The Cross & The Eucharist

The cross and the Eucharist are intimately united. To separate them, as I did when I was Baptist, does violence to the Cross.

I have not always been a practicing Catholic. I was baptized Catholic, but as a child I was raised Lutheran. My journey back to the Catholic Church began in high school.

During those years, I began to take more notice of the world around me and the vast possibilities and adventures that life seemed to offer. I noticed that not everyone believed as I did. Not everyone was a Christian. Not everyone believed in God. And even among Christians, there were profound disagreements about what to believe. I had to ask myself: What made Lutheranism the one true Christian faith, and all others suspect?

That question led me down a rabbit hole of study. I quickly settled, at least in my own mind, that there was a God and that Jesus was God. But Christians were so diametrically opposed to one another that I decided to measure all Christian beliefs against Sacred Scripture, because as a Protestant I believed by default that scripture was our final authority and most important source of truth.

Sacred Scripture is the infallible, inerrant Word of God. Even though there is an authoritative interpreter of the Bible, the Bible itself possesses preeminent authority. I did not yet understand the necessity of authoritative interpretation, nor had I discovered the claims of the Catholic Church—but I was serious about truth.

Ironically, that study led me further away from the Church, externally speaking. After joining a Bible study in high school I left Lutheranism for a Baptist church and was rebaptized. Yet that move was still a step on the path that would eventually lead me home. In fact, I believe that God honors every sincere step a person takes to know the truth and love God.

In the midst of studying religion, I met a girl at a high school Bible study and over time, my faith search also became my girlfriend’s search, who became my fiancée, and finally my wife. After three years of prayer and research, we entered the Catholic Church in 2005.

At the center of that journey was the Eucharist—our Eucharistic Lord, Jesus Christ, truly present: Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. What began as theological and scriptural inquiry became deeply spiritual. I found myself spending more and more time in Eucharistic Adoration and at Mass, longing to receive Jesus in the Eucharist.

I want to share part of that historical, theological, spiritual, and scriptural discovery.

In many ways, the Catholic faith is a symphony of beliefs flowing out of and returning to the Holy Eucharist. The Eucharist is at the center of our faith, together with the passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord. The Eucharist is the Paschal celebration where we commemorate and make present the passion, death, and resurrection. As such, it is something all Catholics are called to participate in every Sunday. It is the central, stabilizing force of grace in the life of every believer, just as the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus is our central, stabilizing truth of faith.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches:

The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life. The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 1324

The Scriptural & Traditional Evidence

Where do we begin?

Studying the Christian faith is symphonic. Everything is connected. Pull one thread and the whole tapestry begins to move. It is like falling into a Wikipedia rabbit hole—one link leads to another, and suddenly it is 3:00 AM and you are researching Easter Island flights for reasons you cannot explain. Maybe it’s the Moia statues from Mario Bros?

That is what happens when you start pulling Eucharistic threads in Scripture.

So we begin at the beginning.

We assume God exists. We assume He has revealed Himself. We assume that revelation has been faithfully handed down in Sacred Scripture and Tradition. If those assumptions collapse, everything else collapses with them. God is Creator. He created everything out of nothing. He is uncreated, outside of time. Everything He made is good.

Central to the Christian message is that rational creatures—angels and men—were given free will. Creation and freedom are acts of love. Love must be freely reciprocated; otherwise, it is not love. But we rebelled.

In Genesis 3, sin enters the world. Death follows. Adam and Eve lose the preternatural gifts. Yet even in pronouncing judgment, God promises redemption.

Without the Fall, the Eucharist makes no sense:
Without sin, there is no sacrifice.
Without sacrifice, there is no covenant renewal.

Covenant and Sacrifice

In Genesis 14, the priest Melchizedek blesses Abram and offers bread and wine. Psalm 110 prophesies of the Messiah:

You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

The Biblical Letter to the Hebrews applies this directly to Jesus. Note the elements common to both Jesus and Melchizedek: bread, wine, priesthood, blessing, victory.

This is only one Eucharistic type among many. The Manna in the desert. The Bread of the Presence. Sacrificial meals. Covenant meals. The Old Testament is saturated with Eucharistic anticipation.

Dr. Scott Hahn defines a covenant as,

a sacred and familial bond established by God with His people… not merely contracts or agreements, but solemn and unbreakable bonds that create a relationship akin to that of a family.

Every Old Testament covenant—Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David—was broken by man. God remained faithful.

Ultimately, God sent His Son. Jesus became the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, establishing a new covenant, with a new covenant sacrificial meal, a new Melchizedek, a new manna, a new bread of the presence. A new family made up of both Jews and Gentiles.

The Passover and the Fourth Cup

The Exodus is also decisive in understanding the Eucharist. If the first nine plagues would not break Pharaoh, God would strike the firstborn. The Israelites were instructed:

Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe.
Exodus 12:22

They had to slaughter the lamb, consume the lamb, and mark their homes with blood in a sacrificial meal

At the Last Supper, Jesus celebrates Passover which commemorates the Exodus. In the Seder, there are four cups:

The Cup of Sanctification

The Cup of Proclamation

The Cup of Redemption

The Cup of Completion

If you read the text of the Last Supper carefully, you see that they drank wine more than once. Note that the last one he drinks— “the cup of the new covenant in my blood”—is explicitly sacrificial — perhaps identifying it with the third cup, the Cup of Redemption.

But if that’s the case, the fourth cup is missing.

After the third cup, Jesus says,

I tell you I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.

The passover meal appears unfinished.

On the Cross, Jesus says, “I am thirsty.” He is given sour wine on a hyssop branch. Then:

“It is finished.” (John 19:30)

This is the fourth cup. The Passover is completed on Calvary. Salvation is not yet complete as Jesus hasn’t died and risen again. What is complete then? What is finished? The Passover.

John 6, St. Paul, and the Real Presence

John chapter 6 begins with an important detail:

Now the Passover was at hand.
John 6:4

Jesus multiplies bread in the wilderness. Then He teaches:

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you…

This is Passover language, signifying that Jesus is the sacrificial lamb of God.

The Greek verb used—phago—means to chew, to gnaw. It doesn’t just mean “eat.” It is literal, physical eating that is envisaged. His listeners understood Him literally. Many left because they took Him literally.

At Emmaus after the Resurrection, He is “known to them in the breaking of the bread.” Paul warns in 1 Corinthians 11 against receiving unworthily. He uses a solemn formula “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you” regarding the teaching on the Eucharist. He uses that phrase for only one other reality: the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus.

“This is my body”

The Church has always believed what Jesus said: “This is my body, which is given for you.”

The Church has always obeyed what Jesus commanded: “Do this in memory of me.”

If the Eucharist were merely bread, then Catholics would be foolish idolaters. But if it is what Jesus says it is—His Body and Blood—then kneeling before the Eucharist is not madness. It’s our salvation. As the Church has consistently taught, and as Christians believed for fifteen centuries before the Protestant Reformers, the Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ.

And in His own words, unless we eat His flesh and drink His blood, we have no life in us. Thus, the cross and the Eucharist are intimately united. To separate them, as I did when I was Baptist, does violence to the Cross. The event of the cross is a Eucharistic act. That is why we have a corpus (body) of Jesus on our crosses at Mass. Because when we are at Mass, we are brought back to Calvary. God exists outside of time and what happens on the altar is the same action as happened 2,000 years ago. It’s a remembrance and a reality. Both/and. Our salvation is through faith in Jesus, what he did on the cross, and participating in that cross by repenting of our sins, having faith in Jesus for our salvation, being baptized, and receiving the Eucharist and all of the graces it carries for us. I was Baptist, and now I can’t imagine my life as anything other than Catholic. The Eucharist sustains me in the tribulation and trails of this life. It gives me joy through the midst of suffering. The Mass isn’t boring. It’s a cosmic event of Heaven coming down to earth. It’s the very central event of our entire lives here on earth before we go to Heaven.