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.232The second part is devoted to the Eucharist as sacrifice.It was divided into twosections: the Eucharist and Jewish sacrifices, and the Eucharist and pagan sacrifices.The division results from the fact that both the practice and the theory of the Eucharistgrew within the context of religious and cultural heritage brought in by Jews and othercitizens of the Empire who had converted to Christianity.Jews contributed the tradi-tions of the Old Testament: in relation to the Eucharist, these are mainly the traditionsof Old Testamental feasts and sacrifices, in the first place those related to the Passover,and the liturgical traditions linked to ceremonial meals.Ethno-Christians came from aHellenic background, with its culture, religions, and above all, various religious prac-tices: sacrifices, mysteries and other rites, including magic.Even if inadvertantly, thosepeople often contributed some elements of that world to the lives of Christian commu-nities.The Fathers observed this phenomenon, they also saw a number of similaritiesbetween the Eucharist and certain pagan rites.That is why the issue of the Eucharist andpagan sacrifices is often present in their works.Apart from a general presentation of the connections between the Eucharist andOld Testamental traditions, the section on Jewish sacrifices contains particular subjectswhich are essential to the issue of sacrifice: the relationship between the Eucharist andthe Passover, the Last Supper and the Passion, and the Eucharist as  remembrance.As a supplement related to the issue of sacrifice, the final part of the paper out-lines the role of the head of a eucharistic gathering.Insofar as possible, each of the subjects has been presented from a historical per-spective, as the practice of and the reflection on the Eucharist developed together withthe intensive growth of Christian communities.Thus, every chapter deals with thedevelopment of a particular aspect of understanding the Eucharist.However, it shouldbe borne in mind that it is a way of analyzing the whole process, not a description ofseparate phenomena.After an analysis of the texts written by the early Greek Fathers, the followingoutline of their eucharistic reflection emerges:The Eucharist is both nourishment and sacrifice.However, the Eucharist received asnourishment was the original way of understanding and interpreting the words and theactions of Jesus during the Last Supper.It was reflected in both the form of celebrating theEucharist, during which a meal was originally taken, and eucharistic thought.The Eucha-rist as a meal originates not only in the Last Supper, but also in all the meals Jesus hadtogether with His disciples, including the period after his resurrection.Celebrating the Eucharist as a meal emerged from the Jewish tradition of commonmeals, in opposition to the contemporary Hellenic tradition of sacrificial feasts.How-ever, in a relatively short time, an evolution takes place: the Eucharist moves towardincreasing  spiritualisation , its connection with real meals disappears, and the interpre-tations of the significance of the eucharistic nourishment attach growing importance toits spiritual dimension.The term  sacramentalisation can be used if we adopt the defi-nition of a sacrament as a visible sign of invisible reality.Thus, in discussing the rele-vance of the eucharistic nourishment, a greater emphasis was placed on the aspect ofinvisible reality.The process developed most fully in Alexandria.Talking of the Eucha-rist as nourishment, Clement, and later on Origen, always stressed that the matter isonly a cover for the real, spiritual reality.233The eucharistic nourishment is received as a gift left by Jesus to His believers.Itis perceived as a manifestation of constant work of the nourishing Logos.The Eucharist as a meal and nourishment, in accordance with the symbolism of ameal, also expresses community and, at the same time, the actual presence of Jesusamong His believers.While both the Body and the Blood of Christ are referred to as food, in the begin-ning the Blood of Jesus is only occasionally called drink, usually in quotations or directparaphrases of biblical passages.As for the fruits of the Eucharist, from the very beginning the Eucharist was un-derstood as the food of immortal life.The eucharistic bread was received as nourish-ment offered by Christ himself, food providing immortality, or in other words, feedingthe immortal life in man.Though the Eucharist is sometimes referred to as nourishment for the soul, forsome of the Fathers, especially Irenaeus, it is precisely its corporeality, materiality thatguarantees the resurrection of the human body.The words of Jesus:  This is my Body and  This is my Blood are commonlyaccepted as binding.It was considered obvious that the bread and wine taken during theEucharist were indeed the flesh and blood of Jesus.There is no dispute underminingthis truth, and probably that is why there are no apologetic trends, supporting the realityof the eucharistic transformation.Receiving the Eucharist, the Body and Blood ofChrist, was also understood as entering into very close, almost physical communitywith God [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]