In course of time the supper was given up, leaving behind what had once been the grace over the bread and the grace over the wine but which were now charged with a new and sublime significance. So, within a few years after the Crucifixion, we find the Eucharist held by itself in the shape familiar to us today: ‘the taking of bread and wine’ (the Offertory), the prayer of blessing (the Consecration), the breaking of the bread, and the Communion.

Thus the Eucharist was not only the original and central devotion of the early Church but was the actual means by which the great truths of Christ’s Person and of the Christian religion were revealed to the first Christians, and preserved among them, years before the New Testament was formed.

And to this day it has remained as the central act of worship, lying at the very heart of the Christian religion. For the Eucharist is Our Lord’s own Service which he has given us with his own hands, a few hours before the nails were driven through them, in order to enable us to obtain what he won for us on the Cross. No other Service can take the place of the Eucharist and no Sunday can be complete without our taking part in it.

We are not fit to approach God because of our sins, and so we remember before him how Our Lord was crucified to save us from the power of sin and to bring us to him. And as we draw near to God in the Eucharist, he welcomes us.

As, therefore, the Crucifixion is the ground of our reconciliation to God, so the Eucharist is the means by which in our everyday life we make that reconciliation our own and enter into it.

References

1. Dix, Dom Gregory (1945) The shape of the liturgy, Westminster: Dacre Press.

2. Dix, Dom Gregory (1945) The shape of the liturgy, Westminster: Dacre Press.

3. Dix, Dom Gregory (1945) The shape of the liturgy, Westminster: Dacre Press.