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New Testament in a Year

Read the New Testament from start to finish, from Matthew to Revelation.

Duration: 365 days

1 Corinthians 11:17-34

The Lord’s Supper, Sign of Unity^[a]

¹⁷Do You Despise the Church of God? Now in giving you this instruction I cannot praise you, because your meetings tend to do more harm than good. ¹⁸To begin with, when you come together in your assembly, I hear that there are divisions among you, and to some extent I am inclined to believe it. ¹⁹There must be such factions among you so that it will become clear to you which groups should be trusted.

²⁰^[b]When you do assemble, it is not to eat the Lord’s supper, ²¹for each of you goes ahead with his own supper, and one goes hungry while another has too much to drink. ²²Do you not have homes in which you can eat and drink? Or do you have such contempt for the Church of God that you humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I praise you? In this matter, I cannot praise you.

²³You Proclaim the Death of the Lord.^[c]For what I received from the Lord I handed on to you: the Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, ²⁴and after giving thanks he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

²⁵In the same fashion, after the supper,^[d] he also took the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁶And so, whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.

²⁷God’s Judgment on the Community.^[e] Therefore, anyone who eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner is guilty of an offense against the body and blood of the Lord. ²⁸Everyone should examine himself about eating the bread and drinking from the cup. ²⁹For a person who eats and drinks without discerning the body of the Lord is eating and drinking judgment on himself.

³⁰That is why many of you are weak and ill, and a number of you have fallen asleep. ³¹If we were to examine ourselves, we would not be condemned. ³²However, when we are judged by the Lord, he is disciplining us to save us from being condemned together with the world.

³³Practical Conclusion. Therefore, brethren, when you come together for the meal, wait for one another. ³⁴If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that in assembling you may not incur condemnation. As for the other matters, I will resolve them when I come.

Footnotes

1 Corinthians 11:17 From the very beginning, the Church has celebrated the Eucharist. She does so by renewing the actions and words of Jesus on the night of the Last Supper, and here we have the most ancient document written about it. The document evokes the celebration itself and expresses its most profound meaning. Nevertheless, Paul does not intend to give an explanation of the subject. He is simply intervening in the face of abuses. He stresses that the Eucharist is not to be celebrated in the same way as one organizes a sacred meal in a temple with one’s friends. We are not going to partake passingly in some magical or symbolic food of immortality. Celebrating the Eucharist is a serious action that engages the whole community in the highest reality of its faith: the union with Christ in his Passion, the unity that he imparts to human beings, and the expectation of his coming and its accomplishment for all. Such an action entails exigencies for Liturgy and life.
1 Corinthians 11:20 Before the Eucharist, the Corinthians apparently held an ordinary meal, an early form of the agape (see 2 Pet 2:13; Jude 12). Paul condemns the abuses that occurred in it.
1 Corinthians 11:23 This is the earliest written New Testament account of the institution of the Eucharist. The words over the bread and the cup stress the Lord’s self-giving, and the words “Do this in remembrance of me” command Christians to repeat his action.
1 Corinthians 11:25 After the supper: i.e., after the Passover supper. The Lord’s Supper was first celebrated by Jesus in connection with the Passover meal (see Mt 26:18-30). The cup: a symbol of the New Covenant in the blood of Jesus (Lk 22:20; see Jer 31:31-34). The Old Covenant was the Mosaic Covenant (see Ex 24:3-8).
1 Corinthians 11:27 In this passage Paul presents a profound teaching: The reception of Christ’s Body is a source of life and unity; it also has an effect on the relationships of human beings and on their salvation. But if the fraternal bond created by communion loosens, as at Corinth, the community becomes disunited in spirit and in body.

New Catholic Bible (NCB)