Eucharist on the way to unity

 

Christ desires that his followers be united in mind and heart. This unity finds its fullest expression in the Eucharist, the source and summit of all Christian life. Yet divisions within the Body of Christ have separated us into denominations, each with its own claims and counter‑claims. Across the centuries, the Eucharist has often been at the centre of these controversies.

It is striking, however, that for the first thousand years of the Church’s life the Eucharist was not a point of dispute. Christians, East and West, held a common faith that the bread and wine offered in the Divine Liturgy truly became the Body and Blood of Christ. The precise mechanics of this change were not defined, but believers recognised that the consecrated gifts were no longer what they had been before. This conviction remains alive in both traditions to this day.

In the Christian East, the term metaousiosis (μετουσίωσις) is used to describe this change of being or substance (ousia). While it avoids the Latin terminology of “transubstantiation,” it expresses an equivalent reality. For this and other reasons, the Latin Church recognises the validity of the Eucharist in the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and Roman Catholics may receive Holy Communion there under certain circumstances, even though full communion has not yet been restored.

In recent decades, Anglicans and Roman Catholics have also made progress, producing agreed statements on the Eucharist. Much work remains, and reciprocal eucharistic hospitality is far from universal, but the movement toward deeper understanding continues.

As we enter another Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, may practical initiatives at local, diocesan, and international levels help us overcome obstacles and draw us closer to the unity that Christ himself willed for his disciples.