The Lord's Supper

[ssms27]

1 cor 11:33 So then, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another-- 34 if any one is hungry, let him eat at home–lest you come together to be condemned. About the other things I will give directions when I come.

It seems that after discussing the Lord’s supper that Paul tells the church to eat at home if they can’t wait to eat when they participate in the Lord’s supper. This seems to be a real meal and nothing like what we see in today’s Communion.

My question is how is this verse understood in Catholic Theology? I’m not posting this in the Apologetics thread because my interest is on the Church’s teaching not a debate.

 

[jay29]

When Jesus said, “This is My Body” and “This is My Blood” I believe Him

 

[ssms27]

Again, I’m not really looking for debate. I’m not going to reply if I think an explanation is right, wrong or stupid; all I’m looking for is an explanation.

 

[benedictgal]

Again, I’m not really looking for debate. I’m not going to reply if I think an explanation is right, wrong or stupid; all I’m looking for is an explanation.

We need to read these texts the way that the Church reads them. You can’t isolate this particular passage without looking at the rest of the rest of the story (forgive me for sounding too much like Paul Harvey). The Church does not read these texts in a vaccuum. Remember, before the Scripture was canonized, all we had were oral tradition, the Gospels and the Epistles.

During the Last Supper, Jesus anticipated his Sacrifice on Calvary and, using the framework of the Passover, offered himself, under the forms of bread and wine, as our Paschal Lamb. When he says, “This is my Body…this is my Blood”, they are, in fact, what they become. In the context of the Passover, Jesus, himself became the Priest and Sacrificial Victim.

If you go further into First Corinthians, you will note that St. Paul says,

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that, on the night that the Lord Jesus was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it saying “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way also the chalice, after supper, saying, “This chalice is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in rememberance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink this chalice, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

Now, in the verse immediatly before it (the one you quoted), St. aul is not merely referring to a meal in the ordinary sense of the word. This “Lord’s Supper” is, in fact, the Mass. Granted, in the very earliest days of the Church, they did not celebrate the Holy Sacrifice in buildings similar to what we have seen in later years), they gathered in people’s houses. The Jews, at the time, were persecuting the early Church (remember, Saul was one of them) and so they could not meet openly. When Rome began its persecutions full throttle, the Church had to meet clandestinely, hence they moved to the catecombs.

I hope I have answered your question as best I can.

 

[Pax]

The reference that Paul is making involves agape meals of celebration that were companion celebrations to the offering of the “prayers and the breaking of the bread” which is the mass and Eucharist. There were abuses occuring and Paul was interested in curbing and eliminating the abuses.

I hope this helps.

 

[benedictgal]

The reference that Paul is making involves agape meals of celebration that were companion celebrations to the offering of the “prayers and the breaking of the bread” which is the mass and Eucharist. There were abuses occuring and Paul was interested in curbing and eliminating the abuses.

I hope this helps.

Well, even in Apostolic times there were abuses. Like Pope Benedict said, there has never been a golden age in liturgy.

But, Pax is right. Later on in the text, St. Paul makes some very strong statements:

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judge ourselves truly, we shoul dnot be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

So then, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another–if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home–lest you come together to be condemned.

And in the passage immediately preceding the text that you used, ssms27, comes the admonishment to which Pax refers:

But, in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together, it is not for the better, but for the worst. For in the first place, when you assemble as a Church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and I partly believe it, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

Ssms27, when you isolate just one passage (without reading what comes before it and after it) and try to interpret it on your own, you don’t get a clear picture of what is happening. It happens to all of us. That is why, as I stated in my earlier post, you need to read Scripture with the Church and understand it how She, through the Magesterium, interprets it.

 

[otjm]

It might help to remember that in the earliest church, there were no churches; they would meet on Saturday at synagogue, and would gather in a house on Sunday to “break bread”, which is to say, have a Eucharistic Meal. It took a while before the persecutions started and they would meet in the catacombs to celebrate Mass, as that was not until Christianity had spread far enough and was casuing enough division to come tot he serious attention of the Romans.

 

[ssms27]

Thanks to Benedictgal, Pax, otjm,

I didn’t think I was isolating the text…the problem I found was when reading it in context. What I was picturing is something like a normal meal with the family mixed with communion. Your explanations helped clear this up.

 

[bpbasilphx]

<<This seems to be a real meal and nothing like what we see in today’s Communion. >>

This is not an issue that can be answered on a computer board. Books have been written about it.

Check out Dom Gregory Dix’s THE SHAPE OF THE LITURGY.

 

[scylla]

Thanks to Benedictgal, Pax, otjm,

I didn’t think I was isolating the text…the problem I found was when reading it in context. What I was picturing is something like a normal meal with the family mixed with communion. Your explanations helped clear this up.

Your right sometimes it was a meal mixed with the Eucharist, back then there were abuses in people mixing things with worship, as they were still organizing and people were disobedient, as they are disobedient today.

As someone else said too, agape meals were something that people practiced until they were finally ended, because of abuse.
Maybe, not really though, since many Catholics have coffee and donuts after Mass. (that is our modern day agape meal)

God Bless
Scylla

 

[AJV]

A description of an Agape:

What wonder if that great love of Christians towards one another is desecrated by you! For you abuse also our humble feasts, on the ground that they are extravagant as well as infamously wicked. To us, it seems, applies the saying of Diogenes: “The people of Megara feast as though they were going to die on the morrow; they build as though they were never to die!”

But one sees more readily the mote in another’s eye than the beam in his own. Why, the very air is soured with the eructations of so many tribes, and curiæ, and decuriæ. The Salii cannot have their feast without going into debt; you must get the accountants to tell you what the tenths of Hercules and the sacrificial banquets cost; the choicest cook is appointed for the Apaturia, the Dionysia, the Attic mysteries; the smoke from the banquet of Serapis will call out the firemen.

Yet about the modest supper-room of the Christians alone a great ado is made. Our feast explains itself by its name. The Greeks call it agapè, i.e., affection. Whatever it costs, our outlay in the name of piety is gain, since with the good things of the feast we benefit the needy; not as it is with you, do parasites aspire to the glory of satisfying their licentious propensities, selling themselves for a belly-feast to all disgraceful treatment,—but as it is with God himself, a peculiar respect is shown to the lowly.

If the object of our feast be good, in the light of that consider its further regulations. As it is an act of religious service, it permits no vileness or immodesty. The participants, before reclining, taste first of prayer to God. As much is eaten as satisfies the cravings of hunger; as much is drunk as befits the chaste. They say it is enough, as those who remember that even during the night they have to worship God; they talk as those who know that the Lord is one of their auditors. After manual ablution, and the bringing in of lights, each is asked to stand forth and sing, as he can, a hymn to God, either one from the holy Scriptures or one of his own composing,—a proof of the measure of our drinking. As the feast commenced with prayer, so with prayer it is closed.

We go from it, not like troops of mischief-doers, nor bands of vagabonds, nor to break out into licentious acts, but to have as much care of our modesty and chastity as if we had been at a school of virtue rather than a banquet. Give the congregation of the Christians its due, and hold it unlawful, if it is like assemblies of the illicit sort: by all means let it be condemned, if any complaint can be validly laid against it, such as lies against secret factions. But who has ever suffered harm from our assemblies? We are in our congregations just what we are when separated from each other; we are as a community what we are individuals; we injure nobody, we trouble nobody. When the upright, when the virtuous meet together, when the pious, when the pure assemble in congregation, you ought not to call that a faction, but a curia—**

newadvent.org/fathers/0301.htm

 

[Prayerjohn]

after reading 1Cor 33-34 it sound like its talking about not having disorder in their masses.

 

[benedictgal]

after reading 1Cor 33-34 it sound like its talking about not having disorder in their masses.

Yep. Like I said earlier, there were even problems back then, too. But, that’s for another thread.