In last week’s Parish Notices, the small article on the Eucharist looked at the structure of the Eucharist as shaped by the actions of Jesus at the Last Supper. What about the words which accompanied those actions?
The Last Supper is always presented as occurring on the night before Jesus died. The Supper is essentially tied to his death and its meaning in the gospels is pervaded by the imminence of that impending death.
So when Jesus says “This is my body given for you” he is referring to that death the next day and is using the Supper as a way of telling us what his death means. It is no accident that he does this at a meal, that is over bread and wine. And over bread and wine which in the Jewish religious meal referred to the liberation of the people of Israel by means of the Exodus.
Bread (food) gives us life. We need it to keep living. And so Jesus links his death to bread, bread which gives life. The point of this is that “his body given for us” is bread for us – it is about our being given life. It is about our being given life by means of his death. So his death is the source of life for us. He breaks death, he breaks it open so that we can go beyond death into life. (In accord with this you will notice in the Good Friday Liturgy the emphasis is not on Christ’s suffering but on his victory over death). God acts in strange ways: he turns death into a source of life.
And of course we eat bread, we share it. By eating the bread of life we take his new life into ourselves. In the Eucharist we share the gift that Jesus makes of himself to us and for us. We share not just bread but we share in his overcoming of death. We share now the seed of his resurrection. We receive and share the new life he gives us. The Eucharist is indeed the Bread of Life. And in sharing the cup we share in the life he pours out for us on the cross. And scripturally the sharing wine is the sharing of joy and contentment. We rejoice in the gift that Jesus makes of himself to us and for us. In the Eucharist he plants the seed of the resurrection in us.
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Angela Dupuche says:
I believe the most important words are “Do this in memory of me” which I understand to mean we should give ourselves out to bring life to others