Dear St. Christopher’s Family, 

Communion, or what we call Eucharist, is a curious thing. We say that we believe what Jesus meant when he says “This is my body,…This is my blood.” And it should end there. Of course it doesn’t. Among the many issues that divided the church at the time of, and even more so after the Protestant Reformation, some of the biggest fights were over the Eucharist.

Christians have spent centuries trying to explain exactly what happens here. Roman Catholic theology speaks of transubstantiation: the substance of bread and wine becomes Christ’s Body and Blood while their outward characteristics remain. Lutherans have traditionally explained Christ’s presence differently—sometimes, though imperfectly, described as consubstantiation. Other Protestant traditions place greater emphasis on the Eucharist as a memorial of Christ’s saving death.

No matter how we define it, though, we must at last let faith drive our belief. The little wafer we receive on Sunday barely looks like any bread we’ve ever consumed, and I have some mixed feelings about the quality of the wine we use (we really ought to be using a 1929 Château Lafite, but there’s also an argument to be made for simplicity). 

Anglicanism has generally been reluctant to solve the mystery quite so neatly. We believe that Christ is really present in the Eucharist. When we receive the consecrated bread and wine, we are not simply eating bread and drinking wine while thinking very hard about Jesus. We encounter the risen Christ in the sacrament. An early summary of our theology, attributed to a young Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I) sums it up nicely:

Twas God the Word that spake it,
He took the Bread and brake it;
And what that Word did make it,
That I believe and take it.

But we stop short of pretending that we can explain precisely how that happens. 

That restraint is important. At the altar we invoke the Holy Spirit, repeat the words Jesus gave us, and do what he commanded us to do. We trust his promise without requiring the mystery to become a mechanism.

Prayer C eventually puts it more simply than any theological system can:
“Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the Bread.”