The Eucharist stands as the crown of Christian Life and the fulfilment of God's work through Jesus Christ and within the Church. Its significance is deeply interwoven with the fundamental design of the world and humanity's place within it.
The Divine Order of Creation and Humanity's Role
God fashioned the world such that its mode of life would be determined and moulded through human beings. After creating the raw material of the world in Genesis 1:1, God spent six days forming and filling it, subsequently resting on the Sabbath.
This divine pattern of work, presented in Exodus 20, serves as a model for human endeavour. Human beings, as the image of God, work in the same manner that God works. They are tasked with the ongoing shaping and filling of creation.
In essence, man functions as God's Junior partner in the creative development of the world. Man, being the image of God and the Crown of the world, is the enduring link between God and the world, serving as the conduit through which God directs the world towards its ultimate purpose.
The fall of the first man and woman had consequences far beyond their personal deprivation of life and blessing; the entire creation suffered due to their actions. Evidence of this suffering is seen in the thorns and thistles that began to sprout after the fall, and in the way the ground cried out to God against Cain's shedding of his brother's blood.
This interconnectedness illustrates that just as life flows from a head and heart throughout the whole body, so too does life emanate from man to the entire body of the world. As a result of the Fall, humanity was steering the world towards destruction, moving it in the wrong direction.
Jesus Christ: Redemption and Restoration
Jesus Christ entered the world as the Incarnation of God, simultaneously fulfilling God's purpose and man's purpose. By participating in every aspect of human life, Christ repaired every aspect of human life and redirected it towards the Father, thereby healing it. Since the man whose life Christ healed is the head of the world, His actions resulted in the healing of the entire world.
A pivotal event in this redemptive work is the resurrection of Christ, which occurred on the first day of the week. This day holds dual significance: it is simultaneously viewed as the Eighth Day of the old week and the first day of the new week.
When Christ came into the world, He carried into Himself the whole history of the old world. His genealogy extends back to Adam, and His very bones and blood embody the concrete history of the people of Israel and their relationship with the wider world.
The Elements of the Eucharist and Universal Connection At the culmination of His earthly life, Jesus took Bread and Wine and offered them to God, declaring them His body and blood. The very matter of the human body expresses simultaneously humanity's unity with the rest of the human race and its unity with the whole world. The physical substance comprising human bodies is literally constituted from the food consumed.
The elements of Bread and Wine illustrate a transformation of the world's raw materials:
- Dirt is transformed into grain plants, which are then transformed by human intention and labour, with the application of fire, into bread.
- Dirt is transformed into the Great Vine, which is then transformed by human intention and labour, with the influence of air, into mature wine.
When these transformed elements are consumed, the world is taken into the body. The grain plants and grape vines themselves possess a historical, genealogical connection stretching back to the beginning of the world with the creation of their first kinds.
When Jesus, as God united with a human body and soul, takes these elements into His body, He is taking the whole world into His body. When He then takes these things into His body and proceeds to the Cross, He takes the whole world to the Cross. Consequently, when He is raised from the dead, the whole world is raised with Him.
The Eucharist as a Memorial and Ongoing Participation Christ instructed His followers to "do this as my Memorial" concerning the Bread and Wine. This instruction makes believers, as members of the same body, participants in this divine work. This is the reason for the practice of worship and offering, or tithing, the fruit of human labours to God in the Eucharist. By joining human work with God's work in Jesus Christ and integrating it into His body, the finite, limited value of the world is transfigured into the infinite, unlimited value of Christ.
The Eucharist is performed on the first day of the week because this act gives birth to New Life every week. Simultaneously, it is performed on the eighth day of the week because this act carries into it all of the work from the preceding week. In the Eucharist, God makes the world His body, and, as was His will from the very beginning of creation, He accomplishes this through humanity, the image of God, within the Church.