Remember the Sabbath and Keep it Holy

The Holy Eucharist: Remember the Sabbath Day and Keep it Holy

Ever consistent with ancient Catholic practice and the entire venerable Anglican Common Prayer tradition, our Congregation teaches that “The Holy Eucharist (commonly called the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion) [is] the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day” (2021 HCAC Common Prayer Book, p. 11).

This belief in the centrality of the Holy Eucharist has manifested itself throughout the history of the Universal (Catholic) Church, beginning with the earliest Christian communities in Jerusalem who shared all possessions in common. In the New Testament this is seen most clearly in Saint Luke’s Acts of the Apostles (2:42): “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”  This was the primary way in which the early Church faithfully obeyed the Commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day (Exodus 20:8).

True gratefulness for the miracle of Christ’s sacramental presence in the Lord’s Supper permits us to rejoice in the truth of the full love of who is Jesus Christ — the God who is near to us.

It is my intention in this article to invite us to contemplate the supreme Mystery of our Faith – the Holy Eucharist. In concert with the immemorial proclamation of the Church Universal, the Anglican tradition believes that, in the Lord’s Supper, “following consecration, the Bread and Wine truly and verily become the ‘real’ sacramental presence of Christ’s Body and Blood” (HCAC 2021 CPB Catechism Q. 178). Indeed, every time a Presbyter says the Prayer of Consecration on our behalf over the Church’s “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,” he repeats the words of Jesus spoken at the Last Supper: “This is my Body… this is my Blood.”  In saying these most sacred of words on the night before he died for us, Jesus was telling us that he desired, even after his Ascension, to be sacramentally present with his bride and remain the heartbeat of the Church – so that (as we say in our liturgy) “he may dwell in us and we in him.”  

In fact, an intrinsic connection exists between the celebration of the Lord’s Supper and our gratefulness for his “real” sacramental presence with his redeemed people at the holy Table. The truth is, the Holy Eucharist is itself the Universal Church’s greatest act of adoration. As the early Church’s most preeminent theologian, the great Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430), writes: “No one eats of this flesh, without having first adored it.”

In life today, which is far too often noisy and frenetic, it is more important than ever for Christians to recover our capacity for inner silence and recollection as we listen to “the Word that [became] flesh” (John 1:14). True gratefulness for the miracle of Christ’s sacramental presence in the Lord’s Supper permits us to rejoice in the truth of the full love of who is Jesus Christ — the God who is near to us. May a new wave of Faith in the Eucharistic Mystery and of the boundless joy one finds in participating in the Lord’s Supper on the Sabbath Day – and an enthusiasm in witnessing to Christ’s immeasurable love for us – continue to grow greater and greater in our hearts here at Holy Communion Anglican Church.

The Holy Eucharist is the ultimate “balm of Gilead” (Jeremiah 8:22) which can heal the self-consumed ego-centric driven lives of our modern society. In the ever increasingly individualistic culture, which our daily American reality has rapidly become, the Holy Eucharist is a kind of antidote taken to counteract the particular poison of the secular world – a medicine which operates in the minds and hearts of believers and is continually forming in us the intimacy of fellowship, of service, of sharing – in other words, the power of the Gospel.

Eucharistic worship reveals what we truly believe and how we view ourselves in relationship to God, one another, and the world.

I am reminded of the example of the forty-nine Christians of the fourth century town of Abitinae in the Roman Province of North Africa. These believers were martyred during the horrific persecution under Emperor Diocletian in 304 A.D. for refusing to conform to the law that outlawed the celebration of the Christian Sacrament (Dominicum). These true saints chose to die rather than deprive themselves of receiving the efficacious grace of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sunday service of the Holy Eucharist. They proclaimed to their Roman persecutors: “Sine Dominico non possumus” – without the “Dominicum” – without the Sunday Eucharist, “we cannot live.”

For those of us faithful to the Anglican Common Prayer tradition, how we worship not only reveals and guards the Scriptural and Pastristic Truth that we believe but guides us in how we live our Christian Faith and fulfill our Christian mission in the world. Liturgical Worship is not an “add on” but serves the primary role in our life together as members of the body of Christ. Indeed, it is the foundational identity of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, expressing our highest purpose. Eucharistic worship reveals what we truly believe and how we view ourselves in relationship to God, one another, and the world.

From the Holy Eucharist, the Ascended Christ is truly present among his adopted children and working in and through them in the power of the Holy Spirit. And in all her generations through twenty centuries, the Church Catholic — despite the limitations and sinful errors of her clergy and laity alike — she remains THE divine institution created and guided by the Almighty himself to spread the Good News of salvation in Christ throughout the world.

We give thanks to God for the great gift of the Holy Eucharist, the sacred banquet in which we receive the living Christ. When we truly remember Our Lord’s one oblation of himself once offered – that full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world – our hearts and minds are filled with the grace of God, and we receive a pledge of the glory that is to be ours. It is my prayer that all of us may grow in love for our Lord more and more through our even greater faithful participation in the supreme Sacrament of his Body and Blood. Beloved, “Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8).