The Bread & the Cup

. . . The Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread:

And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.

After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.

For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come.

--I Corinthians 11: 23-26

By whatever denominational name Christians call themselves, whether they receive the Sacrament standing or kneeling at an altar rail or in their pews, whether they drink wine in a chalice, or grape juice in a paper cup, or drink nothing at all, Christians all over the world next Sunday will be performing the supreme Christian rite--the Holy Communion.

Long before the New Testament was collected and canonized, the Communion was the core and center of the faith of the tiny Christian sect. They met to celebrate it in private houses. Outsiders were exeluded; even "catechumens" (those not yet baptized) were permitted to be present only for part of the rite. And for centuries they met as outlaws in danger of death.

"Here We Stand." On May 19, 303 A.D., in the Algerian city of Cirta (now Constantine), one Munatus Felix, high priest of the emperor, personally led a raid on a Christian service. He took with him a stenographer, whose report, taken in shorthand, sounds disconcertingly familiar to modern ears.

"Bring out whatever scriptures you have got," commanded Felix, after his men had collected all the evidence they could find. A subdeacon brought only one large book, explaining that the lectors kept the rest. Felix . . . said to them: "Identify the lectors." They said: "We do not know where they are." Felix said to them: ". . . Tell us their names." [The sub-deacons'] said: "We are not informers. Here we stand. Command us to be executed." Felix said: "Put them under arrest."

No one knows how many thousands were rounded up in such raids and executed. They could easily have saved their skins by staying home and saying their prayers in comfortable privacy. But they came together because they had to; they felt themselves to be a corporate whole--the living church of Christ. And for the Church to live, the Eucharist, or Holy Communion, had to be performed.

"Heave It Higher." In his scholarly study of the Eucharist, The Shape of the Liturgy (Dacre Press, London, 1945), Liturgist Dom Gregory Dix writes of a trend that came after the 4th Century. Multiplication of churches began to spread the clergy thin, and led to the short, popular "low Mass" performed by one priest alone, in which the congregation took little part. A notion also arose that the Communion was only for those whose lives were almost sinless. As a result of these and other factors, says Dix, the Communion came to be looked upon more & more as a rite which the priesthood performed for the laity, rather than with it. The congregation came to look, rather than to participate. "Heave it higher, Sir Priest!" was the plea of the medieval layman when he could not see the Host at the consecration.

According to Anglican Dix, this attitude carried over into Protestantism. When the Reformers set up their own forms of the Eucharist, he says, they "took as their model . . . not the primitive corporate action with its movement and singing, but the medieval Western development of low Mass--the 'simple said service' performed by a single minister, at which the people had only to look and listen and silently pray."

Today a trend is under way in the opposite direction. Initiated largely by the Benedictines, the so-called "Liturgical Movement" in a few Christian churches is attempting to return again to the usage of the early centuries, to bring the laity still more intimately into the performance of the Holy Communion. The effects of this movement are hardly beginning to be felt. But many see a new awakening of the Spirit in this turning toward a time when Christianity was a single community of the daring--when there were no "Protestants," "Romans" or "Orthodox," but only Christians.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.