What you are thinking of is an Agape meal. It is mentioned in the Didache I think (or one of those ancient documents). It is a meal that sort of resembles the Eucharist only there is no consecration. It is a sharing of bread and wine more as a community meal. I have experienced it several times but it was always made clear that what we were doing is not Eucharist. We usually used leavened bread.
Today at Thanksgiving mass the pastor blessed loaves of bread after mass and people were told to take a loaf home and pass it around the table as a sign of unity and love (agape is the highest form of love)
Ah yes, the
agape, one of the Greek words for “love,” implying a divine, unconditional, self-sacrificing, active, volitional, and thoughtful love; the love of a spouse or family, or affection for a particular activity, in contrast to
philia, which could denote either brotherhood or generally non-sexual affection, and
eros, an affection of a sexual nature.
Soon after the year 100, Ignatius of Antioch refers to the agape or love-feast. In a letter to the Emperor Trajan, the Roman historian Pliny the Younger perhaps indicates, in about 112, that the meal was normally taken separately from the Eucharistic celebration: he speaks of the Christians separating after having offered prayer, on the morning of a fixed day, to Christ as to a god, and reassembling later for a common meal. Tertullian too seems to write of these meals, though what he describes is not quite clear. Clement of Alexandria (c.150-211/216) distinguished so-called “Agape” meals of luxurious character from the
agape (love) “
which the food that comes from Christ shows that we ought to partake of.” Accusations of gross indecency were sometimes made against the form that these meals sometimes took. Eventually, its connection with the Eucharist had virtually ceased by the time of St. Cyprian (??-258).
St. Augustine also objected to the continuance in North Africa of the custom of such meals, in which some indulged to the point of drunkenness, and he distinguished them from proper celebration of the Eucharist: “
Let us take the body of Christ in communion with those with whom we are forbidden to eat even the bread which sustains our bodies.” He reports that even before the time of his stay in Milan, the custom had already been forbidden there.
