Readings

Belgic Confession Article 35 – the Lord’s Supper
We believe and confess that our Saviour Jesus Christ has ordained and instituted the sacrament of the Holy Supper to nourish and sustain those who are already born again and ingrafted into His family: His church.
Now those who are born again have two lives in them. The one is physical and temporal__ they have it from the moment of their first birth, and it is common to all.
The other is spiritual and heavenly, and is given them in their second birth; it comes through the Word of the gospel in the communion of the body of Christ; and this life is common to God’s elect only.
Thus, to support the physical and earthly life God has prescribed for us an appropriate earthly and material bread, which is as common to all as life itself also is.
But to maintain the spiritual and heavenly life that belongs to believers He has sent a living bread that came down from heaven: namely Jesus Christ, who nourishes and maintains the spiritual life of believers when eaten __ that is, when appropriated and received spiritually by faith.
To represent to us this spiritual and heavenly bread Christ has instituted an earthly and visible bread as the sacrament of His body and wine as the sacrament of His blood.
He did this to testify to us that just as truly as we take and hold the sacrament in our hands and eat and drink it in our mouths, by which our life is then sustained, so truly we receive into our souls for our spiritual life, the true body and true blood of Christ, our only Saviour.
We receive these by faith, which is the hand and mouth of our souls.
Now it is certain that Jesus Christ did not prescribe His sacraments for us in vain, since He works in us all He represents by these holy signs, although the manner in which He does it goes beyond our understanding and is incomprehensible to us, just as the operation of God’s Spirit is hidden and incomprehensible.
Yet we do not go wrong when we say that what is eaten is Christ’s own natural body and what is drunk is His own blood__ but the manner in which we eat it is not by the mouth but by the Spirit, through faith.
In that way Jesus Christ remains always seated at the right hand of God the Father in heaven__ but He never refrains on that account to communicate Himself to us through faith.
This banquet is a spiritual table at which Christ communicates Himself to us with all His benefits. At that table He makes us enjoy Himself as much as the merits of His suffering and death, as He nourishes, strengthens, and comforts our poor, desolate souls by the eating of His flesh, and relieves and renews them by the drinking of His blood.
Moreover, though the sacraments and thing signified are joined together, not all receive both of them.
The wicked person certainly takes the sacrament, to his condemnation, but does not receive the truth of the sacrament, just as Judas and Simon the Sorcerer both indeed received the sacrament, but not Christ, who was signified by it. He is communicated only to believers
Finally, with humility and reverence we receive the holy sacrament in the gathering of God’s people, as we engage together, with thanksgiving, in a holy remembrance of the death of Christ our Saviour, and as we thus confess our faith and Christian religion.
Therefore no one should come to this table without examining himself carefully, lest “by eating this bread and drinking this cup he eat and drink to his own judgment.”78
In short, by the use of this holy sacrament we are moved to a fervent love of God and our neighbours.
Therefore we reject as desecrations of the sacraments all the muddled ideas and damnable inventions that men have added and mixed in with them.
And we say that we should be content with the procedure that Christ and the apostles have taught us and speak of these things as they have spoken of them.
78. 1 Corinthians 11:27

Luke 22:7–23 
7 Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. 8 Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.”
9 “Where do you want us to prepare for it?” they asked.
10 He replied, “As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, 11 and say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 12 He will show you a large room upstairs, all furnished. Make preparations there.”
13 They left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.
14 When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. 15 And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.”
17 After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. 18 For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”
19 And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. 21 But the hand of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table. 22 The Son of Man will go as it has been decreed. But woe to that man who betrays him!” 23 They began to question among themselves which of them it might be who would do this