The significance of studying the Eucharist is that it is the point at which God and man meet. The Eucharist is not merely a spiritual ritual; it is a sacrament through which God manifests Himself, His love, salvation and power to man. In it, we offer our obedience to, our faith in, and our love for God. And thus the purpose of God is realized in us and in the world through the church.

The Church Has Two Axes:

The church has two axes, a horizontal axis and a vertical axis. It extends along vertical axis through the Eucharist and along the horizontal axis through the ministry. Vertically, its attain the members strive to full stature of Christ. Horizontally it seeks to bring every sanctified soul through faith in Christ.

The Effectiveness of the Eucharist:

From the above, we realize that service and ministry can only derive their strength through the vertical axis of the Eucharist. That is why we pray during mass: “For every time you eat of this bread and drink of this cup, you preach My death and confess My resurrection and remember me till I come”

This is what St. Paul asserts when he says: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes” (1Cor 11:26).

Awareness of the Eucharist:

It is evident from the above how important our awareness of the vitality of the Eucharist for us as practice, concept and strength for the ministry is. For if the Eucharist is Christ Himself, how can we serve without him?

“Without Me you can do nothing.”

We also realize that service and the ministry prepare our souls for the coming of Christ. We meet with Him in fellowship and love and faithfulness. Observance is not enough; we need to study and gain profound understanding and awareness.

The enduring presence of Christ:

The Eucharist is Christ’s enduring presence on earth in fulfillment of His promise: “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age”. The ascension of the Lord and His disappearance from human sight was in order that our relationship and our fellowship with Him should not be subject to the finite and the material, but be on the level of “the secret work that every soul apprehends through obedience and love”. St. Athanasius says that although Christ was slain, rose, and ascended to heaven, He is with us in His work through the Eucharist in the strength of His incarnation and redemption. This is the grace of the only Son in the power of the incarnation and redemption, and in the glory of the resurrection “when you accept it as an effective power through the Eucharist”.

St. Athanasius asserts that when Christ was in the flesh on earth, the church was hidden in Him and He did everything for its sake. When He ascended in the flesh, however, the Church was manifest while He became hidden in it and it now did everything for His sake.

All this highlights the importance of the church’s study of the Eucharist, our rituals and doctrines so that we have solid Orthodox faith, thought, and practice for our sakes and that of the entire world. This world awaits the day the light of Christ breaks in living faith and loyal witness through the church. This church has been able to express its faith through the practice of living ritual and has overcome all persecution, heresies, convulsions, and ethnic pressures.

Maybe Christ who hid in the land of Egypt so that His light would enlighten the whole world also wished to hide faith in Him in the Church of Egypt in order to lighten the world that is in darkness. Our church is a prolific mother who gave birth to Clement, Athanasius, Cyril, Dioscorus, Anthony, Rifka, and Dulagi. She will never grow old, but will give birth every day to saints, martyrs, and servants.

The Eucharist:

What does the word Eucharist mean?

“Eucharist” is a Greek word meaning “to do with thanksgiving”. When we thank each other, we use the words “I thank you” and we generally accompany this with an inclination of the head. Thus, giving thanks is more than just words; it is action, giving, and meekness.

If we recall the first man and how he experienced the sacrament of thanksgiving, we see how God created him in His image. We also recall what St. Paul said in his epistle to the Hebrews when he discussed Christ and stated that He was the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person (Heb. 1:3).

Christ then is the express image of the Father’s person, in other words, the image of the Father. We were created in the image of God; that is, we were created as sons. We were created in the image of sons and in the image of the Son, not in form but in the spirit of “sonship“. St. Paul confirms this when he says,

“For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29).

Man, therefore, was created to be adopted and to live in the spirit of sonship dealing with God as a Father. The fatherhood of God resides in His power and His divinity and is manifest to man through the matter that God had first created. “For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead” (Rom. 1:20).

Man ate of the fruits of the earth and of the trees in the wilderness and with this he ate of the love of God, of His tenderness and power. Through what was made he seemed to point to God and say, “You did not leave me in need of any of the works of Your honor”.

He is not satisfied with what is material but with the love of God and His person which are hidden in matter.

The love of God for man:

God is the nourishment that man takes incarnated in matter. This is exactly like the child whose mother breastfeeds him. He not only takes milk but feeds on her maternal love and her whole being. In the same way, when man eats and drinks the love of God, matter is transformed into fulfillment, joy, praise, thanksgiving and obedience.

In other words, matter was the means of conveying the love of God and His fatherhood to man. It is the same means by which man exercises his sonship of God in the spirit of obedience through partaking of it with gratitude and joy as the gift of love.

The manifestations of the Eucharist:

Thus We realize that the Eucharist is:

The matter through which God manifests Himself in all His love and Fatherhood. It is the matter through which man’s sonship is also manifested according the purpose of God,

“having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will” (Eph. 1:5).

This is the Eucharist of the New Testament; the matter that bears the relationship of the Fatherhood of God and the adoption of man as sons is Christ Himself. Christ brings to us the Fatherhood and love of God. “I am in the father and the Father is in Me”

“For God (the Father) so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in His should not perish but have everlasting life”.

The Lord Jesus bears within Himself our flesh, our humanity, and our sonship to God. He instills within us the spirit of sons through His being the only begotten Son.

A misconception:

It is a misconception to limit our partaking of the Eucharist to the forgiveness of sins. We need to realize that the life of the Eucharist is far greater than this limitation. Meeting God Seeing Him, and responding to

Him are the sound bases for our life with Him and our eternal union with Him.

“Those You have given Me, that they may be one as We are”.

Union is effected through the Eucharist:

The Eucharist alone unites us with the Father and the Son.

“Grant, o Lord, that we may be worthy of partaking of Your Holy offerings purity for our souls and bodies, so that we may be one body and one spirit and that we may thus enter into eternal life”. “If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world” (Jn. 6:51).

What do we need?

We need to partake of the Eucharist with the feeling that we need God Himself.

We should also realize that through the Eucharist we offer the obedience of sons to the Father by uniting with the Son who was obedient unto death, the death of the cross in order to instill in us the spirit of sons in the cross.

Finally,

The Eucharist moves from its vertical axis of the spiritual development of servants to its horizontal axis of sacramental ministry to the world in order to convert it to faith in Christ through us as bread and a sacrifice for the world. St. Augustine said, “He sent us as sheep among the wolves so that the wolves might eat us and become sheep”.