Best 77 quotes in «eucharist quotes» category

In our own generation, as never before, there is need to demonstrate that Christianity is capable of bringing mankind into a truly universal society based not on fear and compulsion but on mutual love. To manifest the unitive power of Christian charity we must make faithful use of the means of unity which Christ has provided for His church. Among these the Eucharist holds a place of honor as the supreme source and symbol of Catholic unity.

Has Christ provided such a blessed banquet for us? He does not nurse us abroad—but feeds us with His own breast—nay, with His own blood! Let us, then, study to respond to this great love of Christ. It is true, we can never parallel His love. Yet let us show ourselves thankful. We can do nothing satisfactory—but we may do something out of gratitude. Christ gave Himself as a sin-offering for us. Let us give ourselves as a thank-offering for Him. If a man redeems another out of debt—will he not be grateful? How deeply do we stand obliged to Christ—who has redeemed us from hell!

He explained, however, that the Eucharist is about the unity of the church. If a majority vote determined the matter, then the unity would be betrayed. He noted that some people in the church might not be ready to make this move. He would call a meeting, inviting those who might have reservations to come and express their worries … If they strongly dissented, we would have to wait.

Holy Communion is offered to all, as surely as the living Jesus Christ is for all, as surely as all of us are not divided in him, but belong together as brothers and sisters, all of us poor sinners, all of us rich through his mercy. Amen.

I daresay that the gradual “decomposition” of scripture, its dissolution in more and more specialized and negative criticism, is a result of its alienation from the eucharist – and practically from the Church herself – as an experience of a spiritual reality. And in its own turn, this same alienation deprived the sacrament of its evangelical content, converting it into a self-contained and self-sufficient “means of sanctification.” The scriptures and the Church are reduced here to the category of two formal *authorities*, two "sources of the faith"--as they are called in the scholastic treatises, for which the only question is which authority is the higher: which "interprets" which. As a matter of fact, by its own logic, this approach demands a further contraction, a further "reduction." For if we proclaim holy scripture to be the supreme authority for teaching the faith in the Church, then what is the “criterion” of scripture? Sooner or later it becomes “biblical science” – i.e., in the final analysis, naked reason. But if, on the other hand, we proclaim the Church to be the definitive, highest and inspired interpreter of scripture, then through whom, where and how is this interpretation brought about? And however we answer this question, this “organ” or “authority” in fact proves to be standing over the scriptures, as an *outside* authority.

If the Cross is God’s masterpiece of His love, then the Eucharist is the centerpiece of our worship.

I held the Host with two fingers and thought: How small Jesus made Himself, in order to show us that He doesn't expect great things of us, but rather little things with great love.

In the Eucharist we can find all the dimensions of communion: God communicates himself to us, we enter into communion with him, the participants of the sacrament enter into communion with one another, and creation as a whole enters through man into communion with God. All this takes place in Christ and the Spirit, who brings the last days into history and offers to the world a foretaste of the Kingdom.

Hot dogs and Communion at the Hope Rescue Mission. I will always think of the body of Christ now with this scene in mind. Doctors and housewives and professors in nice shoes and brightly colored sweaters shuffling to the table together with men and women who hadn't changed clothes for days or weeks. The sophisticated smell of after-shave mixed with the sharp scent of dirty socks and stale smoke. People whose lives seemed all together sharing the same loaf with people whose lives were broken and tattered. We were all one body, for we all ate from the same loaf.

In trying to find out what Bruno thought of his priesthood, we now have a serious problem which we did not have before. In Venice, he told his fellow-prisoners that he was an enemy of the mass, and thought transubstantiation a ridiculous idea and the Catholic ritual bestial and blasphemous. He compared the elevation of the host to hanging somebody on a gallows, or perhaps to lifting him up on a pitchfork. He told somebody who had dreamt of going to mass that that was a terrible omen; and he performed a mock mass with Ovid's Art of Love instead of a missal. He joked about hungry priests going off from mass to a good breakfast. He spoke particularly ill of the mass as a sacrifice, and said that Abel, the archetype of the sacrificing priest, was a criminal butcher who was rightly killed by the vegetarian Cain. A phrase he used elsewhere, apparently about Christ's passion and not directly about the mass itself, seems nevertheless to express rather exactly his attitude to is: he called it 'some kind of a cabbalistic tragedy'.

I once thought that would be the consummation of all joy—to be united by a bond of love—to be lost in His presence there as if nothing else mattered. "And now—there is much more. Instead of myself and my Christ and my love and my prayer, there is the might of a prayer stronger than thunder and milder than the flight of doves rising up from the Priest who is the Center of every priest, shaking the foundations of the universe and lifting up—me, Host, altar, sanctuary, people, church, abbey, forest, cities, continents, seas and worlds to God and plunging everything into Him.

Is the Lord’s Supper only for Christians? Whenever I ask this question I immediately remember the character of those that partook of the Last Supper with Jesus. They were certainly Jews, some better Jews than others, but Jesus shared this meal knowingly even with Judas. Or again consider the Emmaus Road encounter. Jesus shares this meal with those who had given up on his being the One to redeem Israel, who were leaving Jerusalem downcast and disappointed, and who were oblivious to the fact that it was Jesus who was speaking and sharing with them! There has to be a balance in the liturgy to help the congregation make a decision if they themselves are ready to partake of this Meal in a worthy manner (hence the 'ye who do truly and earnestly repent' clause), while at the same time joyfully welcoming all who are willing and ready and able to do so.

In the Eucharist a communion takes place that corresponds to the union of man and woman in marriage. Just as they become "one flesh", so in Communion we all become "one spirit", one person, with Christ.

It became obvious why Catholics had built such beautiful cathedrals and churches throughout the world. Not as gathering or meeting places for Christians. But as a home for Jesus Himself in the Blessed Sacrament. Cathedrals house Jesus. Christians merely come and visit Him. The cathedrals and churches architecturally prepare our souls for the beauty of the Eucharist.

It is not a gathering of 'escapees' from the world, bitterly enjoying their escape, feeding their hate for the world. Listen to their psalms and hymns; contemplate the transparent beauty of their icons, their movements, of the entire *celebration. It is truly cosmical joy that permeates all this; it is the entire creation - its matter and its time, its sounds and colors, its words and silence - that praises and worships God and in this praise becomes again itself: the Eucharist, the sacrament of unity, the sacrament of the new creation.

I will always find myself a prisoner to the divine sublimity of the Eucharist itself." (201)

Luther and Calvin believed that both the Roman church on the right and the Zwinglian and Anabaptist churches on the left made the Lord's Supper too much a place WHERE BELIEVERS DID THINGS FOR GOD - either by offering Christ to God (Rome) or by offering their deep devotion to God (the Radical Protestants). The main direction of the Supper, in both of these views, was up.

mIn the Eucharist a communion takes place that corresponds to the union of man and woman in marriage. Just as they become "one flesh", so in Communion we all become "one spirit", one person, with Christ.

In the womb of the Virgin Mary, God “becomes” human, receiving from her the body that makes possible the “passion” of God; while on the Cross, through the Jewish flesh given of Mary, the divine Son is truly crucified. In the same way, in the Eucharist, Christians receive the very flesh the Logos received of Mary and united to himself, that “truly life-giving flesh of God the Word himself.” Only insofar as God receives the passability of human flesh does he become crucifiable and sacramentally givable.

Most of us do not live especially holy lives, after all. We spend most of our time sitting in traffic, paying bills, and being irritated with one another. Yet every week we are invited to stop all of that for one hour at least. We are invited to participate in a great drama that has been going on without us for thousands of years, and one that will go on as long as there is a single player left standing.

Sometimes silences are pregnant and sometimes not. It is hard to know what to make of the silence of much of the New Testament about the Lord’s Supper. Perhaps it is simply an accident of time and circumstance. There was not a felt need to address the matter. What we should not likely conclude is that it was not seen as an important matter in the latter part of the first century A.D. What we can observe is that the Lord’s Supper continued to be an in-home ceremony taken in the context of a fellowship meal. We also now know it was important in both Gentile and Jewish contexts in the church in the second half of the first century, and beyond. We see no evidence anywhere in this material that clerics of any kind are in charge of the meal and its distribution. Even in the Didache, prophets, who were mouthpieces for God, are only allowed to say the thanksgiving prayer as often as they like. The low ecclesiology, coupled with the ever-present eschatology, suggest that the Didache does indeed go back to the end of the first century A.D. But one precedent in the Didache does stand out: the Lord’s Supper is for baptized Christians, and in particular for those who repent of their sins. We are on the way to the church of the Middle Ages in some respects, but we have not begun to localize or confine grace to the elements of the Lord’s Supper itself and then have it controlled by clerics.

No books is more fascinating than the Bible. And no books are less fascinating than most of our commentaries on the Bible. Nothing is more formidable and unconquerable than the Church Militant. But nothing is more sleepy and sheepish than the Church Mumbling. Christ's words roused His enemies to murder and His friends to martyrdom. Our words reassure both sides and send them to sleep. He put the world in a daze. We put it in a doze.

I wear the lens of the Word and all the world transfigures into the Beauty of Christ and 'everything is eucharisteo'.

People were not to consume blood because "the life" or "the soul" (Hebrew nephesh) of the animal is in the blood. As Leviticus states, "It is the blood that makes atonement, by the power of its life." While scholars continue to debate exactly what this means, one thing is clear: in the ancient world, the Jewish people were known for their refusal to consume blood.

Some ancient rabbis believed that the manna was protological--that it had existedsince the very dawn of creation. As such, the manna was the perfect food, untouched by the sin of humanity's first parents [...] the manna of the exodus was not just one more miracle but a kind of "return to Eden," a return to the state of creation before its corruption by sin and death.

Tell me, son... have you ever been intimidated by anyone?' 'Oh yes,' said Thomas. 'I don't believe it. By whom?' 'By Our Lord... on the altar.

Surely we can only come to understand each other's beliefs by means of direct encounter and open, honest discussion. In the meantime, many free churches invite all believers in Jesus Christ to the Table for the sake of true spiritual unity that transcends intellectual differences of interpretation. Withholding sacramental sharing on the basis of disagreement about the nature of the Lord's Supper seems odd to us. What two people think exactly alike about the act? We are not offended by Catholics' closed Communion, but we find it odd and exclusive. It places intellectual understanding above fellowship among disciples of Jesus Christ.

The brief story of the supper at Emmaus carries within it a number of core principles of the Christian life as Luke understands it. First, the idea that one comes to know Christ through acts of generosity to other human beings. It is because of their kindness to a stranger that the disciples find the beloved teacher whom they had lost. Second, there is the idea that they can conjure his presence in prayer and in communal acts such as the breaking of bread - by remembering his life, death, and resurrection - even in an undistinguished house in an anonymous village. The simple acts of generosity and community in daily life are the acts that make real the living presence of Jesus.

The disciples have lost their beloved teacher and when he returns to console them, he reminds them that he has already given them, in the shared breaking of bread, a way to conjure his presence among them again and again.

The distinctions of body and blood among men are transcended by unity with the Body and Blood of Christ.

The entire contradictory package of Christianity was present in the Eucharist. A sign of unconditional acceptance and forgiveness, it was doled out and rationed to insiders; a sign of unity, it divided people; a sign of the most common and ordinary human reality, it was rarefied and theorized nearly to death.

The Eucharist is the sacrament of cosmic remembrance: it is indeed a restoration of love as the very life of the world.

The eucharist relativizes every leader.

Then a movement began among the people. They creaked to their feet, shuffled and fumbled up to the front, kneeling on the floor, and she saw little Thomas at the beginning of the row. The priest turned and made the sign of the cross and all signed themselves; then he came forward and moved along the line, placing the Hosts in the mouths of the people. Cecil had a very strange feeling; she felt that this was at the same time the most natural and the most unnatural thing she had ever seen. They were like little birds being fed by their mother, and yet it was grown people who knelt to receive what looked like a paper penny of bread on their tongues. She knew at once why the Mass provoked such love and such hate. Either what they believe is true, or else it is a dreadful delusion, she thought.

The liturgy of the Eucharist is best understood as a journey or procession. It is the journey of the Church into the dimension of the Kingdom. We use the word 'dimension' because it seems the best way to indicate the manner of our sacramental entrance into the risen life of Christ. Color transparencies 'come alive' when viewed in three dimensions instead of two. The presence of the added dimension allows us to see much better the actual reality of what has been photographed. In very much the same way, though of course any analogy is condemned to fail, our entrance into the presence of Christ is an entrance into a fourth dimension which allows us to see the ultimate reality of life. It is not an escape from the world, rather it is the arrival at a vantage point from which we can see more deeply into the reality of the world.

The one who lives her life in circles, discovering, entering into, forgetting and losing, finding her way round again, living her life in layers--deeper, round, further in. I know 'eucharisteo' and the miracle. But I am not a woman who ever lives the full knowing.

The Mass is the re-enactment of the cross’s mighty onslaught upon human differences: the breaking down of the wall of partition. We participate in common, as in one family, in the holy Eucharistic offering. We are united with one another through our union with Jesus Christ in Communion.

The seeds of liberation are planted across the common table as we break bread together.

The whole context of Jesus' bread of life discourse is centered on the Jewish hopes for the coming of a new Moses and the return of the manna from heaven.

The devil may, indeed, mar the outside; he may tear and rend the Church, as she has been torn and rent for 1800 years, into all manner of parties and sects; but the Lord's table in our midst, in different sects and denominations it may be, bears testimony to the great truth which you have in the Romans, that "we, being many, are one body.

The Pope would have an easier job than the President of the United States in adopting a change of course. He has no Congress alongside him as a legislative body nor a Supreme Court as a judiciary. He is absolute head of government, legislator and supreme judge in the church. If he wanted to, he could authorize contraception over night, permit the marriage of priests, make possible the ordination of women and allow eucharistic fellowship with this Protestant churches. What would a Pope do who acted in the spirit of Obama?

The proper formation and consecration of the Eucharist requires careful attention. The Objects of the Working must be chosen systematically. My own Record has all the faults of pioneer work: it contains much to avoid. There must be proper tabulation of the Experiments, and strictly scientific observation. Sentimentality, sexual or spiritual, must be sternly suppressed. Compliance with these conventions should assure a success far greater than I have myself attained.

The reference in 1 Corinthians 11:27 is to Christ’s actual body, which was crucified, as the reference to blood makes evident. Anaziõs has been translated 'in an unworthy manner,' and sometimes incorrectly thought to modify not the way of partaking but the character of the persons partaking. But Paul refers to those who are partaking in an unworthy manner, not those who in themselves are unworthy, which presumably Paul would see as including any and all believers. No one is worthy of partaking of the Lord’s Supper; it’s not a matter of personal worth. Paul is rather concerned with the abuse in the actions of the participants, or at least some of them. Paul says that those who partake in an unworthy manner, abusing the privilege, are liable or guilty in some sense of the body and blood of Jesus. They are, in addition, partaking without discerning or distinguishing 'the body.

There is a wonderful simple human reality to Christ's hunger. The man is famished. He's missed meals for three days, He has a lot on his mind, He's on His way back to heaven, but before He goes He is itching for a nice piece of broiled fish and a little bread on the side with the men and women He loves. Do we not like Him the more for His prandial persistance? And think for a moment about the holiness of our own food, and the ways that cooking and sharing a meal can be forms of love and prayer. And realize again that the Eucharist at the heart of stubborn Catholicism is the breakfast that Christ prepares for Catholics, every morning, as we return from fishing in vast dreamy seas?

This insistence on a degree of faith in the communicant is also illustrative of Wesley's belief in the necessity for the co-operation of an active faith in man with the gift of God's grace to make the sacrament effective, which is congruent with his whole theology of salvation, with it's blending of the objective and the subjective.

To share Eucharistic communion with someone unbaptized, or committed to another story or system, is odd—not because the sacrament is 'profaned', or because grace cannot be given to those outside the household, but because the symbolic integrity of the Eucharist depends upon its being celebrated by those who both commit themselves to the paradigm of Jesus' death and resurrection and acknowledge that their violence is violence offered to Jesus. All their betrayals are to be understood as betrayals of him; and through that understanding comes forgiveness and hope. Those who do not so understand themselves and their sin or their loss will not make the same identification of their victims with Jesus, nor will they necessarily understand their hope for their vocation in relation to him and his community. Their participation is thus anomalous: it is hard to see the meaning of what is being done.

What difference does it make if the bread and wine turn into the Body and Blood of Christ and we don't?

We have seen some gatekeeping or fencing-the-table language already beginning to rear its head in this context. One needed to be baptized to take the meal; one needed to repent to take the meal; one needed a bishop or his subordinate to serve the meal. This was to become especially problematic when the church began to suggest that grace was primarily, if not exclusively, available through the hands of the priest and by means of the sacrament. One wonders what Jesus, dining with sinners and tax collectors and then eating his modified Passover meal with disciples whom he knew were going to deny, desert, and betray him, would say about all this. There needs to be a balance between proper teaching so the sacrament is partaken of in a worthy manner and overly zealous policing of the table or clerical control of it.

We should pray that God would enrich his ordinance with his presence; that he would make the sacrament effectual to all those holy ends and purposes for which he hath appointed it; that it may be the feast of our graces, and the funeral of our corruptions; that it may not only be a sign to represent, but an instrument to convey, Christ to us, and a seal to assure us of our heavenly jointure [union].

Whatever brings you nearer to Jesus is a means of grace. Prayer is a means of grace, because in prayer you come to Jesus; reading the Word is a means of grace, because that Word is full of Jesus; and so partaking of the Lord's Supper is a means of grace, because it is a means of communion with Jesus.