The Eucharist and the Laity

There is no greater religious food in the Catholic religion than the Eucharistic Supper that is given at Mass when the priest consecrates the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. This act is called transubstantiation, and for Catholics it is a religious miracle because while the Body and Blood retain the appearance of bread and wine, their substance is believed to contain the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. Those who receive the Eucharistic during Mass and said to consume the Body of Jesus Christ. The priest announces this during Mass when he says to the people what he is doing during the consecration. Catholics believe this practice first occurred at the Last Supper, which is an account recorded in the New Testament, when Jesus turned the bread and wine used for the Pasch (the Jewish feast celebrating the Passover from the time of Moses) and gave to His disciples telling them that it was His Body and Blood and that whoever ate would have eternal life (Pitre).

Since that time, Catholics have celebrated the Mass around this act. Priests are permitted to perform this ritual once per day except on special holy days and in matters of necessity when they must say Mass in multiple places (missionaries for example may say many masses on a Sunday). But Catholics are only obliged to partake of this meal once per year, during the Easter time.

Those who are encouraged to participate in this meal are the priest and those Catholics who are in the state of grace (i.e., a Catholic whose soul is in the state of mortal sin is not encouraged to participate because it is considered a sacrilege to receive the Body and Blood of Christ when not in the state of grace).

The ingredients of the Eucharistic Supper are simple: the host (the bread) is made of unleavened bread, traditionally made by religious sisters; the wine is any red wine.

The traditional way to consume the Eucharist is for the layman to kneel and take the Eucharist on the tongue. Because his hands have not been consecrated like the priest's, it was considered traditionally a sacrilege for a layman to touch the Eucharist with his hands. However, following the changes in the Church made during the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, the deportment of the layman was altered and priests encouraged the laity to accept the Body of Christ (the Eucharist) in their hands and place it in their mouths themselves (Felipe). Traditional Catholics still continue the practice of kneeling and taking the Eucharist on the tongue. Traditionally, only the priest consumes the wine (the Blood of Christ), though in the new order of the Mass (post-Vatican II) the wine is offered to the laity as well.

What is being celebrated and observed in the Eucharistic Supper is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross on Calvary, where He gave His life for sinners that they might be redeemed and allowed into Heaven. Christ's sacrifice on the cross is repeated in an unbloody manner during the sacrifice of the Mass (the Eucharistic Supper) wherein His Body and Blood are once again consumed in an offering to God for the reparation of sinners.

For believing Catholics, this sacrifice is literal and real, but for others it is just considered a symbolic exercise (i.e., for many Protestant Christians who follow the ideas of Protestants like Luther, Calvin, etc., the idea of the transubstantiation is considered unreal and the actions taken by the priest and laity as purely symbolic of the relationship between God and man) (Dorn).

Works Cited

Dorn, Christopher. The Lord's Supper in the Reformed Church in America. NY: Peter

Lang, 2011. Print.

Felipe, Virgilio. The Lord's Supper. IN: Author's House, 2010. Print.

Pitre, Brant. Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist. NY: Image, 2011. Print.