Eucharist and Lord's Supper

EUCHARIST AND LORD'S SUPPER
of the text, we may well be thankful that it is still as intelligible as it is, for
it is of the greatest interest.
The lighting and blessing of a lamp for the evening meal had a place of
its own in jewish domestic piety, where it signalised the beginning and end
of the Sabbath on Friday and Saturday evenings. It had also a special
connection with certain festival observances. In every strict jewish home
for more than two thousand years the lighting of the sabbath lamp has
been and is still one ofthe privileges of jewish mothers; and to this day the
lights of the Habdalah and Hannukah as well as the Sabbath retain their
place in jewish observance. The ordinary jewish blessing to be said at the
lamp-lighting was 'Blessed art Thou, 0 Lord our God, eternal King, Who
createst the lamps of fire',! and the question of whether the word 'lamps'
here should be singular or plural was debated between the schools of
Shammai and Hillel, c. 10 B.C. The bringing in and blessing of the lamp
played a part in the chabUrah supper, and the exact point at which this
should be done formed another subject of discussion between these two
rabbinic schools;2 but it appears that they were agreed that it should come
after the meal was concluded in any case. Here it comes before.
As is well known, the jewish practice survived into christian worship in
the ceremony of the Lucernarium, the blessing of the evening lamp with a
thanksgiving to God for the day, which was still found all over christendom
from Mesopotamia to Spain in the fourth century, and survives to this day
in the East and at Milan and Toledo. One of the most famous and lovely
of early christian hymns, PhOs hilaron (best known to us in Keble's magnificent
translation, 'Hail gladdening light of His pure glory poured',
A. & M. 18) was written to be sung at this little christian ceremony, whose
survival in the blessing of the paschal candle we have already noted. 3
When we look back at (a) we find that it is only an early form of the
Lucernarium. The deacon, as 'the servant of the church', brings in the
lighted lamp, which the bishop (in this form of the rite) is to bless. (In
some places the deacon did so.) The blessing is done with a form obviously
modelled on the ordinary christian 'eucharistic' prayer, retaining the old
jewish notion that one blessed persons and things by giving thanks to God
for them over them. The first sentence, though it is not in any way verbally
derived from the jewish lamp-blessing, may be described as in substance
a christian remodelling of it. The remainder of the prayer is a
than..~sgiving for the past day, beautiful in its simplicity and directness,
which ends with that 'seal' of the Name of God \vithout which in jewish
and early christian teaching no eucharistia or berakah could be valid.
(b) raises the question of the order in which the proceedings are here
described. Itis most usefully discussed a little later.
(c) The Ethiopic translator has evidently got into a certain amount of
1 Berakoth, M., viii. 6 (p. 70). • Ibid. viii. 5 (p. 68).
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