The principle means of Sunday morning worship worship at St. John’s is the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. From the earliest days of Christianity “the chief act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day” (BCP, p. 13) has been eucharistic worship.
Gregory Dix (1901-1952), an English monk and priest of Nashdom Abbey which is an Anglican Benedictine community was a noted liturgical scholar. His book “The Shape of the Liturgy” remains a classic of research in the study of the apostolic church and the development of eucharistic liturgy. He wrote that at the Mass enshrines “the eucharistic action, a thing of absolute simplicity— the taking, blessing, breaking and giving of bread and the taking, blessing, and giving of a cup of wine, as these were first done by a young Jew before and after supper with His friends on the night before He died. . . . He had told His friends to do this henceforward with the new meaning for the anamnesis of Him, and they have done it ever since. . . . week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei—the holy common people of God.” (Shape, pp 743)
When the Church celebrates the Holy Eucharist she is most clearly being the Body of Christ, the people of God. Like the sacrament of holy Baptism, the eucharistic mystery is rooted to the mystery of our Lord’s dying and rising. This is all by Jesus’ design that when the Holy Eucharist is celebrated the mystery of Calvary unfolds before us. This is not some form of repetition as if their is a new sacrifice every Sunday, but rather through sacramental re-presentation to allow every baptized soul actual means to participate in the event that defeated Satan and all His spiritual forces of wickedness and that brought life and eternity to light!
The service of Holy Eucharist in the Book of Common Prayer follows the simple eucharistic actions of Jesus as He did them in the Upper Room on the night He instituted His passion.
Amen
