The Eucharist Essay -- essays research papers fc

renovation is the central rite of the delivererian religion, in which prize and wine be consecrated by an ordained minister and consumed by the minister and members of the flexure in obedience to Jesus command at the Last Supper, Do this in remembrance of me. In the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, and in the Angli smoke, Lutheran, and umteen other Protestant churches, it is regarded as a sacrament, which both symbolizes and effects the sum total of Christ with the faithful. Baptists and others refer to Holy Communion as an institution, rather than a sacrament, emphasizing obedience to a commandment. Traditionally, Jesus command to his disciples at the Last Supper to take in the bread and drink the wine in remembrance of me constitutes the institution of the Eucharist. This particularised command occurs in two impudent Testament accounts of the Last Supper, Luke 2217-20 and 1 Corinthians 1123-25. Older theology asserts that Jesus gave this command on this occasion to ensure that Christians would break bread and drink wine in his memory as long as the church endured. A hypercritical approach to the Gospel texts, however, has made this conclusion less certain. The command Do this in remembrance of me does not appear in either Matthews or Marks account of the Last Supper. Consequently, a number of scholars have supposed that the undoubted determine of communion with the risen Christ at meals in the days aft(prenominal) Easter inspired in some later traditions the understanding that much(prenominal) communion had been foreseen and commanded by Jesus at the Last Supper. The matter can probably never be resolved with complete satisfaction. In all case, the practice of eating meals in remembrance of the Lord and the belief in the presence of Christ in the breaking of the bread cl early(a) were oecumenic in the early church. The Didache, an early Christian document, refers to the Eucharist twice at some length. The Didache and the New Testament to gether indicate considerable transition in both the practice and the understanding of the Eucharist, but no separate exists of any Christian church in which the sacrament was not celebrated.The maturation of Eucharistic doctrine centers on two ideas presence and sacrifice. In the New Testament, no attempt is made to explain Christs presence at the Eucharist. The theologians of the early church tended to accept Jesus wo... ...s of Scripture readings, a sermon, and prayers. This part of the Eucharist, apparently alter from Jewish synagogue worship, has been prefixed to the service of bread and wine at least since the middle of the 2nd century. The second part of the service, the service of the Upper Room, consists typically of an offering of bread and wine the central Eucharistic prayer the dispersal of the consecrated elements to worshipers and a final blessing and dismissal. This particular part of the service has its roots in the ancient traditional table prayers said at Jewi sh meals.The central Eucharistic prayer, the Anaphora, which is Greek for offering, typically contains a prayer of thanksgiving for the creation of the world and its redemption in Christ an account of the institution of the Last Supper the oblation, or Anamnesisthe offering of the bread and wine in thankful remembrance of Christ the Epiclesis, or plea of the Holy Spirit on the bread and wine and on the multitude and prayers of intercession.BibliographyUnderwood, Karen. The Eucharistic Prayer. New York Dodd, Mead, & Co., 1985 Eucharist, World Book Encyclopedia (1999 edition), IV, 290-92.