Eucharist and Lord's Supper

EUCHARIST AND LORD'S SUPPER 81
immediately after it had been blessed. So in the liturgical 'four-action'
shape of the rite, it is broken at once after the blessing (by the eucharistia,
along with the wine) for communion which follows immediately. But
though there is nothing in the record of the last supper to suggest that our
Lord made any point of the broken bread representing His own Body
'broken' on the cross (and in fact the fourth gospel makes a strong point of
the fact that His Body was not broken? the symbolism was bound to
suggest itself to somebody. The reading 'This is My Bodywhich is broken
(klomenon) for you' in I Cor. xi. 24, adopted by the A.V. alongside the
other (more strongly attested) ancient interpolation 'given for you', is the
proof that this symbolism of the fraction as representing the passion was
explicitly adopted in some quarters in the second century.
(4) The communion. It appears to have been the universal tradition in
the pre-Nicene church that all should receive communion standing. This
was the posture in which the cup of blessing was received at the chaburah
meal, though the broken bread was received sitting or reclining at table.
Presumably the change in posture for receiving the bread was made when
the meal was separated from the eucharist. The jews stood for the recitation
of the berakahand to receive the cup of blessing, and this affected the
bread, too, when its distribution came to be placed between the end of the
berakah and the handing of the cup.
Communion ended the rite, just as the handing of the cup was the last
of those points in the chaburah meeting to which our Lord had attached
a special meaning. The psalm which ended the chabUrah meal therefore
reappears at the agape, not at the eucharist. There was thus no 'than..1{sgiving'
at the end of the primitive eucharist. The berakah was itself a
'Thanksgiving' and this was the meaning of eucharistia also. The idea of a
corporate 'thanksgiving for the Thanksgiving' could only come to appear
reasonable after the church had lost all contact with the jewish origins of
the rite. Even then the tradition was for centuries too strong to be set aside
that the bsrakah or eucharistia was the only prayer in the rite, which must
express in words its whole meaning-from the offertory to the communion.
It is only in the iourtb~.ertWry that a ~rateiliaillssgi.ying after communion
begins to make its appearance in eucharistic rites in Syria and
Egypt; and even then in the great historic rites it always remains a very
brief and formal little section, appended, as it were, to the eucharistic
action, which really ends at its climax, the communion. A single sentence
of dismissal, probably said by the deacon, appears to have been the only
thing that followed the communion in the pre-Nicene church. Here again
the influence of its origin appears to have marked the Shape of the Liturgy
permanently throughout christendom, down to the sixteenth century.
Such was the structure of the pre-Nicene eucharist in its 'four-action
shape', the bare elements of those parts of the chabllrah rite to which our
1 John xix. }'i.