The Lord’s Body and Blood

But when the first Eucharist was held, things were very different.  For by then Our Lord’s Body, through which his Blood had coursed while on earth, had been changed at his Resurrection on Easter Day into a spiritual, heavenly Body.  He could now appear or disappear in it indoors or out of doors as he wished.  So during the 40 days from Easter to Ascension Day the Apostles knew that he was near them, whether they saw him or not.  And after he had gone back to Heaven in his Risen Body on Ascension Day, he was still near them; for, since Heaven is where God is seen and God is not far away, so Jesus who is there is not far away either.

This is my Body, this is my Blood

At the Eucharist, therefore, the words, “This is my Body, This is my Blood”, could come true and did come true.  And when the Apostles, in obedience to Our Lord’s command, did what he had done at the Last Supper, and took the bread and wine and offered his Body and Blood to God, then the bread and wine became what they offered, as he had said: “This is my Body, This is my Blood”.  And the Apostles knew that, under the forms of Bread and Wine, Our Lord Jesus Christ was hidden in his Risen and Ascended Body, present unseen in their midst as surely as he had been on Easter Day.

This is exactly what he had promised them, and when Jesus gives his word he always keeps it.  When he was in the synagogue at Capernaum a year before his Crucifixion and Ascension, he explained it very plainly in these words: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven …and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (NRSV, John 6:51).  Some of those who heard him say this, not knowing that what he was talking about was going to happen after his Resurrection and Ascension, could not understand it at all. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” they asked.  But Jesus went on, “…my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.  Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (NRSV, John 6:52,55,56).  That is what John the Apostle heard Jesus say with his own lips.

And in the year 110 AD, that is within about 10 years after the death of St John, St Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch in Syria, was being taken to Rome to be thrown to the lions there in the Colosseum.  And in one of his letters which he wrote on that journey, he said, “…the Eucharist is the flesh of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, which flesh suffered for our sins and which in his loving-kindness (God) the Father raised up (from the dead)”. (1)