Tag Archives: bread

Corpus Christi = Triumph of Orthodoxy

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Scenes related to Corpus Christi: the elevation of the Host at Mass; the pelican’s piety, piercing her own breast with her beak in order to raise her chicks from the dead with the blood of her pierced breast; an image of Christ the priest-and-king, offering the Host and Chalice.



Twice the Christian Church has been overwhelmed by controversy about whether God can be present in or act through material things.

The first time was in the Christian East, when the iconoclasts insisted that icons should be destroyed, not merely not venerated. You can read about all the dates and details in a book. The important thing to know is that the iconoclasts systematically leveled churches that were adorned with icons and dissolved monasteries, confiscating monastic property because the monks led the resistance against the iconoclastic efforts to wipe out icons. Finally, in AD 843, the icons were restored to the great cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and a massive procession was held. People carried icons large and small through the streets of the imperial capital to celebrate the vindication of the icons, the triumph of Orthodoxy as it is still referred to, and every year on the first Sunday of Lent—the anniversary of that massive procession—each parish of the Greek and Russian Churches celebrates the Triumph of Orthodoxy again, processing with icons at least around the aisles of the church if not through the streets of the city.

The second time the Christian Church was torn apart by the controversy about whether God can be present in or at through material things was in the Christian West. You can read about the details of these Eucharistic controversies in books as well; the important thing being that these continued on and off for nearly 400 years. The Western Church was torn by riots between those who did vs. those who did not believe that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. It was not until AD 1215 that the question was settled that yes, indeed, Christ IS truly present in the Eucharist and in 1246 a nun, Juliana, organized a procession with the Blessed Sacrament through the streets of a city in Belgium to celebrate Christ’s presence in the Eucharistic bread.

In both cases—the iconoclastic controversy in the East and the eucharistic controversy in the West—the dispute was about whether God can be truly present in material objects and whether it is appropriate to offer incense, prayers, and proskynesis (prostrations and genuflections). In both cases, the Church acknowledged that God can be present in material things because God himself was made flesh in the womb of the great Mother of God, Mary most holy and—in both cases—that incense, prayers, and genuflections are appropriate recognition of the presence of God. And in both cases people began to hold processions through the streets with the material objects that were at the heart of the controversies… icons in the east, the Eucharist in the west.

We hold processions through the streets with icons or the Eucharist to celebrate God’s blessing on the world in general and on our neighborhood in particular. We acclaim the Eucharist and offer our worship—music, incense, singing, kneeling and genuflecting—to recognize and celebrate God’s presence with us. God is with us and what else can we do but sing like the angels and bow down with our faces to the ground?

We should-we must carry the Eucharist in procession to celebrate that God is with us. Even here. Even now. But we should-we must examine ourselves, turning ever more completely toward the God who gives himself for us. Even here. Even now. And we should-we must forgive and embrace the neighbor that we find beside us—whether we like them or not—if we hope to experience the NOW of eternity as abundant, inexpressible joy. Even here. Even now.

My most popular post was also about Corpus Christi—almost 1,000 people viewed it on the day it was published! Read it here.

Yeast, Sincerity, and Truth

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Bread for the Eucharist with yeast (on the left) as the Orthodox use; on the right, Western hosts without yeast.

Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the entire mound of dough? Get rid of the old yeast so that you may be a new mound of dough, because you are unleavened; for Christ, our passover, was sacrificed. Hence let us celebrate not with the old yeast, not with the yeast of evil and sexual immorality, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Cor. 5:6-8)

The apostle Paul urges the Corinthians to expel the man who has a sexual relationship with his stepmother before his immoral behavior spreads and destroys them all. No one’s behavior is “private,” even if it is something a person does when no one else is there to watch.

The apostle mentions the passover sacrifice and the passover bread because the Passover feast was about to be celebrated (1 Cor. 16:8). He compares the man’s bad behavior to the yeast that must be thrown away before Passover starts. He urges the parish to not be contaminated by the man’s immoral behavior when they celebrate Passover; the apostle wants them to celebrate with the new bread of sincerity and truth, unspoilt by the “yeast” of insincerity, dishonesty, and lies.

According to Jewish practice, bread without yeast would only be used once a year–i.e. during the Passover. When the first Christians–who were Jewish Christians–would have known that and would have used leavened bread for the weekly celebrations of the Eucharist. Eastern Christians still maintain the practice of using bread with yeast for the Eucharist. Western Christians also used bread with yeast but began to use bread without yeast sometime in the 10th century.

The Eastern Christians saw the yeast in the bread that they used as a sign of the Resurrection; they could not understand bread without yeast as anything except a denial of the Resurrection. They also saw the use of bread without yeast as the rejection of the 4th Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon as the Armenians, who rejected Chalcedon, also used bread without yeast in the Eucharist.

Yeast gives life to dough that is totally dead–grain harvested, ground into flour, pounded and kneaded, passed through fire. Yeast can mean resurrection.

Yeast gives life to grape juice that is also totally dead–cut from the vine and harvested, crushed beneath feet, dead. The yeast makes the grape juice come alive and ferments it, making it wine.

But if there is too much yeast or the fermentation goes on too long the wine goes sour. It becomes vinegar. The bread can grow mold. Too much yeast can make the wine and bread corrupt. Rotten. Uneatable and undrinkable. The moldy bread and sour wine must be thrown away. Yeast means Resurrection but it can also sometimes mean corruption.

See my popular 2019 blog post about Communion wafers here.

Corpus Christi: Wafer vs. Bread

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Contemporary hosts made for Holy Communion are often whole wheat and do not appear as glistening white as wafers produced with white flour.

Wafers have been used for Holy Communion by Western Christians since the late 1200s. Before that, unleavened bread–made without yeast–was used. (Western Christians adopted the use of bread without yeast in imitation of the matzah–unleavened bread–used at Passover and the Last Supper in the Gospels. The matzah was not like the crackers now sold in grocery stores; matzah and the unleavened bread used by Western Christians was more like tortilla or gyro bread.) Eastern Christians have always used bread made with yeast.

I remember in the 1970s how people joked, “It takes more faith to believe that a wafer is bread than it does to believe that it becomes the Body of Christ!” This was because the wafers do not look like anything most people think of when you ask them what bread looks like. It turns out this is because wafers are NOT technically bread at all! Both are baked goods made with flour but they are not the same just as cake and crackers are also baked goods made from flour but are not bread. Bread, by definition, is made from dough and must be kneaded and formed by hand; wafer is made from batter and is never touched until after it is baked. The first reference to Western Christians using wafers instead of bread are from the late 1200s and many people objected precisely that wafers were “not real bread.”

People also objected that the wafers were not made by monks as priests as the unleavened bread used at Mass had been. People did not think that layfolk–even nuns–should be baking the bread used for Holy Communion. (It did become common later for nuns to make wafers for churches to buy and this was a way for nuns to support themselves. Since the 1960s, making wafers for Holy Communion has become a big business that you can read about here.)

It is unclear how rapidly wafer-use spread among Western Christians but they became used uniformly across Europe by the late 1600s. Why did wafers become so popular? One reason might be that wafers did not spoil as quickly as real bread, even if it was made without yeast; this made it easier to keep the Blessed Sacrament reserved. Also, some people thought the bread or wafer used for Communion should be glistening white and it is easier to control the color of wafers than bread. Some people thought that the wafers never being touched until after they were baked was emblematic of Christ’s birth from the Virgin Mary; these people favored the use of wafers rather than bread that was touched as it was kneaded and formed.

It became standard to make a large wafer for the priest to elevate for people to reverence at the Elevation and just before Communion; the wafers that would be consumed by the layfolk were much smaller discs that were coin-sized. Preachers suggested that the coin-size wafers should remind people that God was like a vineyard owner who could hire people all day long and would pay all the workers the same coin at the end of the day (Matthew 20:1-16).

Want to know more? There are three books about the different kinds of bread used for Holy Communion:

1. Fractio Panis by Barry Craig (Germany, 2011).
2. Bread and the Liturgy: The Symbolism of Early Christian and Byzantine Bread Stamps by George Galavaris (Wisconsin, 1970).
3. The Bread of the Eucharist: Early Christian Eucharist and the Azyme Controversy, by Edward Martin (Rome, 1970).

The elevation of the Host in a contemporary celebration of the Solemn Mass by Dominican religious.