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joclucsylv
Guest
Can somebody explain to me why the Church uses unleavened bread for Holy Communion? This question has been asked to me by a Oneness pastor. He believes Jesus used leavened bread.
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fermat
Guest
According to this Jewish source (emphasis added):
And this day shall become a memorial for you, and you shall observe it as a festival for the L-RD, for your generations, as an eternal decree shall you observe it. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove the leaven from your homes … you shall guard the unleavened bread, because on this very day I will take you out of the land of Egypt; you shall observe this day for your generations as an eternal decree. - Exodus 12:14-17
Since Jesus is Jewish, I’m going to defer to the Jews on this one…
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JM3
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rdscheirer
Guest
Passover = Easter
Jesus took the unleavened bread of Passover and said after consecrating it - this is MY BODY WHICH IS GIVEN UP FOR YOU. He took the cup of wine -interestingly at the time it it was only the third cup of four- and said THIS IS MY BLOOD WHICH WILL BE SHED FOR MANY FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS- then HE was arrested in the Garden(Eden?-where it all started-analogy?) Crucified and said IT IS FINISHED meaning the fourth cup of wine for the passover was completed by his blood and death.
Jesus took the unleavened bread of Passover and said after consecrating it - this is MY BODY WHICH IS GIVEN UP FOR YOU. He took the cup of wine -interestingly at the time it it was only the third cup of four- and said THIS IS MY BLOOD WHICH WILL BE SHED FOR MANY FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS- then HE was arrested in the Garden(Eden?-where it all started-analogy?) Crucified and said IT IS FINISHED meaning the fourth cup of wine for the passover was completed by his blood and death.
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joclucsylv
Guest
Where in scripture dies it say unleavened bread though??
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fermat
Guest
Right here:
And this day shall become a memorial for you, and you shall observe it as a festival for the L-RD, for your generations, as an eternal decree shall you observe it. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove the leaven from your homes … you shall guard the unleavened bread, because on this very day I will take you out of the land of Egypt; you shall observe this day for your generations as an eternal decree. - Exodus 12:14-17
Or does he want to know whatNew Testament scripture says it? None, because there was no need to state the very obvious. This is a Passover meal and Exodus states to use unleavened bread. So you can bet He did.
Don’t fall into that trap though. It is in Exodus, plain as day. If he holds that it is not valid, then he is denying scripture. Sometimes in the pursuit of trying to prove the church wrong, people fall into all sorts of contradictions.
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Suscipiat2011
Guest
You forgot to look at fermat’s answer.
It is more than scripture, though, it is our tradition and the Roman Rite has always used unleavened bread due to the passover feast requiring unleavend bread.
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Suscipiat2011
Guest
Fermat, you beat me to the punch!
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fermat
Guest
Just barely though!
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TimothyH
Guest
God gives Moses and Aaron the instructions for the first passover night in Exodus 12.
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God commands that Israel to keep the passover perpetually.
Christ would have used unleavened bread when he instituted the Eucharist on the night he celebrated the passover with the 12 Apostles.
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joclucsylv
Guest
Thank you!!!
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rdscheirer
Guest
Let us see- God told Abraham to sacrifice Issac on Mt. Moriah and it ends (contiues) with the sacrifice of Jesus on the same mountain. Only God could do this.
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Dakota_Roberts
Guest
The Catholic Church uses both leavened and unleavened bread, Latins aren’t the only Catholics
PS Jews were supposed to have gotten rid of all the leavened bread at the time the Supper happened, it’s unlikely they used leavened bread since they most likely didn’t have any leaven bread.
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patrick457
Guest
Minor trivia: the site where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre now stands was actually a quarry in the 1st century. The tradition of ‘Mount’ Calvary only came into being in the late 4th-5th century, when Christians began to be more specific about identifying the ‘Golgotha’ of the Gospels with a finger of rock (which itself is too small and narrow to be even called a hill!) in the area, known today as the Rock of Calvary. Before this, the idea seems to have been that ‘Golgotha’ referred to the whole quarry area in general rather than a specific spot within it. It was around this same time that a connection began to be established between the Rock of Calvary and Mount Moriah: after all, Isaac was a type of Jesus, right? And there have been an increasing tendency amongst Christians to appropriate and adapt certain Jewish traditions: the Temple Mount, for instance, is identified as Mount Moriah in the Bible (2 Chronicles 3:1) as well as the spot where Adam was created, and even where the created world began to spring out in some Jewish legends (cf. Golgotha as the resting-place of Adam’s skull and the center of the world).
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Geaux_LSU
Guest
Why do the Orthodox Christians use leavened bread?
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promethius
Guest
They have a tradition that dates back to the eighth century, centered around the mistaken argument that Christ might have used leavened bread for passover (an argument which can only be promulgated if one has spent little or no time with Jews during passover, when even touching leaven is forbidden).
Why the orthodox use leavened bread.
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patrick457
Guest
I should mention here that it’s not just the Orthodox, but also Eastern Catholics who use leavened bread. (Not all Eastern and Oriental Churches do of course: Armenians and Maronites for instance use unleavened bread - the latter because of Latin influence).
Back in the early Christian period, the bread used in the Eucharist in many churches are usually ordinary round loaves (usitatus ‘in common use’, i.e. the kind you buy off the bakery or make and eat at home), which were, of course, leavened. The congregation would usually present loaves of bread (as well as wine) during the Offertory, which would then be placed upon the Altar (considering the size of the loaves, the Altar would be literally loaded with them!
). In some places the celebrant would even inspect the best loaf out of these, and then use it as the ‘main’ Host.http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/3238/pbps39breadu.jpg
Carbonized Roman bread found in the ruins of Pompeii
We don’t know the exact cause for the shift to unleavened bread or even when it happened in places like the West (the matter of the Armenian Church is also tricky: some claim that it used azymes from the beginning, while others claim that it shifted customs at an unspecified time period), but probable reasons as to why are: (1) practicality, since unleavened bread did not spoil as quickly as leavened bread did, and it did not leave as much crumbs as ordinary loaves did; and (2) a desire to emulate more the actual bread that Jesus might have used in the Last Supper (also perhaps under the influence of St. Paul’s words about the “azyme of sincerity and truth”) and to draw a clearer distinction between the sacred and the profane.
The whole issue about leaven on the Eucharistic bread only became a huge one during the Great Schism, when the Greeks accused both the Latins and Armenians for using azymes. In the Greek view, bread (artos) is not really ‘bread’ if it did not have leaven in it (it would be azymos ‘unleavened’ - and so the Bible calls it
). And since the Gospels say that Jesus took artos (and not azymos) at the Last Supper, the will of God is clearly not being followed and so Latins and Armenians are in a very questionable position, or so the argument goes. Also, there is the accusation of ‘Judaizing’: were these two Churches trying to emulate/keep Jewish custom by using azymes, and if so, are they not guilty of the fault of the Judaizers, whom the Apostles condemned?
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Mintaka
Guest
Many Eastern Rites of Catholics and Eastern Orthodox churches use leavened bread partly because that’s the tradition in their area, and partly to emphasize that Christians aren’t bound to the same Passover/Easter rules as Jews.
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