Yet it was not so much that the people of God went to the Eucharist as that the Eucharist formed them into the people of God.  By receiving Sunday by Sunday in Communion the actual Risen and Ascended Body of Christ – the living Bread from Heaven – they became a real and living part of himself; and being thus all made one with him they also thereby became truly and actually one Body, the Body of Christ.  That is why the Eucharist was and is and always will be the centre of the Christian life, not only the life of the individual member of the Church but of the Church itself as a whole.

There could be no direr punishment than for a Christian to be excommunicated – to be excluded from the Eucharist.  What a long way we have travelled from those days to these when many voluntarily and deliberately excommunicate themselves!

But it is still true that the glorified Body of Christ, which we receive in the Eucharist, is continually making the communicants into his Body, into the people of God.  And so just before the Communion, at the Breaking of Bread, the priest says:

“We break this bread
to share in the body of Christ”.

And the people all respond:

“Though we are many, we are one body,
because we all share in one bread”. (1)

Reference

1. © The Archbishops’ Council (2000) Common Worship: Holy Communion, Order One.  Available from:
http://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-worship/worship/texts/principal-services/holy-communion/orderone.aspx (Accessed 02 June 2012) (Internet).