Tag: Eucharist

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Great Receivers Love Holy Eucharist

The Eucharist Crushes the Barriers of My Heart

When he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you (emphasis mine). Do this in remembrance of me.”

1 Cor. 11:24

Great receivers love grace. Grace being Jesus in them to live the Christian life in joy, holiness, and power. In the Holy Eucharist, Jesus gives us sanctifying grace to strengthen us to live the Christian life. Great receivers know that Christ as grace is present in the Lord’s Supper. They hunger to partake. They know that Christ is available now by the power of the Holy Spirit in the elements of bread and wine. In his Body and Blood, Christ blesses them with physical, emotional, and spiritual renewal. Great receivers run to the Eucharist for they know that there at the altar they will meet Christ.

In the sacraments, we acknowledge in faith that whatever happens to Christ also happens to us. Baptism plunges us in to the waters of his vicarious human life, uniting us and identifying us with his humanity. The Lord’s Supper feeds us with Christ, participating in his perfect human life, death, resurrection and ascension in the bread and wine.

Leonard J. Vander Zee, Christ, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 51.

To choose Jesus is to allow grace to crush the barriers in my heart. Those big barriers of trust in my own abilities and self-confidence need to collapse. If my trust is in myself, I am self-centered, not Jesus-or Eucharist-centered.”

Tadeusz Dajczer, The Mystery of Faith: Meditations on the Eucharist (Orleans, MA: Paraclete Press, 2009),17.

HT: Jesus Creed

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The Eucharist: The Heart of Christian Worship

The Sacramental Question

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?

I Corinthians 10:16

John Williamson Nevin makes a most remarkable yet true statement–our view of the Eucharist (i.e., Lord’s Supper) shapes and forms our understanding of Christ, church, theology, and church history.

In other words, a low view of the Eucharist lessens my understanding of the incarnation as Christ present in a material world. A low view of the Eucharist lessens the value of the church for we fail to see the continuous, sacramental, historic nature of the Church Catholic. A low view of the Eucharist makes theological reflection purely intellectual separate from the prayer life of the church. A low view of the Eucharist disconnects table fellowship from the communion of the saints both present and past.

On the other hand, a high view of the Eucharist recognizes that Christ is present in the Body and Blood. A high view of the Eucharist leads believers into heavenly worship joining with all saints and angels in praising God. A high view of the Eucharist joins worship, prayer, and theological reflection into one united whole. A high view of the Eucharist values the historic church by building on its strengths and learning from its weaknesses.

As St. Irenaeus wrote:

Again, moreover, how do they [heretics] say the flesh will end in corruption and not receive life, that flesh which is nourished by the Body and Blood of the Lord? Therefore let them either change their opinion or cease to assert such things. Our opinion is in conformity with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist confirms our opinion . . . Just as the bread from the earth, receiving the invocation of God, is no longer common bread but rather the Eucharist consisting of two things, the earthly and the heavenly, so our bodies, receiving the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible but have the hope of resurrection to eternal life.

Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, Book IV

As the Eucharist forms the very heart of the whole Christian worship, so it is clear that the entire question of the church, which all are compelled to acknowledge–the great life problem of the age–centers ultimately in the sacramental question as its inmost heart and core.

Our view of the Lord’s Supper must ever condition and rule in the end our view of Christ’s person and the conception we form of the church. It must influence, at the same time, very materially, our whole system of theology, as well as all our ideas of ecclesiastical history.

John Williamson Nevin, The Mystical Presence, preface.

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The Eucharist: Humility Before the Lord’s Table

The Lord’s Supper Reminds Us How Sinful Sin Must Be

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

1 Cor. 11:27-29

Holy Eucharist is the act of giving thanks through the partaking of the Lord’s Supper; commemorating the death of Christ by participating in Christ through the elements of bread and wine.

Right reception of the Lord’s Supper has a ‘humbling’ effect on the soul. The sight of the bread and wine as emblems of Christ’s body and blood, reminds us how sinful sin must be, if nothing less than the death of God’s own Son could make satisfaction for it, or redeem us from its guilt. Never should we be so ‘clothed with humility,’ as when we receive the Lord’s Supper.

J.C. Ryle, Practical Religion, “Going to the Table”, 152.

HT: J.C. Ryle Quotes