The Meal at the Centre of Christian Worship

Bread and wine, consecrated and shared in the rite most commonly called the Eucharist, Holy Communion or the Lord's Supper depending on tradition, form the central sacramental act of Christian worship across nearly every denomination, instituted according to the Gospel accounts at the Last Supper Jesus shared with his disciples before his crucifixion, where he identified the bread and wine with his body and blood and instructed his followers to continue the meal in remembrance of him.

Dix's classic study of the liturgy's historical development traces how this shared meal, originally embedded within an ordinary communal supper in the earliest Christian communities, gradually separated out into its own distinct rite with an increasingly formalised structure across the first several centuries of Christian practice, a process of liturgical development Dix documents in close textual detail across the surviving early sources. Christian traditions differ substantially in how they understand what happens to the bread and wine during consecration, ranging from the Catholic and Orthodox doctrine that the elements become, in substance, the actual body and blood of Christ, to Protestant positions holding the elements remain bread and wine while conveying Christ's presence spiritually, or serving primarily as a remembrance.