This is My body

 

 When the hour had come, He sat down, and the twelve apostles with Him.  Then He said to them, "With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God."  Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, "Take this and divide it among yourselves; for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes."  And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me."  Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.  But behold, the hand of My betrayer is with Me on the table.  And truly the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed!"  Then they began to question among themselves, which of them it was who would do this thing.

 

- Luke 22:14-23 

 

Yesterday we read that in the daytime, Jesus was teaching in the temple, but at night He went out and stayed on the mountain called Olivet with the other pilgrims to Jerusalem.  Then early in the morning all the people came to Him in the temple to hear Him.  Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called Passover.  And the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might kill Him, for they feared the people.  Then Satan entered Judas, surnamed Iscariot, who was numbered among the twelve.  So he went his way and conferred with the chief priests and captains, how he might betray Him to them.  And they were glad, and agreed to give him money.  So he promised and sought opportunity to betray Him to them in the absence of the multitude.  Then came the Day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover must be killed.  And He sent Peter and John, saying, "Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat."  So they said to Him, "Where do You want us to prepare?"  And He said to them, "Behold, when you have entered the city, a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water; follow him into the house which he enters.  Then you shall say to the master of the house, 'The Teacher says to you, "Where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with My disciples?"'  Then he will show you a large, furnished upper room; there make ready."  So they went and found it just as He had said to them, and they prepared the Passover.

 

 When the hour had come, He sat down, and the twelve apostles with Him.  Then He said to them, "With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God."   My study Bible tells us that Christ has a fervent desire for this Passover because this meal will impart the mysteries of the new covenant to His followers, and also because this event will inaugurate the great deliverance of humanity from sin through the power of the Cross.  

Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, "Take this and divide it among yourselves; for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes."  This first cup offered by Christ is a conclusion to the Old Testament Passover meal which Christ eats with His disciples in order to fulfill the Law.  My study Bible explains that until the kingdom of God comes means until Christ's Resurrection.  At that time He will again eat and drink with His disciples (Luke 24:43, Acts 10:41).  

And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me."  Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you."   The Greek root for the word translated as gave thanks is eucharist/εὐχαριστέω.  This word immediately came to refer to both the Liturgy and the sacrament of Holy Communion.  Before the end of the century, my study Bible explains, a manuscript called the Didache ("The Teaching") refers to the celebration of the Liturgy as "the Eucharist."  Moreover, in AD 150, St. Justin says of Holy Communion, "This food we call 'Eucharist,' of which no one is allowed to partake except one who believes that the things we teach are true, and has received the washing [holy baptism] for forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives as Christ commanded us."  Jesus says, "This is My body."  For the Orthodox Church, these words have always been accepted as true:  in the words of St. Justin, "that the food consecrated by the word of prayer which comes from Him is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus."  

"But behold, the hand of My betrayer is with Me on the table.  And truly the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed!"  Then they began to question among themselves, which of them it was who would do this thing.  My study Bible points out that Judas, too, is invited to the table for the mystical supper, and that Jesus is seeking by all means to save him.  His unworthy participation, it says, leads to his utter destruction (see 1 Corinthians 11:27-30; compare to Esther 7).

While my study Bible comes from the Orthodox tradition, it explains that in Christendom there are at least three different interpretations of Christ's words.  It notes that for the first thousand years of Christian history, when the Church was visibly one and undivided, the holy gifts of the Body and Blood of Christ were received as just that:  His Body and Blood.  The Church confessed this was a mystery:  The bread is truly Christ's Body, that which is in the cup is truly His Blood -- but one cannot say how they become so.  In the eleventh and twelfth centuries began the scholastic era, the Age of Reason in the West.  The Roman Church by that time had become separated from the Orthodox Church in 1054, and it was pressed by the rationalists to define precisely how this transformation occurs.  Their answer was the word transubstantiation, which means change of substance.  These elements are therefore no longer bread and wine, but are physically changed into flesh and blood.  So the sacrament, which is comprehensible only by faith, was subjected to a philosophical definition.  This view was unknown in the ancient Church.  This issue of transubstantiation became one of the points of disagreement between Rome and the sixteenth-century reformers.  They were not able to accept this explanation, and so the radical reformers (who were also rationalists) took up the opposing point of view:  that these gifts are simply bread and wine.  They only represent Christ's Body and Blood, and have no spiritual reality.  My study Bible says of this third viewpoint, that these elements are only symbols, helps to explain the infrequency with which some Protestants partake of the Eucharist.  Although, I hasten to add, I know many who commune every week.  I must say that for myself I have considered all of these "options," and I tend to personally fall on the side of the first thousand years of Christianity, as I find it the most reasonable.  That is, these words of Christ remain a mystery, and only and just that -- something we accept, but cannot explain, in the same way that we cannot explain the other mysteries of our faith, such as the birth of Christ.  This is because, in my own understanding, there are things that reach so far beyond our own grasping and reality that we simply have no choice but to accept them on faith.  Either the light of faith reveals this for a person, or it does not.  I hasten to add that I feel that each of us is on a very long faith journey, and that this journey is one that changes us -- and as we in turn change, so does our perspective on our faith, and this indeed happens in so many ways.  Christ has spoken of Himself as a road:  "I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me," John 14:6.  The Greek word translated as way (ὁδὸς) means "road," and is still used this way in modern Greek.  Therefore Christ speaks of Himself as the "road" to the Father, including the truth and life of God.  So, in the deepest and most original understanding of our faith, we are on a road somewhere.  The importance and significance of the Eucharist is not simply to remember Christ, but to take on the qualities of Christ, the fruits of the Spirit, to become more "like God," even as we hopefully move toward God in our faith.  This is the fullness of the Incarnation and the understanding of the patristic tradition of the Church:  that in Christ, God became human, so that we human beings could become like God.  So much of the understanding of Christ makes sense only through this lens:  His bodily ascent into heaven at the Ascension, thereby glorifying human flesh; His taking on of all that we experience and transfiguring all of life with meaning; and the other mysteries we celebrate such as Baptism, in which water becomes "illumined" with Spirit so that we, in turn, may be made whole and on our own way on this "road" of faith.  The elements of the world such as water for Baptism, or oil for chrismation, are understood to take on a mystical substance which interacts within and for human beings for illumination.  Thereby we are to understand in this same mysterious working of the energies of God as we partake of this mysterious body and blood of Christ.  It is our "supersubstantial" bread, as the prayer to Our Father literally states, in the special Greek word (epiousion/ἐπιούσιον) that appears nowhere in any literature but the Gospels.  As such Christ is our medicine, the fullness of nourishment for all of our real needs:  body, soul, spirit.  As if to underscore explicitly the difficulty of this teaching, John's Gospel tells us that Jesus taught:  "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you," and that for many disciples this was a point of turning away.  (See John 6:53-71.)   The fullness of the faith is understood through mystery.  That is, there is depth and breadth to our faith that none of us is fully-equipped to understand at the levels of its true founding, as only God can understand and fully know God.  But we begin with these words, which lift us into a promise of Christ as Passover, given in entirety for us, and making a new covenant for all.  Christ teaches us, "Do this in remembrance of Me."  In a profound religious sense, and certainly for the Jews of Christ's time, to remember is to bring into the present, to participate in something -- not simply to commemorate in a social sense.  St. Paul clarifies this when He admonishes the Corinthians not to take the Eucharist in an unworthy manner (see 1 Corinthians 11:23-32).  Let us take on the multiple ways in which our faith works in us, and seek to participate in the mystery offered to us.