Holy Eucharist

Definition and Meaning

The Holy Eucharist (Gamsa Seongchallye) is the name the Anglican Church of Korea gives to its worship service centered on Holy Communion. It corresponds to the "Holy Eucharist" of English-speaking Anglican churches. The Greek word for Communion, eucharistia, originally meant "thanksgiving," and the element gamsa ("thanksgiving") in the Korean name derives from it. The name reflects the understanding that the sacrament in which bread and wine are shared in remembrance of Christ's death and resurrection is an offering of thanksgiving to God.

Biblical and Historical Background

Holy Communion originated in the Last Supper, which Jesus shared with his disciples on the night before his arrest. Scripture records that Jesus took bread, "and gave thanks, and brake it" (Luke 22:19-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). Believers in the early church continued to gather, devoting themselves "in breaking of bread, and in prayers" (Acts 2:42). By the second century, a pattern is known to have become established in which the Sunday gathering included the reading and teaching of Scripture, followed by the sharing of bread and wine. After the Reformation, the Church of England set forth its Communion rite in a vernacular prayer book. The Anglican Church of Korea inherited this tradition and celebrates the Holy Eucharist using a Korean-language prayer book.

Practice in the Korean Church

The Anglican Church of Korea makes the Holy Eucharist the principal service of the Lord's Day, and a priest presides. The service generally consists of two parts.

• Liturgy of the Word: Passages from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the Epistles, and the Gospels are read according to a lectionary that follows the liturgical calendar. The readings are followed by the sermon, the profession of the creed, and prayers.
• Liturgy of the Eucharist: The service proceeds through the Peace, the Offertory, and the Eucharistic Prayer. The congregation receives the consecrated bread and wine, and the service concludes with the dismissal.

Other traditions call the same rite by different names. The Catholic Church refers to it as the "Mass" or the "Eucharist," while most Protestant churches call it "the Lord's Supper" or "the Communion service." The frequency of celebration also differs. Anglicans celebrate Communion every Sunday. By contrast, many Presbyterian and Methodist churches in Korea celebrate Communion only a few times a year, such as at Easter and Christmas, and their Sunday worship centers on the sermon. In recent years, however, there has been a movement within Protestantism toward more frequent Communion.

Understandings of how Christ is present in Communion also vary among traditions.

• The Catholic Church teaches transubstantiation, the doctrine that the substance of the bread and wine is changed into the body and blood of Christ.
• Lutherans understand the body and blood of Christ to be present together with the bread and wine.
• Presbyterian and other Reformed churches confess a spiritual presence through the Holy Spirit.
• Baptists and some other churches emphasize the memorial character of the rite.
• Anglicans are described as confessing the real presence of Christ while generally declining to define its manner in any single way.

These questions are treated in more detail in Eucharistic controversies.