The Eucharist in the Early Church
Part VII: The Bread of Eternal Life
This is the seventh in a seven-part series on the Eucharist in the Early Church.
This series began as an attempt to show, by reference to the earliest witnesses, the consistency of the Church’s teaching on the Most Holy Eucharist. Scholars who surmise that the Eucharist began as a simple symbolic meal that was disfigured into a complex and arcane ritual miss the continuity of the Church’s Tradition. They also miss the close relationship between Our Lord’s own words in the Gospels and the early ritual of the Mass. This is no truer than when Christ himself speaks about eternal life in the Bread of Life Discourse: “Whoever eats [literally ‘gnaws’] my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day” (Jn. 6:54). The final question we will pursue: how does the Eucharist bring about eternal life?
The simple answer is that Jesus in the Eucharist nourishes us with grace, and grace is the seed of glory. The more we live in grace, the more we live in God and the more we are prepared to live eternally with Him. St. Irenaeus of Lyons (2nd c.) draws a connection between the grain of wheat that dies and becomes the Eucharist (cf. Jn. 12:24) and our human bodies that, “nourished by it [Eucharist] and deposited in the earth and suffering decomposition, shall rise at their appointed time.” Like grains of wheat, we who die with the Bread of Life will rise again to glory. Even though our bodies are naturally mortal, St. Gregory of Nyssa (4th c.) reminds the faithful, “Christ’s immortal body, when it is within him who eats, changes the whole mortal body into its own nature.” Unlike earthly food that is assimilated into our mortal nature through consumption, Jesus makes us a part of his immortal nature when we share in communion.
The risen flesh of Christ, present in the Eucharist, is therefore the source and the pledge of our future resurrection. It is the promise of eternal life and the necessary strength for the journey toward this resurrection, symbolized in The Lord of the Rings by the lembas bread of the elves. Sustaining us spiritually rather than physically, this way-bread (viaticum) is especially important in our final days as food for the journey toward Heaven. It forms an integral part of the Last Rites that the Church provides to our departing brothers and sisters.
If nothing else is remembered or gained from this bulletin series, I want you to remember just how precious a treasure the Eucharist is for the Church. Everything we believe about the Eucharist flows from our belief in Jesus’ Real Presence. It’s why the structure of the Mass has remained so consistent, it’s why we care about obtuse words like ‘transubstantiation’, why we search for foreshadowings in the Old Testament, and why we strive to live in communion with one another and God and approach the Eucharist with the proper disposition and spiritual state. As we come forward each week, let us strive to say “Amen” with greater devotion to the Bread of Life so that we may rise again on the last day.