Holy Communion

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Holy Communion is the name by which the eucharistic service of the Book of Common Prayer is commonly known; in the prayer book itself the service is titled "The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion". The service is the Church's celebration of the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, in which the faithful receive communion in both kinds, and its doctrinal teaching is stated in Articles XXVIII to XXX of the Thirty-nine Articles.

The name

The name Holy Communion is taken from St Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 10:16, "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?" It emphasises fellowship: communion with Christ, and through him with one another in his Church. The same service is also called the Lord's Supper, after its institution by Christ at the Last Supper, and the Eucharist, a name drawn from the thanksgiving that stands at the heart of the rite. The three names were used side by side in the Church of England's formularies, and "Holy Communion" became the usual English name of the service in the prayer book tradition.

History

The English history of the service begins before the prayer book itself. In 1548 the "Order of the Communion" inserted a devotion in English into the Latin Mass, allowing the people to receive communion in a form they could understand. The first complete English communion office came with the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, the work of Thomas Cranmer in the English Reformation, which gave the Church a single order for the administration of the sacrament in the vernacular.

The book of 1552 gave the service a more reformed shape. The elevation of the consecrated elements was dropped, and the "black rubric" explained that kneeling at communion implied no adoration of the sacramental bread and wine. The books of 1559 and of 1662, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, settled the service in the form it has kept ever since: at the administration, the words of 1549, speaking of the body and blood of Christ preserving the communicant's body and soul unto everlasting life, and the words of 1552, calling upon the communicant to feed on Christ in the heart by faith with thanksgiving, were combined into the single form still in use.

Doctrine

The teaching of the Church of England on Holy Communion is stated in Articles XXVIII, XXIX, and XXX of the Thirty-nine Articles. Article XXVIII, "Of the Lord's Supper", teaches that the supper is not only a sign of the love Christians ought to have among themselves, but a sacrament of redemption by Christ's death: to those who receive it rightly, worthily, and with faith, the bread broken is a partaking of the body of Christ and the cup of blessing a partaking of the blood of Christ. The body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the supper only after a heavenly and spiritual manner, and the means by which it is received and eaten is faith. Article XXIX, "Of the Wicked which eat not the Body of Christ", adds that the wicked, and those without a lively faith, although they press with their teeth the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, are in no wise partakers of Christ. Article XXX, "Of both Kinds", affirms that the cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the lay people, for both parts of the sacrament ought by Christ's ordinance to be administered to all Christian men alike — a point on which the practice of communion in both kinds, restored to the laity at the Reformation, rests. Full expositions of these articles may be found in Browne's commentary on Article XXVIII, Article XXIX, and Article XXX.


See also

References

  • The Thirty-nine Articles, Articles XXVIII–XXX.
  • Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer (1901).
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