Why is it Practiced Differently by Catholics
After I truly had a relationship with Jesus and was growing in my faith in my early thirties I had many questions along the way. But nothing plagued me more than when I saw how the Catholics practiced their version of the Communion. When I felt compelled to join in a Right to Life meeting I met several Catholics who were very active in the Pro-Life movement. I saw their commitment and was fascinated by the reverence that they had for the things of the Lord. Something that seemed to be severely lacking in the Protestant churches that I had attended. I became attached enough to these new found friends that I wanted to know more about their church services and find out if there was something that I had been missing all along.
I attended their Catholic service known as Mass. During this Mass there were similarities to what my Protestant church practiced, but notably the Communion was a major part of the service. Not only was there a detailed production before the taking of the elements, but only members of the Roman Catholic church were allowed to partake, just being a believer wasn’t qualification enough. They also used wine instead of grape juice and a container that looked like a small version of a church building called the tabernacle contained the bread and wine. When I asked about the Communion, I was corrected by one of the parishioners who said it was the Eucharist. So the name they give to it is different as well.
Catholics observe the Eucharist as an unbloody sacrifice. Meaning that they believe Jesus is sacrificed upon the altar every time the Eucharist is served, but because it is spiritual there is no bloody mess. Instead the bread and wine are transitioned, by the power of God and the priest who offers the elements, into the actual body and blood of Jesus. However, because there is miraculous power involved, the body and blood still have the flavor and texture of bread and wine. Eating and drinking of Jesus was so important that if you missed every other part of the service you did not want to miss this one thing. There was almost an unspoken rule that salvation was closely tied with taking the Eucharist. I even asked about this and the friends I had at the church quoted to me the words of Jesus in John chapter 6, “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no part with Me.” This led me on a deeper discovery because I had to know at this point if they were right and my salvation was in fact tied to the body and blood of Christ in the Communion.
Having consulted with a couple of my mentors and having dug through several commentaries from well known theologians I felt no better and had more questions than answers. What if we Protestants and Evangelicals are taking communion wrong? What if we missed one of the most important things that Jesus said and we are not actually recognizing the body and blood of Jesus as we should? After all, the Catholic church has a long history, and their practice of taking the body and blood of Jesus seems far more reverent than does ours.
I went back to the Reformers of the sixteenth century to try to find out why they dropped what the Roman Catholic church was doing and why they practiced the Communion differently. I found that even among them there wasn’t always a full consensus. Martin Luther believed not in 1Transubstantiation (the transformation of the bread and wine into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus) as the Catholics did, but in Consubstantiation (that Jesus is present in, under and through the elements). Whereas Calvin and Zwingli viewed it as a commemoration (much like a symbol as I learned to practice it, but something more where it is a remembrance of what Christ did on the cross in a fuller sense).
When I took a bibliology class sometime later I asked the professor to explain more about Communion to the class. He gave the same differing perspectives of the Reformers that I had discovered, but he said something that I had not yet heard. He said that we practice Communion as a memorial. This was something I had not considered before and I wanted to get some more insight. So I began to search through Scripture to find the use of this word “Memorial” and sure enough, there is ample evidence to see why it was considered to be a memorial. I also found that the Webster’s First Edition Dictionary printed in 1828 gave the definition of Communion as a memorial. These discoveries led me on a journey, not to new revelations about Communion, but to rediscovering something that has been lost through the passage of time.
I believe as Protestants, something that we shouldn’t shy away from though is the word “Eucharist.” Primarily because the word is not a Roman Catholic word or even a Latin word. It is rather a Greek word.”Eucharist” is a transliteration of the word “Eucharistao” which is the Koine Greek word for “Thanksgiving.” If anything is a time for thanksgiving it is in the price that Jesus paid for our salvation. We see Jesus giving thanks on the Passover evening:
27 Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. 29 But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.”
Matt 26:26-29 (NKJV)
For this reason we should not be afraid to refer to the Communion as the Eucharist. Lutherans still call it by this name, but, as Martin Luther believed, so too his church means something very different from the Roman Catholics when they take it. The Catholic church defines the Eucharist as an ”unbloody sacrifice,” essentially a re-crucifixion of Christ on the altar. However, we already know that this is a misinterpretation of the meaning of the word Eucharist, because Eucharist does not mean “Sacrifice” but “Thanksgiving.” We are thankful for Christ’s sacrifice, we are not sacrificing Him on the altar.
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