NOTES for Co1 11:23-32

The Sacrament of the Eucharist, whose institution we commemorate today, is so familiar to us from the Liturgy celebrated every day that it is not easy on this day to experience all its newness. Nevertheless, it is worth making an effort to grasp anew what happened. At the Passover meal, the Lord commanded His disciples that from then on He Himself, His Flesh and Blood, would be the food that gives us life. And this is the food of eternal life. In this sacrament we offer thanksgiving to God—and thereby do something directly opposed to sin. Therefore, for us who participate in the sacrament, it becomes an entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven. And this takes place not only in spirit but also in the flesh—the Most Pure Flesh of Christ, which becomes our life.

All the readings today are connected with the feast: they are about the Messiah's priesthood, the feeding with bread, and the Eucharist. But the Eucharist is above all the continuing presence of Christ in this world and His service to God, which the whole Church shares with Him: "the fulfillment of the Gospel of the Kingdom," "the healing of soul and body" (St. John Chrysostom). The Church journeying, the Church teaching, the Church preaching, the Church healing: this is the Body of Christ.

The sacrament of the Eucharist was instituted on the very night when Jesus was betrayed to death. The apostle Paul says that when we receive this Bread and this Cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death. Like Baptism, the Eucharist unites us with Christ in His sufferings—and therefore in His glory. The Eucharist is the clearest evidence that God sees the human person only as a whole and that every attempt to separate and delimit soul and body is essentially artificial. He enters our hearts not only through the word, but through bread and wine. Many of the holy fathers said that He takes the form of bread so as not to frighten us, for eating human flesh would indeed be terrifying. The sacrament of the Eucharist is like a blood transfusion: His Flesh and Blood are united with ours and gradually transform us. In this sacrament He gives Himself to us completely, just as He gave His life on the cross. And it is through this very sacrament that He enables us to give ourselves completely to Him and to be united with Him in all fullness.

The breaking of bread among the first Christians differed quite noticeably from the forms of it that we know today. In those days it included a fraternal meal, which today is found in Christian gatherings only rarely, if at all. Among the first Christians, as one can see, the custom of Jewish ritual meals was still preserved, similar, for example, to the Sabbath meal or the Passover seder, which began with prayer and the blessing of bread and wine and then smoothly flowed into the joyful feast without which no Jewish holiday is imaginable. And, as one can see, some of the newly converted, who only recently had been Gentiles, did not look very deeply into the meaning of the breaking of bread as the sacred gathering of the Church. For them it was simply a cheerful gathering of fellow believers, while the reality of the risen Christ, present in this gathering and sanctifying it by His presence, was apparently more of an abstraction for them.

Of course they understood for whose sake they had gathered, but one can think that they perceived this more as a symbol or allegory than as a genuine reality. Perhaps they thought that the Savior's words, spoken by Him at the Last Supper, meant not the kind of remembrance that makes the eternal present, but the kind that calls to mind something that once existed in the past but no longer exists now.

And after remembering the Teacher and blessing His memory, they began to celebrate with a sense of duty fulfilled. They most likely did not think at all that the risen Christ was still quite truly sitting with them at the same table, that the Church is not an organization created by Him but His spiritual body, His own continuation in our world, which is being transfigured but is not yet transfigured.

And therefore, according to the apostle's word, they became ill and died. Of course, the sacred meal was not killing them, as some commentators have sometimes interpreted Paul's words. What was killing them first of all was their separation from the Church as the body of Christ, from that source of life beside which they were standing but from which they were not drinking. Of course, God does not abandon anyone, even those who do not believe in Him very much. Everyone who lives is alive by His power.

But after baptism God brings the newly converted person to a new source, which must become the foundation of his whole further life. The previous way of spiritual life, and of life in general, is no longer for him. And if the newly converted person neglects this new source, whether consciously or simply through frivolity, irreversible degradation can occur both in his spiritual life and in his life as a whole. The kind from which one can become ill and die.

The apostle Paul warns us against a very serious danger: confusing concepts. He says that the Corinthians gather "in such a way that it does not mean eating the Lord's Supper." But how should it be eaten? What is wrong in the Corinthian community, and what does this have to do with us? It is completely obvious that in our day, even with every desire, it is impossible to come to church in order to eat. The Eucharist in its modern form cannot serve as breakfast or lunch. So are we all right?

Apparently not. The problem is that a person comes to church not for the sake of meeting God. What is put in the place of this meeting is no longer so important. In our day this is usually human interaction. We feel our loneliness acutely, and in church we have the opportunity to interact with people, counting on understanding, since people in church really are usually more benevolent than on the street or in the subway. And we come in order to socialize, to talk, to spend time... The Church becomes a hangout for us. And this does not mean eating the Lord's Supper.

For Paul, as for all Christians, the breaking of bread and the gatherings connected with it were the center of church life. The Church, properly speaking, exists as a gathering in which the breaking of bread is performed in Christ's name. This has been so in every age, from the very beginning of church history. But "in the name" does not mean only "in memory," at least not in the sense in which we use that expression today. In the Bible we often meet expressions such as "God remembered" or "God forgot," although it is perfectly clear that, in our human sense, God forgets no one and nothing, and does not remember in that sense either; He simply knows all His creation as a whole and each of the people He created specifically.

But God is not an impersonal Absolute. He is a Person, and like every Person He can turn His face toward someone or turn away. This is what the language of the Bible calls "remembering" or "forgetting." And during the Christian breaking of bread, we Christians remember Christ, and He remembers us. Then the bread and wine again become His body and His blood, in the same sense in which this happened at the Last Supper. But for this to happen, He Himself must be at the center of the gathering.

And the issue is not only that He should come, but also that communion with Him should become the center and meaning of the whole gathering. In the Corinthian church, judging by the apostle's words, there were problems with this. The breaking of bread there sometimes turned simply into a noisy feast, and it often turned out that some ate and drank to excess while others remained hungry. The feast as such came to the fore, pushing communion with the Risen One into second place. The sacred act turned into profanation, not because there were food and wine on the table, but because behind them one could no longer see the One for whom and around whom they had gathered.

It is precisely against this, and not against the meal as such, that the apostle protests when he says that those who perform the breaking of bread in this way are not thinking at all about the body of Christ, not only in the sense of the bread they break, but also in the sense of the spiritual reality that is called the Church with a capital letter. This is no longer Christianity, but the same old paganism under the guise of Christianity, which cannot and must not exist in the Church.