Christ's real presence in Euchrist

The Presence of Christ at the Lord's Supper Is Christ really, truly, personally present with us in the sacrament? Do we therein covenant and commune with him in person, touch to touch, immediately and really; or is this only a show, a symbol of something absent and different from what it seems?

The gross perversions of the Romanists and Ritualists, who have made it altogether a question of the local presence of Christ's flesh and blood, have occasioned much confusion of thought and many prejudices on the subject. Nevertheless, as a matter of fact, every believer knows that Christ is present in the sacrament - that he has, as a matter of fact, experienced his presence. If he is not present really and truly, then the sacrament can have no interest or real value to us. It does not do to say that this presence is only spiritual, because that phrase is ambiguous. If it means that the presence of Christ is not something objective to us, but simply a mental apprehension or idea of him subjectively present to our consciousness, then the phrase is false. Christ as an objective fact is as really present and active in the sacrament as are the bread and wine, or the minister or our fellow-communicants by our side. If it means that Christ is present only as he is represented by the Holy Ghost, it is not wholly true, because Christ is one person and the Holy Ghost another, and it is Christ who is personally present. The Holy Ghost doubtless is coactive in that presence and in all Christ's mediatorial work, but this leads into depths beyond our possible understanding. It does not do to say that the divinity of Christ is present while his humanity is absent, because it is the entire indivisible divine-human Person of Christ which is present.

When Christ promises to his disciples, "LO, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world-age," and, "Where two or three are met together in my name, there am I in the midst of them," he means, of course, that he, the Godman Mediator they loved, trusted, and obeyed, would be with them. His humanity is just as essential as his divinity, otherwise his incarnation would not have been a necessity. His sympathy, his love, his special helpful tenderness are human. He is able to be our perfect High Priest, "being touched with the feeling of our infirmities," because he "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15).

But what do we mean by "presence" ? It is a great mistake to confuse the idea of "presence" with that of nearness in space. This may be a condition of presence, or it may not, but it is never "presence" itself. If you walk abroad at noonday in the tropics, the most overwhelmingly present thing to you in the universe is the intolerable sun, although it is ninety-three millions of miles distance. If another person is only one foot distant, but separated from you by a wall which cuts off sight and sound, he is as absent as if in the center of a distant star. But if the same person, a hundred feet from you in an audience-room, sees you face to face, and hears every vibration of your voice, he is as truly present as if he touched you at every point. When Whitefield's preaching was fully heard and its power felt across the Delaware River, he was present really and truly wherever was heard and his matchless eloquence felt. "Presence," therefore, is not a question of space; it is a relation. Personal presence is such a relation of persons that they are conscious of each other as immediate objects of perception and sources of influence. We know nothing as to the ultimate nature of the union our souls and bodies, yet we are no less certain of the fact. So we need not speculate how it is that Christ, the whole God-man, body, soul, and divinity, is present in the sacrament, but we are absolutely certain of the fact. He has promised it. We have hundreds of times experienced it. We can neither see his face, nor hear his voice with our bodily senses; nevertheless, when we exercise faith, he, the whole Christ, speaks to us, and we hear him; we speak to him, and he hears us; he takes all we give him, he gives us and we receive all of himself. This is real, because he is present. And this is not confined to the sacrament. He makes manifest to our faith the reality of his presence with us, and communicates the same grace to us, on many other occasions and at other times, here and now and in this breaking of bread we have a personal appointment to meet our Lord. And he never disappoints those who thus seek him with faith and love.

Holy Eucharist

The Holy Eucharist is called the "sacrament of sacraments" in the Orthodox
tradition. It is also called the "sacrament of the Church." The eucharist is the
center of the Church's life. Everything in the Church leads to the eucharist,
and all things flow from it. It is the completion of all of the Church's
sacraments -- the source and the goal of all of the Church's doctrines and
institutions.

As with baptism, it must be noted that the eucharistic meal was not invented
by Christ. Such holy ritual meals existed in the Old Testament and in pagan
religions. Generally speaking the "dinner" remains even today as one of the
main ritual and symbolic events in the life of man. The Christian eucharist is
a meal specifically connected with the Passover meal of the Old Testament.
At the end of his life Christ, the Jewish Messiah, ate the Passover meal with
his disciples. Originally a ritual supper in commemoration of the liberation
of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, the Passover meal was transformed by
Christ into an act done in remembrance of him: of his life, death and
resurrection as the new and eternal Passover Lamb who frees men from the
slavery of evil, ignorance and death and transfers them into the everlasting
life of the Kingdom of God.

At the supper Christ took the bread and the wine and ordered his disciples to
eat and drink it as his own Body and Blood. This action thus became the
center of the Christian life, the experience of the presence of the Risen Christ
in the midst of his People (see Mt 26; Mk 14; Lk 22; Jn 6 and 13; Acts
2:41-47; 1 Cor 10-11).

As a word, the term eucharist means thanksgiving. This name is given to the
sacred meal-not only to the elements of bread and wine, but to the whole act
of gathering, praying, reading the Holy Scriptures and proclaiming God's
Word, remembering Christ and eating and drinking his Body and Blood in
communion with him and with God the Father, by the Holy Spirit. The word
eucharist is used because the all-embracing meaning of the Lord's Banquet
is that of thanksgiving to God in Christ and the Holy Spirit for all that he has
done in making, saving and glorifying the world.

The sacrament of the eucharist is also called holy communion since it is the
mystical communion of men with God, with each other, and with all men
and all things in him through Christ and the Spirit. The eucharistic liturgy is
celebrated in the Church every Sunday, the Day of the Lord, as well as on
feast days. Except in monasteries, it is rarely celebrated daily. Holy
Communion is forbidden to all Orthodox Christians on the week days of
Great Lent except in the special communion of the Liturgy of the
Pre-sanctified Gifts (see below) because of its joyful and resurrectional
character. The eucharist is always given to all members of the Church,
including infants who are baptized and confirmed. It is always given in both
forms -- bread and wine. It is strictly understood as being the real presence
of Christ, his true Body and Blood mystically present in the bread and wine
which are offered to the Father in his name and consecrated by the divine
Spirit of God.

In the history of Christian thought, various ways were developed to try to
explain how the bread and the wine become the Body and Blood of Christ in
the eucharistic liturgy. Quite unfortunately, these explanations often became
too rationalistic and too closely connected with certain human philosophies.

One of the most unfortunate developments took place when men began to
debate the reality of Christ's Body and Blood in the eucharist. While some
said that the eucharistic gifts of bread and wine were the real Body and
Blood of Christ, others said that the gifts were not real, but merely the
symbolic or mystical presence of the Body and Blood. The tragedy in both
of these approaches is that what is real came to be opposed to what is
symbolic or mystical.

The Orthodox Church denies the doctrine that the Body and the Blood of
the eucharist are merely intellectual or psychological symbols of Christ's
Body and Blood. If this doctrine were true, when the liturgy is celebrated
and holy communion is given, the people would be called merely to think
about Jesus and to commune with him "in their hearts." In this way, the
eucharist would be reduced to a simple memorial meal of the Lord's last
supper, and the union with God through its reception would come only on
the level of thought or psychological recollection.

On the other hand, however, the Orthodox tradition does use the term
"symbols" for the eucharistic gifts. It calls, the service a "mystery" and the
sacrifice of the liturgy a "spiritual and bloodless sacrifice." These terms are
used by the holy fathers and the liturgy itself.

The Orthodox Church uses such expressions because in Orthodoxy what is
real is not opposed to what is symbolical or mystical or spiritual. On the
contrary! In the Orthodox view, all of reality -- the world and man himself --
is real to the extent that it is symbolical and mystical, to the extent that
reality itself must reveal and manifest God to us. Thus, the eucharist in the
Orthodox Church is understood to be the genuine Body and Blood of Christ
precisely because bread and wine are the mysteries and symbols of God's
true and genuine presence and manifestation to us in Christ. Thus, by eating
and drinking the bread and wine which are mystically consecrated by the
Holy Spirit, we have genuine communion with God through Christ who is
himself "the bread of life" (Jn 6:34, 41).

I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if
anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the
bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh
(Jn 6:51).

Thus, the bread of the eucharist is Christ's flesh, and Christ's flesh is the
eucharistic bread. The two are brought together into one. The word
"symbolical" in Orthodox terminology means exactly this: "to bring together
into one."

Thus we read the words of the Apostle Paul:

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 broken 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 you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as
often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you
proclaim the Lord's death, until he comes. Whoever,
therefore, eats the bread and drinks the cup in an unworthy
manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of
the Lord (1 Cor 11:23-26).

The mystery of the holy eucharist defies analysis and explanation in purely
rational and logical terms. For the eucharist -- and Christ himself -- is indeed
a mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven which, as Jesus has told us, is "not of
this world." The eucharist -- because it belongs to God's Kingdom -- is truly
free from the earth-born "logic" of fallen humanity.

Hearing things like what that misguided soul Woodkirk wrote, I agree that Communion in the hand is a really bad idea. Here's a story from my own experience.

We were at a friend's wedding at our church. There were a lot of non-Catholics present, but our oh-so-eccumenical priest didn't bother to recite the rules for receiving communion. When the time came, I heard a friend of ours who is kind of a joker say to his eight year old daughter, "do you want to go up and get a cookie?" I thought nothing of it, because I thought he was just making an extremely inappropriate joke. He wasn't. Both he and his daughter went up to receive.

Later, when talking to them, we found out that he hadn't been to mass in years. He wanted to know if it was "bad" that he had received communion under those circumstances. We told him, probably, but his ignorance of the gravity situation made it somewhat less of a sin. Regardless, we mentioned that he probably shouldn't receive again unless he's planning on going to confession first. He also mentioned that his daughter had received too, and that she had never received before. He then pulled the consecrated host out of his breast pocket saying, "She didn't like it, so she spit it out. What should I do with it?"

My wife quickly took the host and ate it to prevent further sacrilege. And to think, all that could have been avoided if only the priest had read the rules! It just sickens me.

One of the most unfortunate developments took place when men began to debate the reality of Christ's Body and Blood in the eucharist. While some said that the eucharistic gifts of bread and wine were the real Body and Blood of Christ, others said that the gifts were not real, but merely the symbolic or mystical presence of the Body and Blood. The tragedy in both of these approaches is that what is real came to be opposed to what is symbolic or mystical.

The Orthodox Church denies the doctrine that the Body and the Blood of the eucharist are merely intellectual or psychological symbols of Christ's Body and Blood. If this doctrine were true, when the liturgy is celebrated and holy communion is given, the people would be called merely to think about Jesus and to commune with him "in their hearts." In this way, the eucharist would be reduced to a simple memorial meal of the Lord's last supper, and the union with God through its reception would come only on the level of thought or psychological recollection.

On the other hand, however, the Orthodox tradition does use the term "symbols" for the eucharistic gifts. It calls, the service ....."spiritual and bloodless." These terms are used by the holy fathers and the liturgy itself.

From the Orthodox site, OCA.org

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