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EUCHARIST.

Liturgy,Page 2877 The Eucharist, also known as the Mass, Communion service, Lord's Supper, and Divine | among other names, is the central act of Christian worship, practiced by almost all denominations of Christians. Though varying in form from the very austere to the very elaborate, the Eucharist has as its essential elements the breaking and sharing of bread and the pouring and sharing of wine (in some Protestant churches, unfermented grape juice) among the worshipers in commemoration of the actions of Jesus Christ on the eve of his death. The word eucharist is taken from the Greek eucharistia, which means "thanksgiving" or "gratitude" and which was used by the early Christians for the Hebrew berakhah, meaning "a blessing" such as a table grace. When Christians adopted the word from the Greek into other languages, the meaning was narrowed to the specific designation of the ritual of the bread and wine. HISTORY The ritual attributed to Jesus by the writers of the New Testament is portrayed as a Jewish Passover seder meal in which Jesus reinterprets the symbolism of the traditional celebration (Paul in 1 Cor. 11:23 26, Mk. 14:2225, Mt. 26:2629, and Lk. 22:1420). Passover commemorates the liberation of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, which was the first step in their becoming a people in covenant with God.
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It is celebrated to this day by a lengthy ceremonial meal with prescribed foods, in which the story of the deliverance is symbolically reenacted (see Ex. 12:1 28). Selecting from the many symbolic foods customary in his time, Jesus takes only the unleavened bread (the bread of emergency or affliction) and the wine. The tradition of the early witnesses is that Jesus asks the traditional questions about the meaning of the ritual and answers, first about the bread he is breaking, "This is my body, broken for you," and then about the wine, "This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, which is to be poured out for many." It is clear that Jesus refers to his death and is interpreting the significance of that death in terms of the symbolism of the Exodus story and the Passover ritual. He invites the disciples to repeat the action frequently and thus enter into his death and the outcome of that death. By placing his death in the context of Passover, Jesus interprets it as a liberation bringing his followers into community as one people in covenant with God (see 1 Cor. 11:17 34). In the earliest Christian times, Eucharist was celebrated rather spontaneously as part of an ordinary meal for which the local followers of Jesus were gathered in his name in a private home. By the second century it is clear that there were strong efforts to regulate it under the authority and supervision of the local church leaders known as bishops. By the fourth century, Eucharist was
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celebrated with great pomp and ceremony in public buildings, and the meal was no longer in evidence. At that time, solemn processions emphasized the role of a clergy arrayed in special vestments. The form of the celebration included several readings from the Bible, prayers, chants, a homily, and the great prayer of thanksgiving, in the course of which the words and actions of Jesus at his farewell supper were recited, followed by the distribution of the consecrated bread and wine to the participants. The Orthodox and other Eastern churches retained this general format with some variations. The liturgy of the Western churches, however, went through a long period of accretion and elaboration of secondary symbolism which obscured the meaning of the action and tended to leave the congregation passive spectators of what the clergy were doing. During the Middle Ages there also emerged the private Mass, a Eucharist celebrated by a priest without a congregation of worshipers present. The sixteenth-century reformers took action to strip away all accretions and elements that did not seem to be in accord with the text of the Bible. Zwingli and Calvin were more radical in this than Luther. The Roman Catholic church also instituted extensive reforms of the rite in the sixteenth century, leaving a uniform pattern later known as the Tridentine Mass. This, however, was very substantially revised after the Second Vatican Council (19621965), allowing more
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spontaneity and congregational participation as well as offering more variety. THEOLOGY Eucharist is understood by all Christians to commemorate the saving death and resurrection of Jesus, and to mediate communion with God and community among the worshipers. Beyond this basic concept, the theology of the Eucharist varies very widely among the Christian denominations and has often been a cause of bitter dispute between them. Both Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians understand the presence of Christ very concretely, taking seriously the so-called words of institution, "This is my body this is my blood." However, the Orthodox insist that while there is an actual change in the bread and wine that justifies these words, the manner of the change is a mystery not to be analyzed or explained rationally. Since medieval times Catholic Christians have attempted to give an intellectually satisfying explanation, focusing on the notion of a transubstantiation of bread and wine. While the eucharistic theology of the various Protestant churches varies widely, they are united in finding a theology of transubstantiation not in harmony with their interpretation of scripture. The meaning and effect of the Eucharist have also been discussed in Catholic theology under the term real presence. This emphasizes that the
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presence of Christ mediated by the bread and wine is prior to the faith of the congregation. Protestant theology has generally rejected the term real presence as one liable to superstitious interpretation. Orthodox and Catholic Christians also agree on an interpretation of the Eucharist in terms of sacrifice; that is, a renewed offering by Christ himself of his immolation in death. Again, there have been determined efforts in the Catholic theological tradition to give intellectually satisfying explanations of this, while Orthodox theology tends to tolerate a variety of explanations at the same time as it insists on fidelity to the words of the liturgy itself. Protestants believe the theology of sacrifice lacks biblical foundation and doctrinal (Page 2878 | Top of Article) validity, and prefer to emphasize the role of the Eucharist as a memorial. It is paradoxical that the Eucharist is the sacrament of unity for Christians yet is a sign and cause of disunity among denominations. In general denominations exclude others from their eucharistic table, usually on account of theological differences. Contemporary initiatives reflect attempts to reconcile some of these differences and to experiment cautiously with "intercommunion" among the churches. Such initiatives appear to be far more extensive among laity than in the official legislation of the churches.
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