our Lord Himself – the Lord’s Own Service on the Lord’s Day.

This commemoration is not merely an intellectual or cognitive act. Christ commands: ‘do this in remembrance of me.’ What did he do? He took bread and wine, representing the sacrifice which He was about to make of His own Body and Blood on the Cross, and offered them to God the Father. He declared them to be His own Body and Blood, and so they became. In obedience to Christ’s command, we do the same, ‘with these thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto thee.’ We offer the Holy Gifts to God. The Eucharist is the supreme offering of the Church, the Church’s Sacrifice, in which the Body and Blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine are offered to the Father, making-present Christ’s all-acceptable and perfect Sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. Although it is the priest who elevates the host and chalice before God, it is the people, the Church as a whole, who give thanks to God in this action and by it are united to the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.

The Eucharist is also an ongoing Pentecost, a continual disclosure of the Trinitarian Godhead, a prolonged Incarnation of the Word through the Spirit. In the epiclesis, or Invocation of the Word and Holy Spirit of the Father upon the forms of bread and wine, material things are opened to the Holy Spirit and made vehicles of divine life. The Holy Ghost comes to seal and accomplish the Mystery. The bread and wine offered by the Church become the Body and Blood offered by Christ on the Cross through the operation of the Holy Ghost: ‘for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you’ (Saint John 16.14). It is the Holy Ghost Who actualises the Words of Christ from the Last Supper until now.

The bread truly becomes the Body of Christ; the wine truly becomes the Blood of Christ. The Church’s Sacrifice is consumed by the heavenly Fire and made the offering of Christ to the Father in the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit who hovered over the face of the waters in Creation (Genesis 1.2), who overshadowed the Blessed Virgin Mary on the Annunciation causing the Eternal Word to be conceived in her spotless womb (Saint Luke 1.35), and who descended on the Church at Pentecost (Acts of the Apostles 2) now makes present Christ’s Sacrifice in the Church’s Liturgy. The Word and Holy Spirit make the congregation the Body of Christ by the offering and receiving of the Body of Christ. Communion with mere bread and wine would be ineffectual were the Gifts not transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ by the Holy Ghost. As we pray for the Holy Ghost to descend upon the offered gifts, we pray, too, that we may be transformed. The Church asks the Holy Ghost to change the bread and wine so that we may be ‘partakers of His most blessed Body and Blood,’ filled with His grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with Christ, that he may dwell in us, and we in him – thus, united to one another in the communion of the Holy Spirit, we become the Church, just like the earliest Christians at the first Pentecost.

On the Thursday following Trinity Sunday, orthodox Anglicanism celebrates the ancient feast of the Blessed Sacrament known as Corpus Christi, the Festival of the Body and Blood of Christ. The Western Church instituted this feast in AD 1264 in order to provide us with a specific day in the liturgical year on which we may, with unique concentration and attention, offer to God our thanksgiving for the gift of one of the central tenets of the Catholic Faith, the Objective Presence of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the form of bread and wine – the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Saint Thomas Aquinas, that greatest of medieval theologians, the Angelic Doctor, wrote the collects, prayers and hymns for this beautiful celebration. As our English Catechism succinctly describes this wondrous gift of the Real Presence: ‘The Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper.’ On this feast, the Church bids us follow the admonition of Saint Augustine of Hippo: ‘It was in His flesh that Christ walked among us and it is His flesh that He has given us to eat for our salvation. No one, however, eats of this flesh without having first adored it, and not only do we not sin in thus adoring it, but we would sin if we did not do so.’

Our beloved Saviour is the Eucharistic Lord – under the veils of bread and wine is contained, really, truly and objectively, after priestly consecration, the One Divine Person of Jesus Christ, very God and very Man, in the totality of His divinity and humanity, the Incarnate Redeemer of mankind. The instruction of Saint Augustine to the newly-baptised on Easter reverberates and echoes the truth proclaimed on our Feast of the Body of Christ: ‘For you must know what it is you have received, what it is you are about to receive, what it is you should receive every day. This Bread you see on the Altar, consecrated by the word of God, is Christ’s Body. This Chalice, or rather, what the Chalice holds, is Christ’s Blood. By them, Christ the Lord wishes to bestow on us His Body and Blood, which He shed for you unto the remission of sins. If you have received them worthily, you are what you have received. For the Apostle says, “for we, being many, are one bread, one body; all that partake of the one bread.” So did he explain the Mystery of the Lord’s Table. Great indeed are the Holy Mysteries and very great. And when you have received, and have eaten, and have consumed the Body of Christ, is the Body of Christ then consumed? Is the Church of Christ consumed? Are the members of Christ consumed? Far from it! Here they are made clean: there they are crowned. What is here made known to us will remain forever, though it seems to pass away…’ In the Eucharist, the Body of Christ is truly presented and given so that in adoring and receiving the Body of Christ, we become the Body of Christ. The Eucharist makes the Church. The Incarnate Body of Christ becomes the Eucharistic Body of Christ to make us the Mystical Body of Christ. Let us render thanks to God for the inestimable gift of the Eucharist!

In the month of June, dedicated to the Blessed Sacrament in such a sublime way, our portion of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Holy Catholic Church in the Diocese of the Eastern United States, gathers for her annual Diocesan Synod in Oviedo, Florida from Wednesday 9th June to Friday 11th June; please pray for the successful and fruitful deliberations of this most important assembly, especially as it elects our next Bishop Suffragan. We look forward to giving you a full report on the activities and decisions of this year’s Diocesan Synod upon its completion.