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We must be clear about the fact that there is a profound difference in the understanding of the Lord’s Supper here. Not only is the meaning of the Words of Institution in dispute between Lutherans and Reformed, but from this difference also emerges a totally different understanding of the practice of the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper can and must have a different purpose in the Reformed Church than among Lutherans. It can and must, as a human act of confession, become a means toward union. That is what it has become in the Reformed and in the Crypto-Calvinist churches of our day. While for us Lutherans—just as for the Catholic Churches of the East and West—the Sacrament of the Altar can only be the goal of unification, it stands firm for all Reformed Churches and those churches influenced by the Reformed spirit that it is the means of unification that Christ willed.