GIVEN FOR YOUR FREEDOM

    St Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians in the mid-50s of the 1^st century AD (or CE, if you prefer). This means it was written 20-25 years after the Resurrection. Why is this important?

    In chapter 11, St Paul writes about abuses in Eucharistic celebrations in that city, and he narrates what the meaning of this sacrament is: what he “received from the Lord” and handed on (the Greek word here means Tradition in the fullest sense)—that we are talking about the Body and Blood of the Lord. There is no discussion at this point about the “how” (that is, no mention of the power of the Holy Spirit, no explanation of terms like transubstantiation), only an insistence on the “what”—it is a participation in the Body and Blood of the Lord (see also I Corinthians 10:16).

St Paul is reminding the Corinthians of what is the tradition (today, we would refer to it as the Apostolic Tradition) of what Jesus’ actions at the Last Supper meant. For this to become a “tradition,” it had to have started out almost immediately after the Resurrection and Pentecost. Acts 2:46 tells us this, but I highlight I Corinthians because it was written decades before Acts and the Gospel of Luke. It is the earliest written testimony to the faith of the earliest Christians in what the Eucharist was and meant.

If you were to set up a chart of the narratives of the Last Supper from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and I Corinthians, you would notice two things: 1) there is not an absolute word-for-word agreement as to what Jesus said; but 2) there is agreement on what He did, and what it meant (and means). To quote the old hymn: “This is My Body, given for your freedom; this is My Blood, which was shed for all of mankind.” It is our sacramental participation in the saving death and resurrection of the Lord, a making present of that one unique and perfect sacrifice, a gift of total self-giving in love. I like to point out that mothers, when we were in their wombs, also fed us with their bodies and blood…

Is it difficult to understand how a small bit of bread/wafer and a sip of wine could be His Body and Blood? To quote my hero, St John Henry Cardinal Newman, of course it is difficult, even impossible, to understand, but it is not difficult to believe—He said it, after all! It must surely have been just as difficult for the earliest believers to try to grasp how this man, their friend, was also God Incarnate! But our faith in the Resurrection guarantees that both are true. And the Fox in The Little Prince is exactly on point here: “It is only with the heart that one sees rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” Is Jesus God Incarnate? Is the Eucharist the Body & Blood of Christ? Is the Resurrection a fact? If the latter is true, then the other statements are true, as well.

What do we believe? What do you believe?                                    -Fr. David