Ritual Of Eucharist Research Articles

Diversity of Eucharistic Ritual in COVID-2019 Context

Discussing diversity in the celebration of the Eucharistic ritual in COVID-2019 contexts, this is a comparative study of CITAM (Christ is the Answer Ministries) Valley Road assembly and St. Andrew’s PCEA (Presbyterian Church of East Africa) in Nairobi, Kenya. COVID-2019 had a great impact on the order of worship in Christian churches across the world. Churches were closed down at times. Whereas CITAM Valley Road administered the Eucharist in the virtual space, St Andrew’s PCEA did not adopt virtual Eucharist and had to wait until the lockdown prohibiting church meetings was lifted. This ethnographic study was carried out in Nairobi County at CITAM Valley Road and St. Andrew’s PCEA over a period of six months from late 2021 to early 2022. The methodological approach taken by the researchers was a blend of ethnography and grounded theology. Data was collected through virtual ethnography, participant observation, interviews, and focus group discussions. Findings from the study demonstrated an emerging trend of administering the Eucharist digitally as the Church in Kenya navigated both continuity and change. The findings also revealed the fact that religious change advances not suddenly, or as a single complete change, but in specific expressions that are local and distinct. The researchers posit that in the PCEA, believers could not imagine themselves administering virtual Eucharist in their homes; in CITAM also some Christians felt that administering the Eucharist in the virtual space was different from when it was administered in the physical space.

A Self-Indulgent Narcissus: Performing Marxist Humanism as Individualism in the Work of Petr Štembera

Petr Štembera’s first performance Narcissus No. 1 (1974) was staged as a religious ritual of self-acceptance. During the performance, the artist used a combination of Greek mythology and Christian Eucharistic ritual as a basis for the action during which he consumed detritus from his body while looking at a portrait of himself. This method of arguably self-indulgent individualism was at the core of his broader practice as a pioneer of Czech Body Art. Using Czech philosophical writings on Marxist humanism, this article seeks to reframe individualism, selfishness, and self-indulgence not as pejoratives that are used to dismiss performance works but as a productive basis for a theory of performance-making strategy. Štembera used Zen-Buddhism and phenomenological approaches to contest the political aspects relating to the body in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia. His performance was purposefully selfish, self-indulgent, and individualistic and he strategically refused to share the specifics of his experience with his audience. Instead, he used his performance to offer permission to his audience to perform similar acts of self-indulgence, which in the context of the collectivist Socialist regime of the 1970s functioned, I argue, as a politically subversive act.

“Black, Queer, and Christian”

“Black, Queer, and Christian”

СХОДСТВО И РАЗЛИЧИЕ ВОЗЗРЕНИЙ Л. Н. ТОЛСТОГО В РОМАНЕ «ВОСКРЕСЕНИЕ» С ИДЕОЛОГИЕЙ ДЖ. СВИФТА

The article examines interrelation between J. Swift’s creative work and L. N. Tolstoy’s novel “Resurrection”, which has become relevant nowadays due to the growing “Christianization” of the society. The paper argues that in “Resurrection”, the main problem is correlation of ideology and artistry, which is expressed through “summarization”, allegory, parable-like narration, didacticism. The identified features allow the researcher to draw parallels with J. Swift’s creative work (at the headline level, in the semantics of anthroponyms, in the description of the Eucharistic ritual) and to identify difference at the level of the author’s intention. For the first time the paper puts forward a proposition that the writers were alike as word-painters and antagonistic as thinkers.

Du corporal à la pale : un nouvel objet sur l’autel au Moyen Âge tardif

From the ninth century onwards, the corporal, which was a symbol of purity and the winding-sheet of Christ, possessed great sacrality. However, during the later Middle Ages it was partially replaced by the palla for the purpose of covering the chalice during the Mass. It is difficult to identify it because of its variable names, but the palla is nevertheless indicated by textual, iconographical and material sources as being present on altars from the mid-fifteenth century. Its rigidity and its decor belong to a general tendency towards ornamenting the fabrics used in worship. Its proliferation points to the obsolescence of part of the symbolic exegesis and also to a degree of rationalisation in the eucharistic ritual that would blossom during the early modern period.

성찬 의례의 표준적 함의에 관한 연구

성찬 의례의 표준적 함의에 관한 연구

The Eucharist: Origins and Contemporary Understandings by Thomas O’Loughlin

Reviewed by: The Eucharist: Origins and Contemporary Understandings by Thomas O’Loughlin Michael Wahl Thomas O’Loughlin The Eucharist: Origins and Contemporary Understandings London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015 xvii + 229 pages. Paperback. $34.95 In this book, Thomas O’Loughlin endeavors to develop a constructive, ecumenical, and incarnational theology of the Eucharist defined by its act of thanksgiving to the Father and the human practice of eating. O’Loughlin contends that these two elements have become marginalized in contemporary liturgical practice in favor of Christocentric understandings of Eucharistic presence and theologies of sacrifice. Drawing upon contemporary anthropology and historical sources, he argues that an adequate understanding of Christian worship must take into account the early Christian practice of worship and the basic identity of the human person as homo cenarius. The book is divided into seven chapters. After a first chapter concerned with methodology, O’Loughlin argues in the second chapter that the Eucharist is primarily an act of thanksgiving to the Father rather than an encounter with Christ. Drawing upon early Christian texts, he contends that the first Christians understood [End Page 349] themselves to be participating in Christ’s blessing the Father through their communal meals rather than effecting the presence of Christ in their midst. In the third chapter, O’Loughlin begins his anthropological argument. He posits that human eating differs from that of other creatures because human eating is marked by reason, technical skill, and sociality. He argues that this unique and essential aspect of human nature ought to be incorporated into their worship. O’Loughlin expands this claim in the fourth chapter, suggesting that all meals exist on a continuum from the most hastily eaten snack to the Eucharistic ritual meal. Consequently, he critiques contemporary Christianity’s marginalization of the meal expressed in the reduction of the bread and wine to mere tokens and emphasis on the discontinuity between natural food and the “bread of angels.” Rather than emphasizing a binary division between “sacred” and “profane,” O’Loughlin highlights the continuity among the growth of foodstuffs, their preparation and cooking, their being shared at table, and their becoming occasions of thanksgiving to God. In the fifth chapter, O’Loughlin turns to an historical investigation. He examines a number of early Christian texts in order to explore their own interpretations of the Eucharistic rituals they performed. He argues that the community meal and the Eucharist were intimately connected and seen as a celebration of unity, a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Father, and a supper of reconciliation. The practices of early Christian communities combined with their memories of the meals of Jesus—including, but by no means limited to, the Last Supper—guide their liturgical praxis and subsequently form their self-understanding. In the sixth chapter, O’Loughlin investigates whether it is possible to establish the form of the meal that early communities used and believed to be in continuity with the practice of Jesus. He argues that although there is no uniform practice, there are common strands. All early Eucharistic rituals contain a blessing of the Father within the context of a meal, the sharing of a single loaf and a common cup, and a remembrance of Jesus. Moreover, early Christian worship is focused mainly on the unity of the assembly which partakes of one loaf and one cup rather than on the substance of the loaf and contents of the cup. Finally, in the seventh chapter, O’Loughlin argues that a eucharistic theology grounded in an understanding of the human person as homo cenarius entails [End Page 350] a reimagination of current eucharistic practices in order to refocus on offering thanksgiving to the Father, emphasize the role of the assembly, and recover and reinvigorate the place of the meal within the eucharistic celebration. Even as there is much to appreciate in O’Loughlin’s work, there are also points that call for further examination and critique. His distaste for theologies of Eucharistic presence will sit uneasily with many Catholics. Furthermore, despite the variety of scriptural and other early Christian ancient texts to which he appeals, he makes no mention of John 6, which plays a pivotal role in Catholic Eucharistic theology. O’Loughlin...

Why does the Didache Conceive of the Eucharist as a Holy Meal?

AbstractIn the institution accounts of the New Testament Jesus declares the bread to be his body and the wine his blood. In the passages of the Didache referring to the eucharistic ritual (Did 9-10 and 14) the words of institution are lacking. Wine is not related to Jesus’ blood and bread is in no way linked to his physical body. If the Didache does not even suggest that the eucharistic ritual is related in any way to the tradition of the Last Supper, why then is the communal meal in the Didache considered holy? This paper argues that the meal was conceived in terms of holiness in order to show that it related as much to the Divine as did the temple service. Since a temple setting was generally seen as the natural context for religious rites, temple concepts and temple thinking were used to describe and define non-temple ritual settings.

En syrisk kilde til den ældste kristne nadverforståelse – en analyse af Addai og Maris Nadverbøn

The Anaphora of Addai and Mari (A&M) is an ancient Syriac Eucharistic prayer. This article provides a Danish translation of the prayer and presents indications that A&M contains one of the oldest Eucharistic traditions that we know of. It is argued that A&M presents an understanding of the divine presence in the Eucharist that differs from traditional Western and Hellenistic views, and that A&M seems to be influenced by Jewish prayer forms. The article utilises A&M to discuss and broaden commonly held theories about the earliest understandingand development of the Eucharistic ritual.

Musical Instruments in the Medieval Corpus Christi Procession

SHE MOST SPLENDID Of all religious processions during the Middle Ages was held during the Corpus Christi festival, which was instituted by Pope Urban IV in 1264 to be held on the first Thursday following Trinity Sunday.' Its main feature was a parade of clergy and lay folk who escorted the sacrament through the city ceremonially after mass. It was a joint monumental enterprise in which all the local groups participated, civic and religious alike. As a manifestation of the power of the medieval church, as well as a visual and aural spectacle, the Corpus Christi procession was perhaps one of the most typical late medieval phenomena, bringing together all the arts, together with a wide range of dramatic presentations, under a common symbology. One of the effects of the Lateran Council was the elaboration of eucharistic ritual, typified by the consecration of the host as the new focal-point in the mass. Not only was the vision of Christ's passion kept vividly alive before the minds and eyes of the faithful, but thereby the notion of salvation as well.2 For the first time the host was raised up in full view during the mass and paraded through the streets in full panoply. Both clergy and laymen alike placed a great value upon the observance of transubstantiation, and looking at the consecrated wafer became for many the main purpose of attending mass. Crowds flocked around the altar awaiting the significant moment, many leaving the church immediately thereafter or running from service to service to see the elevated host as often as possible.3 That this exposure of the host was the climax of festive worship, exercising a hold on the popular mind, can also be seen in vernacular literature. Both prayers and hymns to the elevation became