Please help me understand the first Eucharist

[PRmerger]

1a) If so, how do you explain Jesus standing there and the bread being His body?

I think if one can accept that God created the universe, that it’s not too much of a leap to be able to fathom how God could stand there while holding His Body in the Eucharist.

 

[Erick_Ybarra]

But isn’t it possible that the Lord’s Supper before his death was just instructions and not necessarily a real sacrifice?

For this is a hard thing to understand. If the first Lord’s Supper was a real propitiatory sacrifice, then Jesus really died before His crucifixion. Now I know Scripture says he was “slain from before the foundation of the world”, but this doesn’t mean he was sacrificed in death before the world, but that he was going to be sacrificed as a plan of God before the world began. Now, concerning the first Lord’s supper, if Jesus did indeed die with the disciples then how can this be a memorial if he did not die prior to?

If what happens to the bread is that it becomes the body of Jesus broken as a re-presentation of the one sacrifice of calvary, how can it be done as a memorial at this point if there was not yet a crucifixion to remember.

It all has to be a miracle. For we know Ignatius believed the eucharist was the real flesh…just a little confusing

 

[PRmerger]

But isn’t it possible that the Lord’s Supper before his death was just instructions and not necessarily a real sacrifice?

For this is a hard thing to understand. If the first Lord’s Supper was a real propitiatory sacrifice, then Jesus really died before His crucifixion.

Scott Hahn says, essentially, that the propitiatory sacrifice started at the Last Supper and ended at the atoning death of Christ, when he partook of the Fourth Cup (part of the Passover liturgy).

 

[thenobes]

No, I don’t think the bread turns into flesh. I believe the bread is Jesus’s body in the following sense: He is every bit as present in the bread as He was in front of His apostles at the Last Supper. Alternatively, the bread becomes the resurrected body of Jesus. I believe there is a difference in the body of Jesus before his resurrection and after; for example, His apostles didn’t recognize Him after the resurrection, so He probably looked different at the least.

Well my view is simply this. Jesus had a human soul. And a human soul is the basis of the organization of matter that produces what we call a “human nature”. This is an idea that is supported by St Thomas Aquinas the great theologian.

However Jesus’s soul was adfixed to the Divine nature and as such could be allowed to show moments of glorification, that is, show properties that are beyond our normal nknowledge of the attributes of the human nature.

For instance, the Transfiguration was part of “glorification”, as would be “walking on water”.
These are properties not normally possesed by the human body.

After the Resurrection, Jesus displayed more regularly aspects of glorification.

So basically, if the human soul is attached to matter, that matter is the “Body and Blood” of that human, no matter what it looks like. And if glorified, it may look very well quite different.

peace
steve

 

[po18guy]

Also, I can’t see how any Christian would say it would be impossible for the physical body of Jesus to be present physically with His apostles and the resurrected body of Jesus to be present in the bread. I mean… impossible? For Jesus?

This keeps cropping up. There is one strong believing Christian in these forums who has written that Christ “could not” be present in the Eucharist. That was the first time that I have heard a Christian claim that Jesus could not do something that is within His nature. Of course, as with the Father and the Holy Spirit, Jesus cannot violate His nature. That is not a limitation upon God, but the sign of perfection. However, man often thinks as man does, and not as God does.

The devil’s weapons are doubt and discouragement - but he’s invisible. If we could see him, we could easily reject his influence.

 

[po18guy]

But isn’t it possible that the Lord’s Supper before his death was just instructions and not necessarily a real sacrifice?

For this is a hard thing to understand. If the first Lord’s Supper was a real propitiatory sacrifice, then Jesus really died before His crucifixion. Now I know Scripture says he was “slain from before the foundation of the world”, but this doesn’t mean he was sacrificed in death before the world, but that he was going to be sacrificed as a plan of God before the world began. Now, concerning the first Lord’s supper, if Jesus did indeed die with the disciples then how can this be a memorial if he did not die prior to?

Time is immaterial to God. Since the fall from grace, it is an ultimately fatal imposition that is intended solely for the created world. Time affects every aspect of our being - even the cells that make up our bodies have a birth, a life of different spans, and a programmed death. Our bodies age, our minds deteriorate. All of this occurs while God watches, and it does not affect Him in the slightest. He, in all of His Persons, remains outside of this. He may appear in time, but transcends it completely.

How is it that the two disciples waked and talked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus for an extended period of time, but without recognizing Him? They had just spent as much as three years in His presence. They did not recognize His Face, His Body, His walk, His gestures, His mannerisms or His voice - nor even the content of what He was speaking as it related to Him. Only in the breaking of the bread was Jesus made known to them. The breaking of the bread is how Jesus chose to make Himself known. He was not known until and unless He broke the bread and left it to them. He disappeared from their sight and the bread remained. This alteration of His countenance and clothing had occurred much earlier in His ministry at the Transfiguration, so popping back and forth in time was nothing new for him. Movies have flashbacks as well as foreshadowing, don’t they? This is something for us to contemplate.

If what happens to the bread is that it becomes the body of Jesus broken as a re-presentation of the one sacrifice of calvary, how can it be done as a memorial at this point if there was not yet a crucifixion to remember. It all has to be a miracle. For we know Ignatius believed the eucharist was the real flesh…just a little confusing

This is the enigma of our God. All existence is present to Him simultaneously. It is as though He is looking at a huge touch-screen before Him. It makes Him present to each second, minute, hour, day or year. Yet, He can touch each one in any order, whenever He wills it to occur. Yet, in another sense, He is present to all of them simultaneously. Our lives exist along a time line. God simply exists.

Yet, the Eucharist is not primarily a memorial. In memory is how we consume it, but not why we consume it. “Memorial” is what impresses us as we read, but we often forget what preceded those words: “This is My Body…the is My Blood…Do this…” Do what? Eat and drink! We eat and drink in participation with his atoning sacrifice. We must cooperate with His grace. If someone has paid for our meal, we do not benefit unless we actually eat the meal!

Paul wrote that the Eucharist is not a mere memorial, but a “participation” in that selfsame sacrifice. Its nature is incomprehensible to man, but we have Jesus’ words of Truth from the very mouth of Truth Itself.

 

[po18guy]

Paul is admonishing the Corintians that when they do eat they need to be worthy but also any one that eats and drinks not recognizing believing the true nature of what they are eating / drinking are in fact profaning the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

dis·cern/diˈsərn/
Verb:

Perceive or recognize (something).
Distinguish (someone or something) with difficulty by sight or with the other senses.

I Corinthians 10:16-17
Knox Bible (KNOX)
We have a cup that we bless; is not this cup we bless a participation in Christ’s blood? Is not the bread we break a participation in Christ’s body? The one bread makes us one body, though we are many in number; the same bread is shared by all.

To participate is not a simple memorial. It is not to watch the race, but to actually run the race.