The Holy Communion

[mathinspiration]

How does it vary in other churches? Why do some churches actually believe it is the real body and blood of Christ or just part of it or just symbolic?

 

[Mnarvasa001]

It started with the protestant reformation when Martin Luther separated from the Roman Catholic Church. For 1500 years, most, if not all Christians believed that Holy Communion was the reception of Christ's literal Body and Christ's literal blood during the Catholic Mass. But when Martin Luther separated, it invited many other individuals to reinterpret scripture according their own understandings, leading to the belief that the Lord's Supper and the "breaking of the bread" said multiple times in Acts, is something done purely in a symbolic way.

You can see how seriously Catholics take Communion as the real Body and Blood of Christ, receiving it AT LEAST once a week, and others, every single day, while some churches only perform their communion service once a month or so.

Read John 6 (all of it). You'll be amazed. Jesus starts of with thousands of followers (multiplication of the loaves and fish) at the beginning of the chapter and then ends the chapter with just the original 12 following him. He must have said something PRETTY offensive and odd to have that happen.

 

[FireDragon76]

The Reformed churches under Zwingli introduced the notion that "the finite cannot contain the infinite", and that undermined the entire notion of the Lord's Supper as a sacrament.

 

[Citizen of the Kingdom]

I think what gets undermined is the actual Presence of abiding in God because it is replaced with an 'infacto' substitute that was meant for the uneducated populace to envision the need for daily bread.