Reasons to Believe by Scott Hahn

Author:Scott Hahn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780385521857
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2007-05-08T04:00:00+00:00

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it, and said, “This is My body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” (1 Cor 11:23–25)

A command cannot get much simpler or more direct than that: Just do it.

And so the early Christians did, wherever they went. I have already mentioned the passage from Acts (2:42, 46) where Luke lists “the breaking of the bread” among the defining characteristics of the Church. The remaining chapters of Acts bear this out, as we repeatedly see the community “do this” in remembrance of Jesus (see, for example, Acts 20:7 and 27:35). In Acts 13:2 we find the public worship of the Church described by a word familiar to Catholics, and that is “liturgy” (from the Greek root leitourgia). We see, in that passage, that the Apostles, like modern Catholics, fasted for the celebration of the Mass.

What Jesus did, and what He commanded the Apostles to do, Catholics continue to do today.

Like so many other details in the life of Jesus, this one was foretold and foreshadowed in the Old Testament. The Church’s Eucharistic prayers emphasize this by mentioning the sacrifices of Abel and Abraham and the bread and wine offered by Melchizedek. We have already seen that the Church Fathers saw the universality of the Mass as a fulfillment of the prophet Malachi’s “pure offering,” from east to west (Mal 1:11). The Fathers also cherished the Mass as the fulfillment of a “Wisdom’s banquet” of bread and wine (Prv 9:1–6), and as the true wayfarer’s bread signified by the angel’s feeding of the prophet Elijah (1 Kgs 19:5–7). As the Israelites revered the bread of the presence (Ex 25:29) and drew holiness from it (Lev 24:9), so the Church worshiped the Real Presence in the Eucharist and experienced it as a source of grace.

Jesus taught that the Eucharist was foreshadowed in the manna given by God during Israel’s exodus from Egypt (see Jn 6:49–51). Indeed, long before the Last Supper, Jesus Himself foreshadowed the Eucharist by multiplying bread to feed His congregations, by repeatedly evoking banquet scenes in His preaching, and by choosing to be born in a town named Bethlehem (Hebrew for “House of Bread”). In an extended, explicit foretelling, He detailed the theology of His Eucharistic presence in the famous “Bread of Life” discourse (Jn 26–58). “I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh” (Jn 6:51). His flesh is bread; His blood is drink. This corresponds directly to His pronouncements over the

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