The Last Supper

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Faith1960

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We’ve been questioning this a lot on another CAF sub-forum but I wanted new people to chime in. Maybe fresh ideas will help. We all know that the Eucharist is the glorified Jesus , Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity but how was He the Eucharist at the Last Supper?

Was the Eucharist glorified? (If so, can someone send some links that say so – a Fr. Hardin says it wasn’t)

Was it because He’s God and isn’t bound by time and space? (If so, can you explain how that relates to the first Eucharist being Jesus’s body and blood)

Was it by the power of Jesus as God that He could make the Eucharist His body and blood while not being glorified yet? (And if so, how could He be hidden under the appearances, if He hadn’t been glorified yet?

Or WHAT? HOW?
 
Faith1960 said:
We’ve been questioning this a lot on another CAF sub-forum but I wanted new people to chime in. Maybe fresh ideas will help. We all know that the Eucharist is the glorified Jesus , Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity but how was He the Eucharist at the Last Supper?

Was the Eucharist glorified? (If so, can someone send some links that say so – a Fr. Hardin says it wasn’t)

Was it because He’s God and isn’t bound by time and space? (If so, can you explain how that relates to the first Eucharist being Jesus’s body and blood)

Was it by the power of Jesus as God that He could make the Eucharist His body and blood while not being glorified yet? (And if so, how could He be hidden under the appearances, if He hadn’t been glorified yet?

Or WHAT? HOW?
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At the last supper, Jesus Christ said that his body would be broken and his blood would be shed. That is future tense. Since Jesus had not yet been glorified through resurrection his body and blood were not then the glorified form.
 
What you are asking is a mystery. No one will ever know the answer. There comes a point when even the most intellectual aspects of theology will break down. Just remember that as true God and true Man, there was nothing that Jesus could not do.
 
Vico said:
At the last supper, Jesus Christ said that his body would be broken and his blood would be shed. That is future tense. Since Jesus had not yet been glorified through resurrection his body and blood were not then the glorified form.
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This is correct, of course.

Think of the New Covenant. Another word for Covenants is Testament.
As in Last Will and Testament.

WHEN does the New Covenant/Testament take affect? AFTER Jesus dies. It cannot be effective before then because the person making out the will is still living –

So at the Last Supper Jesus INSTITUTES communion. The eating of the bread and drinking of the blood that WILL BE done in His memory. In the future, as Vico says.

So I’d have to say it wasn’t glorified then as it is at Mass.

BTW, when was the first mass?
Emmaus?? I think so.

Fran
 
frangiuliano115 said:
This is correct, of course.

Think of the New Covenant. Another word for Covenants is Testament.
As in Last Will and Testament.

WHEN does the New Covenant/Testament take affect? AFTER Jesus dies. It cannot be effective before then because the person making out the will is still living –

So at the Last Supper Jesus INSTITUTES communion. The eating of the bread and drinking of the blood that WILL BE done in His memory. In the future, as Vico says.

So I’d have to say it wasn’t glorified then as it is at Mass.

BTW, when was the first mass?
Emmaus?? I think so.

Fran
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Hi Fran,

Sorry I have to disagree with this. The first mass was the last supper, however it was not completed until his death on the cross. When he took the bread and wine, he said “this IS my body/blood”. Therefore at the last supper it truly was his flesh and blood.

I think it does have to do with God being outside of time in this instance. Mary was saved from original sin because the graces of redemption were applied to her in the past. I think this is similar.

If the apostles did not receive his glorified body, then they did not receive his body at all. OR, they received his unglorified body, which leads to the reason why the disciples left him in John 6, essentially cannibalism. If it was not Christ’s glorified body, than what graces did they receive from it? How could they duplicate this in memory of me, if what they would later do was actually something different, even if they didn’t know that. In a way, it almost makes Jesus into a liar or misleading the disciples.

That is all the time I have at the moment so I’ll leave it at that.
 
spiderweb said:
Hi Fran,

Sorry I have to disagree with this. The first mass was the last supper, however it was not completed until his death on the cross. When he took the bread and wine, he said “this IS my body/blood”. Therefore at the last supper it truly was his flesh and blood.

I think it does have to do with God being outside of time in this instance. Mary was saved from original sin because the graces of redemption were applied to her in the past. I think this is similar.

If the apostles did not receive his glorified body, then they did not receive his body at all. OR, they received his unglorified body, which leads to the reason why the disciples left him in John 6, essentially cannibalism. If it was not Christ’s glorified body, than what graces did they receive from it? How could they duplicate this in memory of me, if what they would later do was actually something different, even if they didn’t know that. In a way, it almost makes Jesus into a liar or misleading the disciples.

That is all the time I have at the moment so I’ll leave it at that.
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Spiderweb,

It couldn’t have been the first Mass because Jesus was still alive. The Mass is a remembrance of something. What were they remembering at the Last Supper? Certainly not Jesus death on the cross since it hadn’t happened yet! He INSTITUTED the mass at this time, it wasn’t CELEBRATED. I’d say that was at Emmaus, or possibly in Acts 2:42 and feven before then. Most of the priests I know think it was at Emmaus and I agree. Jesus broke the bread and drank the wine with the two disciples for the first time.

Thankfully, I’ve learned how to copy and paste because my word does not have to be accepted on these threads. So here’s an article from the internet written by priests. I believe it’s called Word Press. I’m not good at saving the site yet, but I’m learning!

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Why the Last Supper Was Not the First Mass

Jesus-Eucharist-MassThe purpose of this post is to follow up my last one on why the Last Supper was not the First Mass. The next post on Holy Thursday will try to explain exactly what it was: An eschatological banquet enacting a surrogate for sacrifice. But first things first. Four points:
  1. A Mass requires the whole Paschal Mystery. The Mass is an anamnetic moment. It is a moment in which the believing community is brought back to the dynamic movement of the Paschal Mystery so as to enter into that moment and imitate the loving self-sacrificial actions of Christ.
Side note: There has been a danger in post-Tridentine theology to speak of the Mass as a re-presentation of the sacrifice of Christ. But this interpretation both fails to take the book of Hebrews seriously and also misunderstands the Jewish concept of “remembrance,” azkarah. Jewish remembrance does not mean that the past event is brought into the present and enacted again. Rather, it means that those who partake in the ritual action are themselves re-presented to the past event. At the Mass, the community of believers becomes present to the Paschal Mystery. Christ is not re-offered or re-presented on the altar of the priest. Rather, the believing community is re-presented to the sacrifice of Christ and, through the power of the Spirit, made part of that self-offering to the Father. Side note over.

The Mass is a memorial of the Paschal mystery. But without that mystery, there could not be a Mass at the Last Supper.
  1. A Mass requires the Resurrection. It would only lead to heresy, in my opinion, to posit that when Jesus said at the Last Supper: “This is my body,” the bread became his body. What body did it become? His physical body? That is heretical. His resurrected body? More likely… except the resurrection had not happened yet. Catholic theology has always taken temporality and history very seriously, so I think it is important that we not think that Jesus could somehow offer himself to his disciples in his resurrected form before the resurrection had even taken place!
ONE
 
TWO
  1. A Mass requires the sending of the Holy Spirit. Without an Epiclesis, there is no Mass. yet, according to whichever tradition you prefer, the Holy Spirit was not sent until, in John’s gospel, Jesus died and rose, and in Luke’s gospel, until the feast of Pentecost. Either way, while the traditions don’t agree completely with one another, they do agree that Christ sent his Spirit. And that Spirit is the one who transforms both the eucharistic elements and us into the living body and blood of Jesus.
First_MassSo to summarize thus far, a Mass includes: The Last Supper, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, Sending of the Spirit. It is a memorial of all those, not just of Jesus’ last meal with his disciples. The Mass we take part in as believers re-presents us to all of the events that took place from Last Supper to Sending of the Spirit. None of those moments are lost in the process. So that last meal was something very important. But it was not a Mass.
  1. A Mass requires… a Mass. I’m not trying to be snarky here. My point is that, just as we have to be very careful about, say, calling Peter the “first pope,” or the first disciples of Jesus “the first Catholics,” so in a similar way, we should be careful — but even more so, in view of the arguments above — about calling the Last Supper the “first Mass.” The Mass itself took a long time to develop, nor has there ever been one Mass. This second point is very important. There is a reason that there are at least 22 rites in the Catholic Church, including one that does not even have “words of institution.” This is because there has never been one Mass, but only many Masses. Historical critical scholarship, despite its best efforts, has never been able to give us the exact words of Jesus at that Last Supper, and that is almost certainly because it was never remembered in one way. The Last Supper was remembered in different ways in different communities using a variety of words and rituals. As Basil the Great explains to us:
Have any saints left for us in writing the words to be used in the invocation over the Eucharistic bread and the cup of blessing? As everyone knows, we are not content in the liturgy simply to recite the words recorded by St. Paul and the Gospels, but we add other words both before and after, words of great importance for this mystery. We have received these words from unwritten teaching.

There have always been many Masses and many traditions of the words of Jesus. That first generative moment led Jesus into his Passion and sparked many forms of ritualized prayer that we call many rites of the Mass. But that supper never gave us ‘one Mass.’

So what was the Last Supper? That I will discuss on Thursday. In the meantime, let us enter into this week remembering the words of the author of the Gospel of John: “Having loved his own who were it the world, he loved them to the end.” The Last Supper was the beginning of this loving to the end, and it for the sake of learning how to love to the end that we participate in Mass.

This is basically for the OP, but you might find it interesting too.

Fran
 
"At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of his Body and Blood. He did this in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the centuries until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us" (Sacrosanctum Concilium 47).
 
From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

“The Western Mass, like all Liturgies, begins, of course, with the Last Supper.”
 
Tim_D said:
"At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of his Body and Blood. He did this in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the centuries until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us" (Sacrosanctum Concilium 47).
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Tim D

Instituted is different from Celebrated.

How could we catholics disagree on EVERYTHING??

I posted what I had to post.

It makes perfect sense to me.

You could take it up with the priests who wrote the article.

Fran
p.s. Have you studied the New Covenant??
 
frangiuliano115 said:
I posted what I had to post.

It makes perfect sense to me.

You could take it up with the priests who wrote the article.
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Are you suggesting that the opinion of a priest “who wrote the article” trumps the teaching authority of the Church as summarized in Sacrosanct Concilium?

Even the classic Catholic Encyclopedia says the same.

How is that they are all wrong, yet you are correct?
 
Tim_D said:
Are you suggesting that the opinion of a priest “who wrote the article” trumps the teaching authority of the Church as summarized in Sacrosanct Concilium?

Even the classic Catholic Encyclopedia says the same.

How is that they are all wrong, yet you are correct?
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Back to my OP, was the Eucharist at the Last Supper glorified or not? Links would be appreciated.
 
Tim_D said:
Are you suggesting that the opinion of a priest “who wrote the article” trumps the teaching authority of the Church as summarized in Sacrosanct Concilium?

Even the classic Catholic Encyclopedia says the same.

How is that they are all wrong, yet you are correct?
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Please post both.
Pope Paul VI’s encyclical is about number 40 or so.
I’m not familiar with what the Catholic Encyclopedia says.
Should we check with the CCC too?

Which would be no. 1343, BTW.

Are our priests not to be trusted? Didn’t they study enough?

If you post both, readers will be able to make up their own mind. I’m not asking anyone to believe me.
 
Faith1960 said:
Back to my OP, was the Eucharist at the Last Supper glorified or not. Links would be appreciated.
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It was His body and blood. Since Jesus was not glorified until His resurrection, then I would venture to say that no, it was not glorified.
 
Tim_D said:
It was His body and blood. Since Jesus was not glorified until His resurrection, then I would venture to say that no, it was not glorified.
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Then how could it be Jesus, if He could walk through walls and such only after He was glorified?
 
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