1. - According to several inquiries, Sunday precept is maintained is Spain approximately by the 30 % of the population. Nevertheless, we must question ourselves: what does that precept mean? what is the Eucharist’s sense? How do we celebrate it? do we distinguish between what is symbol and what is a reality? What is the relationship between Jesus dinners with his disciples, the last supper, and the dinners in which the resurrected Lord makes himself present? Which are the most important changes that have take place along history? Let us see.
2.- It was before the feast of the Passover. Jesus realized that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father (Jn 13,1), he celebrates the Passover (Lk 22,15) with Galilee and evangelic freedom, on the night that He was delivered up (1 Co 11,24). The supper (Jn 13,2) has a paschal character: the home and the preparation to eat the paschal lamb (Mk 14,12), the ablutions and the washing (Jn 13,5), the bread dipped in the sauce (Jn 13,26), the coup after the dinner (LK 22,20), the singing of the psalms (Mt 26,30), the ample conversation (Jn 13,17) in which Jesus reveals the meaning of that farewell dinner, The celebration table is the exodus table, the paschal table than means the passage of the Lord (Es 12, 11).
3.- The Eucharist, celebrated in the initial Church the first day of the week or the day of the Lord (Acts 20,7; 1 Co 16,2; Rev 1,10), is, from the very first moment, unbound of the jewish pasch. This separation was easy to carry out, since Jesus did not bind his supper to the lamb eating, (he is God’s Lamb, Jn 1,29), but to the bread’s fraction and to the to the cup’s blessing, gestures that, the one preceded and the other followed, respectively, the paschal dinner and that acquired a new meaning in that last supper (1Co 11,23-26; se Gn 14,18-20). In the jewish world, bread’s fraction like introduction and cup’s blessing like end emphasize the dinner’s meaning: to belong to a same community. The bread and the wine are the symbol of the whole dinner. That who is presiding, family’s head or that acting as such (in its case, the guest) splices the bread and he distributes it to every body, pronouncing a praising and thanks to God prayer.
4.- The unleavened bread is the food of the persecuted, as much in the jewish pasch as in the Christian Eucharist. It is misery and hurry’s bread (Ex 12,24.39), symbol of the pass and present difficulties. This is how the paschal jewish ritual says it: “Here is the bread of misery that our ancestors have eaten in Egypt; may that who is in need come to celebrate the pasch”. The God acting in history is the defender of the oppressed; so that, the exodus is an experience of a permanent value: any one oppressed, come to celebrate the Pasch, God passes saving.
5.- Bread´s fraction (with a thanksgiving prayer) appears on the passages of the loaves multiplication: Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks and distributed them to those who were seated. He did the same with the fish (Jn 6, 11). But bread’s fraction acquires in the last supper a new meaning. Jesus mentions his violent death, he says goodbye: This is my body that is broken for you; do this on memory of me (1Co11,24; see Mk 14,22; Mt 26,26; Lk 22,19). “Greek Church use leavened bread. Unleavened bread is perceptive in the Latin Church (Florence Council, 1439). The first unquestionable witness of unleavened bread use in the western church is Rabano Mauro (about 850). Justin, Ireneo and Cyprians are witness of the mixture of water with wine”
6.- The first day of the week (Lk 24,1.13), Emmaus´ disciples acknowledge Jesus when slicing the bread (24, 35). Bread fraction is the Eucharist most ancient name. The expression designates, not only the fact of slicing the bread, but the whole eating, like a festive dinner: On the first day of the week we were together for the breaking of the bread, ect (Acts 20,7-11; see 2,42.46). We have here the first celebration description. Paul is in Troad. The community is meeting in the third floor of a house. Many lamps are lit. The meeting takes place at the beginning of that day, id est, in the night from the Saturday to the Sunday, according to the jewish counting method. Paul dialogs with his brothers to the midnight, Afterward he breaks the bread and eats. Then he converses to the down. The bread and fish eating that the resurrected Lord gives to the seven disciples (Jn 21,13) appears in the primitive Christian art like an eucharistic expression.
7.- The fraction of the bread expression stays in use while the Eucharist is celebrated in a meal frame. It is also called the Lord’s Supper (1Co 11,21). In this context, Saint Paul says, nothing is to be rejected if we receive it with thanksgiving, for it is blessed with the word of God and prayer, and made holy (1Tim 4,4-5). The Eucharist means to share Lord’s table. (1Co10, 21). In Alberthius epitaph (in Hierapolis, Asia Minor, about 180) the meal of the Christians is described like fish, bread and wine (see Rouët of Journel, Enchiridion patristicum, Herder, 1969,187). Nevertheless, the emphasis is placed, more and more, in the thanksgiving. “This food, saint Justine says, is called between us Eucharist”. (Apology I, 66). The Eucharist is separated from the supper and moved to the morning: “ We find this disposition in the middle of the second century by first time (saint Justine, Apology I,67). It was then universally imposed” (Schmaus).
8.- The habit to pass a cup during the meals, from which everybody drinks, (Mk14,23), makes of it a symbol of communion with the God of the alliance and with the brothers. The brothers participate of the table of the Lord; the cup overflows (Ps 23,5). The believer, thankful and hopeful, lifts the cup of salvation (Ps 116,13). In the jewish ritual of the Pasch, the cup that is drunk after dinner (Lk 22,20), the third cup known like that of Elijah, symbolizes the coming of the Kingdom and it is the liberation cup for the oppressed believers. But in the last supper it is also the agony cup that Jesus must drink (Mk 14,36;10,28) and the new alliance cup: This is my blood, the blood of the Covenant, which is to be poured out of many (Mk 14,24; see new alliance, Ex 24,8). Jesus refers again to his violent death, he assumes it like a test desired by God (Jn 18,11), with full conscience of his blood value: My just servant will justify the multitude (Is 53,11).
9.- In Saint John’s evangel, after the loaves multiplication, Jesus announces another bread, which gives eternal life (Jn 6,27). He not only multiplies the bread, but he even presents himself like the bread of life (6,35): whoever eats of this bread will live forever; the bread I shall give is my flesh and I will give it for the life of the world (6,51). People strikes with a coarse realism: How can this man gives us to eat his flesh?. But Jesus is referring to his violent death: My flesh is really food and my blood is drink (6,55). Jesus gives another fundamental clue to understand the Eucharist, the mutual inhabitancy, under another form of existence further away from the death’s limits: He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, lives in me and I in him.(6,56). The Lord is inside us and we are inside him. And the eternal life (6,47) is inside us. This overflows any philosophy: It is the spirit that gives life (6,63).
10.- The fact of salvation is made present in all occasions by the Jewish memorial: This ceremony will be for you as a sign on your hand and a reminder on your forehead (Ex 13,9). Christian community accomplishes Jesus mandate; Make this in memory of me (Lk 22,19). A remembrance is not a simple evocation an event that happened in the past. Its efficacy reaches the present. For each generation Christ’s memory “is its own Pasch, the Lord who passes to free it” (Ligier). In the Eucharist the glorified Lord, who is the crucified, is present: Whenever you eat this bread and drink from this cup, you are proclaiming the death of the Lord until he comes (1 Co 11,26). We must flee from idolatry; it is not possible to participate in the Lord´s table and in the evil’s table: The cup of blessing that we bless, is not a communion with the blood of Christ? And the bread that we break, is not a communion with the body of Christ? (10,16).
11.- Before the scandal of the cross and the empty tomb (Jn 20,2), the Lord tells us: This is my body. Look for me in the Eucharist, the community meeting. It is fundamental to discern the body of the Lord. The divisions may prevent it. Like Saint Paul says to the Corinthians: Your gatherings are no longer the Supper of the Lord (1Co 11,20). Revision is then compulsory: Let each one, then, examine himself before eating of the bread and drinking from the cup. Otherwise, he eats and drinks his own condemnation in not recognizing the Body (1 Co 11,28-29). Here are some suggestions: When you gather, each one of you can take part with a song, a teaching, or a revelation, by speaking in tongues or interpreting what has been said in tongues. But let all this build the Church (1 Co 14,26). Participation is open to everybody: Even all of you could prophesy, one by one (1 Co 14.31). All must be done in a fitting and orderly way (1 Co 14,40).
12.- One of the most ancient testimonies of the Eucharist, the Didaje, written in Syria at the end of the first century, manifests the importance of being united:” All that who has a contest with his fellow, should not join you until reconciliation has taken place, so that your sacrifice is not profaned” (XIV, 2; see Mt 5,23-24). The Eucharist accomplishes the unity of the Church, being a sign of it: You are the body of Christ (1 Co 12,27), And also: So we, though many, form one body, sharing the one bread (1 Co 10,17). It is said in the Didaje: “Like this fragment was disperse through the mountains and assembled became one, in this same way will your church be assembled” (IX, 4). Jesus prays for this unity: May they all be one (Jn 17,21). Hearts unity takes to an effective possessions communication too (Acts 4,32).
13,. For the fathers of the church, the Eucharist is at the same time “figure and reality”. The change takes place during the Eucharistic prayer taken as a whole, that includes Jesus words and an invocation to the Holy Spirit. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem says: “We ask to God, who loves the men, to send the Holy Spirit upon the offering and converts the bread in the body of Christ and the wine in his blood, since anything that the Holy Spirit touches becomes sanctified and transformed” (mistagogic Catechesis, V,7). Saint Ambrose influences the Western Church, insisting above all in the words of the “Lord Jesus” (De sacr., IV, 14-15). German theologian M. Schmaus says: “In the period following the apostles, for a long time the Eucharist was celebrated with a thanksgiving prayer freely formulated, which coupled to the blessing words pronounced by Jesus. The Eastern Church followed another course”. In the fifth century we find the arcane discipline: speaking about the Eucharist is not carry out with open and clear words, but with roundabout and mystery.
14.- Berengarius of Tours (died in 1088), who always stayed in the symbolic level, will be obliged to sign in 1059 an exaggerated formula: “Our teeth bite the own Christ’s body”. Besides, twenty years later, he will have to sign another formula: “The bread and the wine placed on the altar, convert themselves in the true, proper and vivifying flesh and blood of Jesus Christ Our Lord, by the mystery of the sacred prayer and the words of our Redeemer, not only because of the sign and virtue of the sacrament, but in the property of the substance and the truth of the substance” (D 355).
15.- The fourth Letran council, in 1215, wishes to defend at the same time the reality of Christ´s presence and his sacramental mystery presence, “whose body and wine, after transubstantiated, by divine virtue” (D 340). Trent’s council (1551) uses a similar formula and introduces the word transubstantiation: “By the bread and wine consecration a change in all bread’s substance into the substance of the Body of Christ our Lord and of all wine’s substance into the substance of the of his blood takes place; catholic Church has called just and appropriately to this change transubstantiation” (D877).
16.- Trent’s council desired to insure the meaning that the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist has for the Church, before those that emphasized the symbolic meaning only. Nevertheless, Christ´s real presence in the Eucharist is not tied to the philosophic categories (in this case, aristotelic). Even more, aristotelism applied to the Eucharist is a radical modification of the true aristotelism, “that did not tolerate such a separation between substance and accidents” (Schillebeeckx). Like usual, the comeback to the fountains supposes an ecclesial renovation and has an ecumenical dimension.
17.- Augsburg confession (1530) affirmed for the Lutheran churches: “The true body and the true blood of Christ are truly present in the supper under the configuration of the bread and the wine, and in this way are shared and received” num.X). In the Lima’s document (1982) about the baptism, eucharist and clergy, the Faith Commission and the Constitution of the Churches World Council confesses the “real, living and operative of Christ in the Eucharist” (num. 13).
18.- Between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries some piety practices carried out of the Eucharist celebration itself: genuflection, incense offering, adoration, communion and prayer before the sacrarium. “The sacrarium (tabernacle) was initially assigned to worthily keep the Eucharist so that it could be taken to the sick and to the absent, out of the Mass celebration” (Catholic Church Catechism, num. 1379). From the ninth century the Eucharist in called mass (from the latin: oblatio missa, sent offering).
19.- The medieval coarse realism (with bloody host stories) goes too far. Being what it may be, that is not Christ’s blood, says Saint Thomas of Aquinas (ST, III, q. 76, a.8.c and ad 2). Christ is not “enclosed” in the sacrarium; here are the sacramental species (ST III q.76, a 7,c; see Acts 7,48-50). The Eucharist implies a communion mystery, a reality that glitters in a signal, a sacrament of the body of Christ. “The sign consist in a meal. The meal includes the food, the fact of eating, drinking and talking, that is a part of the whole human community. The fact of being a meal instituted by Christ differentiates the Eucharistic dinner of any profane banquet” (Schmaus).
20.- The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is his word fruit, but this word is not a magic and automatic formula that operates by the simple fact of pronouncing it. Without the Spirit’s action in the Eucharist, the word would be a dead letter. The Eucharist is a prayer addressed to the Father. Being certain that she will be listened thanks to Christ’s word the Church requests to the Father the Holy Spirit gift so that Christ real presence is obtained.
21.- According to the second Vatican Council, a real Christ presence in the church takes place. (SC 7). Christ makes himself present in many ways: when two or three meet in his name, listening his word, in the baptism, in the poor and in those that are suffering. But in the Eucharist he is present in a special way. The Eucharist is the meeting of the community, “the update of Christ presence in the middle of the community and up to the depth of any heart” (Von Balthasar). Also Thomas of Aquinas expressly taught that Eucharist’s secure virtue is – in the last instance – Christ real presence in the believers´ community itself (ST, III, q. 73, a 1, 3 y 6). What we call bread, wine, table, communion is not conceivable without the community. Christ real presence in the Eucharist transfigures the meeting (dinner) of the community in the dinner of the Lord
22.- The shepherds (bishops, presbyters) are Christ’s servants and God’s mysteries administrators (1Co 4, 1; LG 21). His function is not to substitute Christ’s presence, but to be at the service of the community “like head in Christ’s person” (PO2). Saint Ignatius of Antioch (died 107) says: “Only should be considered like legitimate the Eucharist made under the bishops presidency or under someone being assigned for it by him” (Ad Smyrn. 8.1).
23.- The Eucharist is the summit of Christian initiation (see LG 11 and SC 10): The one who has been able of discovering that Jesus, the Crucified, is the Lord (being so initiated in what really means the baptism), culminates his initiation taking part in Jesus´ real presence in the Eucharist, the bread of life that feeds the community.
*Dialog: Do we discern the body of the Lord in the Eucharist? (1 Co 11,29)