The Divine Liturgy and the Sacrament of the Divine Eucharist
14 October 2016
The Sacrament of the Divine Eucharist, which is celebrated within the service which we call the Divine Liturgy, is the most important and perfect event of worship among Christians. For those who’ve been baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity, the importance and value of this sacrament is beyond price.
If we participate in the Divine Eucharist with awareness, this unites us to Christ; in other words, it makes us Godlike. It changes our existence from earthly to heavenly. It brings us into the beauty and glory of the Kingdom of God. The Divine Liturgy brings Paradise into our lives.
The transmission and meaning of the Sacrament
The Sacrament of the Divine Eucharist was handed down to us by Christ Himself on the evening of the Last Supper, just a little while before His Passion. After He’d offered His disciples the bread and wine He’d blessed, He asked them to do the same, whenever they wanted to remember Him: ‘Do this in remembrance of Me’.
The Divine Eucharist, then, is, in the first place, a way of remembering Christ. But that’s not all it is. Christ Himself is present. He invites us to live His life with Him as God and as a human person, to experience His sacrifice and His resurrection. He offers us His Body and Blood and invites us to share it: ‘This is my Body which is broken for you for the forgiveness of sins. This is my blood which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins’. At the time of the Sacrament, we don’t have bread and wine before us, but the Body of Christ, which is broken up for us, and the Blood of Christ which is shed for us, for the forgiveness of our sins When we take communion, we become ‘one in body and blood with Christ’, ‘Christ-bearers’, God-bearers’. And when we’ve been united ‘mystically’ to Christ, all we Christians are also united among ourselves, we become one body because we’ve all partaken of the same Bread, that is, Christ.
Union with God and the unity among Christians are the precious gifts which Christ gives us through the Divine Liturgy.
