“Taste and see that the Lord is good” – Psalm 34:8

If I could narrow down the most central and important practice within the Christian life it would have to be the sacrifice of the Eucharist. However, not too long ago, I would’ve found a statement like that to be blasphemous.



Though I should mention that years ago I would also consistently find attending Church to be difficult. Actually, I’ve always found going to Church to be quite a process. “Why go?”, I always thought. It’s not exactly necessary and I’ve always found it annoyingly taxing given my introverted tendencies. I just didn’t…and certainly still do not….have time for the pseudo religious country club that flaunted itself as an ecclesiastical institution. Nevertheless I do recall very early as a young teenager being invited to different churches by friends from school only to find that each one was the same. Three cringy songs, shake some hands, an overly elaborate sermon that last way too long…I mean for God’s sake you are talking about two biblical citations…get on with it, and finally, right before you leave you are subjected to one more sappy song followed by an altar call. Honestly every church I’d been too from childhood to my early adult life was just like this. I was always left wondering, “Is there something I’m missing?”

It was always so odd for me to attend a church service and leave thinking it was just a waste of time. I didn’t need a pastor to give me his interpretation of the bible…I could just as easily read John Calvin’s Commentaries from home without the fake smiles and bad music. Yet I would be reminded again and again, “Not to forsake assembling together”, as if that justified this cringe worthy disaster I was being subjected to. But I guess I’m just as much a clown for taking part in the shangaans…hell I filled the pulpit for some of those services (gag).



Well as it would turn out, I was right. It wasn’t until I saw an early formulaic layout of John Calvin’s services in Geneva that I really took a step back and questioned, “What was liturgy?” I know, it’s embarrassing to admit but I was well into my theological studies before I learned what liturgy was or why it was so important. Yet, to my defense, being raised Southern Baptist bears almost no resemblance to anything Christian. The Southern Baptist faith is more like a gutted shadow of Christianity propagated as orthodoxy for modernized Americans. Yet, it was Calvin’s liturgy that got me started on a journey to find a more fulfilling mode of worship which inevitably led me back to the Patristics. I mean Calvin’s service was essentially a carbon copy of the Roman Catholic liturgy he would’ve been raised on. It was within the Pastritics that I discovered a very debilitating truth. Church was not a social gathering for us to “not forsake our own assembling together, as is the habit of some”, rather it was a necessary element of salvation. Church was were the Eucharistic sacrifice took place.



And there is no salvation outside the Church….



As I studied the early Church Fathers, I found that if there were to be one doctrine that the Church seemed undivided on it was the centrality and nature of the Eucharist. Which I’ll admit was strange to me at first, then troubling given that I had never participated in a Eucharistic service. Most protestant churches can’t decide if they want to have communion once a month or once a year…yeah, they are not making the cut (laughs).



Nevertheless, I’d like to provide a brief look at the historical pieces that really convinced me of Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist and the graces received therein. I think this may be a real benefit to someone, like myself, who is seeking a more historic mode of worship and a fulfilling means of knowing God more deeply, yet find their local church may be lacking.



“Consider how contrary to the mind of God are the heterodox in regard to the grace of God which has come to us. They have no regard for charity, none for the widow, the orphan, the oppressed, none for the man in prison, the hungry or the thirsty. They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead.” – St. Ignatius of Antioch



The quote from above is from one of the earliest Church Fathers to exist after the writing of the New Testament. In it, the reader is exposed to the idea that not only is Christ physically present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, but are informed that to reject such a notion was considered heresy. For St. Ignatius, to deny the reality of the Eucharist was equivalent to no longer praying or doing good works…all of course were essential to the Christian life and salvation. St. Ignatius being one of the earliest and most blatant on this point, yet he represents a long line of Patristics who argued this very same fact. It’s worth noting that by early what is meant is that St. Ignatius was representative of the very next generation of Christians following the Apostles who wrote the New Testament. Historically speaking you don’t get more theological accuracy than that. Unless, I guess, your John McArthur who, as we’ve seen in recent interviews, decided to rewrite Christian history to benefit your own very modern and very American views of Christianity.



A second piece of information to consider is the Didache. The Didache was a text written within the first century that detailed the essentials of the Christian faith. Very similar to later confessions and creeds, the Didache is replete with very ancient and early information on how the Christian church functioned. One particularly interesting excerpt is the following:



“Assemble on the Lord’s day, and break bread and offer the Eucharist; but first make confession of your faults, so that your sacrifice may be a pure one. Anyone who has a difference with his fellow is not to take part with you until he has been reconciled, so as to avoid any profanation of your sacrifice [Matt. 5:23–24]. For this is the offering of which the Lord has said, ‘Everywhere and always bring me a sacrifice that is undefiled, for I am a great king, says the Lord, and my name is the wonder of nations’ [Mal. 1:11, 14]” (Didache 14 [A.D. 70]).



The Didache not only details the simple liturgy of the earliest Christians but that the Eucharist was central and sacrificial. This is important because as St. Augustine points out, ““For when he says in another book, which is called Ecclesiastes, ‘There is no good for a man except that he should eat and drink’ [Eccles. 2:24], what can he be more credibly understood to say [prophetically] than what belongs to the participation of this table which the Mediator of the New Testament himself, the priest after the order of Melchizedek, furnishes with his own body and blood?”



Essentially, what could be of a higher good than to dine at the Lord’s table? To become like him as you consume him?



However, one of the strongest evidences pointing not only to the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine, but to the sanctifying graces therein was Jesus’ own words.



So Jesus said to them, “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. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. – John 6:53-56



Historically speaking, for the first 1500 years of the Christian faith it was rather uncontested that Christ was physically present in the Eucharist and, moreover, when one partakes of his flesh and blood they were forgiven of sin and infused with virtue! No wonder one of St. Joan of Arc’s final request prior to her martyrdom was to partake of the eucharist.



The Eucharist was the means of grace whereby God would cure one of sins and the Christian would made a partaker in the divine nature. By the routine partaking of Christ’s flesh and blood, one would be saved by being united with Him.



But what is one to do once they discover, like I did, that they have arguably never really participated in a real church service? For can anything lacking Christ’s presence really be called a Church?



It’s a simple answer: Get your ass to mass!



Sorry, it’s a common phrase in my home… (laughs)



But really, if you’re baptized just go to your local Anglican Church. This is the route I took. Soon after resigning from my ministerial position I soon found myself attending the local Anglican parish. I was a bit confused at first, but it was a welcomed bewilderment. Plus the Christians there were out of this world sincere and kind …which has been rather consistent across Anglican parishes from my experience. It was here in a small Anglican Parish that I experienced the beauty of the Mass for the first time and with it the graces of the Eucharist.



And with that, I discovered the desire to return to Church.