Eucharist (The Lord'S Supper)

The Eucharist—also called the Lord's Supper, Holy Communion, or the breaking of bread—is the meal Jesus shared with his disciples on the night he was betrayed, in which bread and a cup are taken, blessed, and given to be eaten and drunk in remembrance of him. The name itself comes from the Greek eucharistia, "thanksgiving," the word used in the Gospel accounts for Jesus' giving thanks over the bread and cup.

In the words of institution, the text says that Jesus identified the cup as "my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the remission of sins" (Matthew 26:28), and Luke's account adds that the cup is "the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you" (Luke 22:20). The setting is Passover: John 13:1 places the supper "before the feast of the Passover" and describes Jesus, knowing "that his time had come that he would depart out of this world to the Father," loving his own "to the end," with the awareness that "he came from God and was going to God" (John 13:3). In Acts, the first community is described as continuing "steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and prayer" (Acts 2:42), and as breaking bread "at home" daily with gladness and singleness of heart (Acts 2:46-47)—so the meal appears both as a gathered devotion and as an ordinary shared table.

Paul's teaching is the fullest scriptural reflection on the meal's meaning. He writes that he "received from the Lord" what he also delivered—a tradition handed on about the night of betrayal (1 Corinthians 11:23)—and he describes the cup of blessing and the broken bread as "a sharing" (koinonia) of the blood and body of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16). Because that sharing is real, participation is exclusive: "You can't both drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You can't both partake of the table of the Lord and of the table of demons" (1 Corinthians 10:21), a warning set beside the question of whether we "provoke the Lord to jealousy" (1 Corinthians 10:22). Paul also ties the meal to judgment and discipline within the community: those who are judged are "disciplined by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world" (1 Corinthians 11:32).

Christian traditions differ markedly here, and the differences are confessional rather than merely semantic. In Catholic and Orthodox teaching the bread and cup become the body and blood of Christ, and the Eucharist is a sacrificial participation in his once-for-all offering. Lutheran churches confess the real presence of Christ's body and blood "in, with, and under" the bread and wine while rejecting transubstantiation as an explanation. Reformed and Presbyterian traditions speak of a genuine spiritual feeding on Christ by faith, through the power of the Spirit, without a change in the elements. Many Baptist, evangelical, and free-church traditions treat the supper as an ordinance of remembrance and proclamation, symbolic and commemorative. Traditions also divide over how often the meal is celebrated, who may preside, and whether participation is open to all baptized Christians or restricted to a particular church's members.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.