Eucharist

Eucharist, also called Holy Communion or Lord’s Supper, in Christianity, ritual commemoration of Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples. The Eucharist (from the Greek eucharistia for “thanksgiving”) is the central act of Christian worship and is practiced by most Christian churches in some form. Along with baptism it is one of the two sacraments most clearly found in the New Testament.

Origin in Scripture

The story of the institution of the Eucharist by Jesus on the night before his Crucifixion is reported in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 26:26–28; Mark 14:22–24; and Luke 22:17–20) and in the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians (I Corinthians 11:23–25). According to the Gospel accounts, Jesus established the practice at the Last Supper, a traditional Passover seder, when he blessed the bread, which he said was his body, and shared it with his disciples. He then shared a cup of wine with his disciples and told them that “this is the blood of my covenant, which is poured out for many.” According to St. Luke, Jesus called on his followers to repeat the ceremony in his memory, and the letters of the Apostle Paul and the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament demonstrate that early Christians believed that they were to continue the celebration as an anticipation in this life of the joys of the banquet that was to come in the kingdom of God.