Thankfully these titles no longer have the power to divide that they once did. Rather it is generally understood that they all refer to the same event, that is the celebration of the eucharist in response to the command of Christ, but simply highlight one particular aspect of it. So the word “mass” is simply a convenient nickname deriving from the Deacon’s dismissal at the end of the Latin mass, “Ite missa est”. The title “The Lord’s Supper” refers to the fact that the eucharist was instituted by Christ himself. Holy Communion refers to the one aspect of the service as does the ancient Greek word “eucharist”. The eucharistic prayer is the prayer of Thanksgiving at the heart of the service. The Orthodox churches refer to the whole service as the Divine Liturgy like we used to talk about “divine service” emphasizing the Godward aspect of all worship. Our BCP chose to use the term “Holy Eucharist” which is the most ancient term and one that avoids the debates and divisions that have bedeviled the church in much of its history. It is a term on which liturgists and scholars from all traditions can agree.

Sadly much ink as well as blood have been shed throughout history over differing interpretations of the eucharist. Interestingly enough the great reformation debates were almost solely about the eucharist and not about baptism. Apart from the Anabaptists who had strong views against infant baptism that was not the issue between Catholics and Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Divisions be they in churches, families or communities tend to polarize the thing being debated. So in the crucial years of the reformation debates the differing views on the eucharist became increasingly extreme and distinct. So for instance in Catholic theology of the Counter Reformation the doctrine of Transubstantiation became the order of the day. That doctrine emphasized the change in substance of the eucharistic elements of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. It was an uncompromisingly strong approach. Protestant (including Anglican) theology reacted to this by enunciating a eucharistic theology which highlighted the spiritual reality rather than the corporeal one emphasizing the dimensions of remembrance and the individual faith of the believer. These theologies took on various forms from the more mystical to the more utilitarian.

The debates in the Church of England over the first hundred and fifty years of its existence highlight these tensions and divisions. The English Civil War while having clear political causes nevertheless was a religious war between Christians with differing eucharistic theologies. With the restoration of the Book of Common Prayer in 1662 a typically Anglican compromise was brought about. This allowed happily for a breadth of interpretation. The words reflect a more Protestant theology while the rubrics (that is the instructions of how things are to be done) keep a degree of Catholic understanding. So for instance the bread and the wine are handled in the eucharistic prayer in the so-called manual acts as a sign of their significance. At the end of communion there are clear instructions as to how the left over bread and wine are to dealt with. In other words the assumption is that something holy has happened and that the elements of the eucharist have changed in some way.

It was only in the 19th century with the Oxford or Tractarian movement in England which was taken up enthusiastically in this country by the likes of George Houghton that the catholic understanding of the eucharist was revived in practice as well as word. Once again Anglicans could talk of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. It took until the later 20th century in the major ecumenical encounters and dialogs following the Second Vatican Council for the eucharistic debates of the 16th century to be revisited. From the Catholic side the Dutch theologian Edward Schillabeeckx brought a fresh approach to the rather crudely expressed doctrine of transubstantiation with his concept of “transignification”. It was this latter view that was much more acceptable across the board. No longer was there the demand to know “the how” of the eucharist, how bread and wine became the body and blood of Christ. Rather it was agreed that the Holy Spirit does bring about change both in the significance of the eucharistic elements by means of which we are fed with holy food and in the community of faith that feeds on them. Ultimately the “how” is a mystery as was understood by that wise woman, Elizabeth 1, who uttered these words in response to the viscous debates of her day:

      “He was the Word that spake it
        He took the bread and brake it
        And what the Word did make it
        I do believe and take it.”

Those words for me sum up the Anglican position on the Real Presence so well. They are at one and the same time faithful but allowing for differing interpretations.

So today we give thanks for the great gift given to us by Christ himself, and yet again obey his command to “do this in remembrance of me.”

For the final word on this Feast Day of Corpus Christi I turn to an Anglican Benedictine monk, Dom Gregory Dix, who wrote an important liturgical text in 1945 entitled “The Shape of the Liturgy.” In his closing chapters there appears this fine piece of writing:

“Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of the Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a schoolboy sitting an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; for a village headman much tempted to return to fetich because the yams had failed; because the Turk was at the gates of Vienna; for the repentance of Margaret; for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain so-and-so, wounded and prisoner of war; while the lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the thick June grass came faintly through the windows of the church; tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by and exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonization of S.Joan of Arc – one could fill many pages with the reasons why men have done this, and not tell a hundredth part of them. And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the “plebs sancta Dei” – the holy common people of God.”

So today we too “do this in remembrance of me”. Amen

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