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In this blog post, we introduce our series, “Why We Celebrate Easter.”
As Christians, this is our most holy and most revered of all holidays.
Today is Maundy Thursday, a day we celebrate to commemorate the night when Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior of the whole World, instituted the Holy Communion.
In fact, this is one of the sacraments that is celebrated in all Christian churches. No matter if your church is Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Baptist, Calvinist, Pentecostal, or some other denomination that you might belong to, this is considered a sacrament.
Not Hocus Pocus: When A Jewish Passover-meal Turns Into A Christian Sacrament
The Gospels of (Saint) Matthew and (Saint) Mark both account for that after Jesus and the disciples had eaten a traditional Jewish Passover-meal, Jesus takes a loaf of bread.
Now, this is nothing special if you have ever attended a traditional Jewish Passover-meal (seder). Typically, the father of the household takes a loaf of unleavened bread, breaks it into small pieces, and shares it with his family. Then he does the same with the wine.
Now Jesus does precisely this. He is the Master of the disciples and hence considered to be the oldest or at least the wisest among them. They constantly acknowledge this by calling him the Aramaic word Rabbi, which means teacher, master, or mentor.
The difference is that when Jesus does this, he gives the traditional Seder a new meaning by saying, “This is my body” (Matthew 26:26 and Mark 14:22), which in Latin is “Hoc est corpus meum.”
When people heard priests saying this in medieval Europe and tried to repeat it themselves, they got it wrong and said “Hocus Pocus.” By doing so, they hoped that they too could achieve the miracle of transubstantiation (see below for a further discussion) and transform something that might look and taste one way into something completely different.
Now, we will turn our focus to how the churches view the Holy Communion themselves.
Different Views On The Sacrament Of The Holy Communion
In the (Roman-)Catholic Church, there is the teaching of transubstantiation. One of the most significant medieval thinkers, (Saint) Thomas Aquinas, explained it, and it became a dogma at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.
Dogma is something that each Catholic had to believe to be true; otherwise, that person would be considered a heretic and banned, maybe even killed if the person believed otherwise.
The meaning of this dogma is that the bread truly becomes the bread of Christ and that the wine truly becomes the blood of Christ, yet retains the taste and appearance of each of the elements intact.
No Protestant church believes in transubstantiation, although some churches are very close, while others reject any divine presence altogether.
The Calvinist Churches only consider the sacrament a symbolic act, believing there is no divine presence at all.
This is actually not the teaching of John Calvin, who believed that for the true believer, it is truly the bread and blood of Christ that the person receives.
It was Zwingli whose belief has come to be the dominant teaching of the Calvinist Churches of today.
(Most) Lutheran Churches believe in the real presence, which means that it is both bread and wine, as well as the body and blood of Jesus Christ, simultaneously.
The words that are used to express this teaching are that the bread and wine are “in, with, and under” bread and wine. Catholics also use these prepositions, but with the addition of “through”.
Some movements hold different views on this topic, and the entire subject of Holy Communion could be the subject of a lengthy article on this blog in the future.
Additionally, Pentecostals hold different views, but they are also closer to the Calvinist churches, as well as some Anglican Churches.
In the Orthodox Churches, the most common practice is to use leavened bread, while in Catholic and Protestant Churches, unleavened bread is used to resemble the Last Supper.
Other names
We would like to finish this post with other names of the Holy Communion.
The sacrament is also known as the Eucharist (from the Greek word eucharistia, which means thanksgiving), The Lord’s Supper (from the German word Abendmahl), the Holy Communion or simply Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar or the Sacrifice of the Mass.
During this Easter we will finish each blog post with a prayer in the form of a blessing:
Blessed are You, Lord our God,
who sent Your Son, Jesus Christ to this World,
so that every person that believes in him will gain eternal life through him.
Amen.
Next blog post
Our next blog post will be published on Good Friday (April 3, 2015).
It will be about the Way of the Cross.
Until then,
The Chi Rho Dating Group
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