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The Eucharist displayed in a monstrance, flanked by candles. Eucharistic adoration is a practice in the Latin Church, Anglo-Catholic and some Lutheran traditions, in which the Blessed Sacrament is exposed to and adored by the faithful. When this exposure and adoration is constant (twenty-four hours a day), it is called "Perpetual Adoration".
Eucharist (Koinē Greek: εὐχαριστία, romanized: eucharistía, lit. 'thanksgiving') [1] is the name that Catholic Christians give to the sacrament by which, according to their belief, the body and blood of Christ are present in the bread and wine consecrated during the Catholic eucharistic liturgy, generally known as the Mass. [2]
Some Christian denominations [1] [2] [3] place the origin of the Eucharist in the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples, at which he is believed [4] to have taken bread and given it to his disciples, telling them to eat of it, because it was his body, and to have taken a cup and given it to his disciples, telling them to drink of it because it was the cup of the covenant in his blood.
The Council of Trent, held 1545–1563 in reaction to the Protestant Reformation and initiating the Catholic Counter-Reformation, promulgated the view of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist as true, real, and substantial, and declared that, "by the consecration of the bread and of the wine, a conversion is made of the whole substance of the bread into the substance (substantia) of the body ...
The Eucharist is a sacrifice in that it literally re-presents (in the sense of "makes present again") the same sacrifice offered by Jesus on the cross, [33] wherein the sacrifice of Jesus and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are considered one single sacrifice; the Eucharist is not considered to sacrifice Jesus a second time.
As mentioned, the Eucharistic liturgy is celebrated in the Catholic Church also in other Latin liturgical rites and in those of the Eastern Catholic Churches. The Catechism of the Catholic Church discusses the importance of the Mass in the Catholic tradition under the headings: I. The Eucharist - Source and Summit of Ecclesial Life II.
The institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper is remembered by Roman Catholics as one of the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary, the First Station of a so-called New Way of the Cross and by Christians as the "inauguration of the New Covenant", mentioned by the prophet Jeremiah, fulfilled at the last supper when Jesus "took bread, and after ...
Riggs argues that Augustine believed the Eucharist is a spiritual eating which allows Christians to become part of Christ's body. [5] Western theologians in the three centuries following Augustine did not elaborate on the way Christ is present in the Eucharist but emphasized the transforming power of the sacrament. [6]