The Body and Blood of Christ

 

I wonder what Jesus meant when he said at the Last Supper ‘This is my body: this is my blood’? Should these words be interpretated as reality or symbol? Was Jesus just instructing the apostles to commemorate his memory or was he saying something much more profound  ̶  that the bread and wine were more than a memorial, that they were indeed his body and his blood. Both interpretations  ̶  and many others  ̶  may be discerned in Christian devotion, the more protestant denominations largely accepting the former interpretation of a memorial meal, the Catholics taking the latter interpretation of a substantial transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

​

During the consecration prayer, the priest prays that the bread and wine ‘may be to us his body and blood’, perhaps inclining to a more symbolic interpretation. Note, please, the words to us and also the implications of the use of the dative case rather than the accusative and the profundity of to us. This suggests to me that there is a permitted personal approach to the question of the real presence. Do you believe, do I believe, that the host which we receive is actually the body of Christ or is it, indeed, a very special consecrated symbol we receive physically in holy communion?

​

Twas God the Word that spake it,
He took the Bread and brake it:
And what that Word did make it,
That I believe and take it.

​

These words attributed to Queen Elizabeth I seem to me to encapsulate what is, after all, a great mystery of faith as we replicate Our Lord’s words from the Last Supper during mass.  We should not be preoccupied by theological debate but trust our hearts, our minds - and even our doubts - as we kneel at the altar and offer to God ‘ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice’.

​​​​

Deacon Douglas MacMillan

​

The Collect

​

Almighty and everlasting God,

you have given us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith,

to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity

and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity:

keep us steadfast in this faith,

that we may evermore be defended from all adversities;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.