The Eucharist means “to give thanks” in the New Testament, it is also called the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion (The Christian Theological Tradition, 491). Nowadays, the Christian only maintains two rituals: Baptism and the Eucharist, while Catholic Church and Eastern Christianity still keep the seven sacraments, which are Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, Marriage and the Holy Orders. Even though Christian has simplified or canceled the other five sacraments, it remains the Eucharist, which was set up and demonstrated by Jesus on his own. From this, we would know that the Eucharist occupies an important position in Christian faith and why it is considered as the center of Christians’ lives. In this paper, I would like to explore the origin, elements and importance of the Eucharist. Last Supper on the Holy Thursday Holy Thursday is the Thursday before the Easter. It was the day Jesus set up the Eucharist and also the day of his betrayal (Mauriac, 13). Now people commemorate the Last Supper of Jesus on this day. It was all mentioned in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus dined together with his twelve Apostles in Jerusalem before the crucifixion, which is known as the Last Supper today. Each gospel has mentioned that Jesus prayed for the bread and wine, and divided them to his apostles, making his statement that the bread was his body, the cup was the new covenant in his blood. According to the Gospel of Luke 22:19, Jesus set the assignment for his people by saying that “do this in remembrance of me”. It was also mentioned in the Gospel of John, even though it didn’t clearly present the whole process of the Last Supper, it passed Jesus’ teaching and prayer at that night. Actually the Eucharist grew out of the Jewish Passover, an important Jewish festival which was mentioned in the Old Testament. According to the four Gospels, the day before Jesus’ crucifixion was the day of Passover, so, the last meal that Jesus shared with his disciples was actually a Passover meal. At that night, Jesus took the bread as his body, took the wine as the blood for new covenant, and he sacrificed himself to replace the lambs which were used for sacrifices on the Passover. His death saved people from sins, just like the death of lambs set people free from slavery. After that day, the custom of Passover changed, the preparation of it used to begin with selecting the lambs (Emminghaus, 15), but sacrifice of Jesus drew this tradition to an end, therefore there is no need to kill any lambs. In Paul the Apostle’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, it recorded the earliest celebration of the Eucharist. It describes the earliest form of the Eucharist that performed by early Christian, it tells the nature of this event: the rite that memorizing the death of Jesus. The origin of the Eucharist is the Last Supper which Jesus had with his disciples the night before he suffered. According to that, the action and meaning of the Eucharist is rooted in the statement that Jesus made at the last night, he is also the origin of this sacrament. “Take and eat, this is my body” The Lord asked his people to celebrate the Eucharist at the Last Supper in order to remember him, according to Emminghaus, the commission includes two parts: a doing and a remembering; it is a dynamic and expressive action being done in the community and it consists in imitating the model that Jesus had provided. The action is the blessing spoken over the two elements of the meal which are consecrated on a table: bread and wine (Emminghaus, 3). So there is a question that why Christian needs bread and wine in the Eucharist. The answer is clear since the Lord already proclaimed it in the Last Supper: “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take and eat, this is my body.’ Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”(Matthew 26:26-28). The bread is the sign of Jesus’ body, that is mentioned in Gospel of John. Referring to the time when Jesus fed five thousand people with five small loaves and two small fish, after the miracle, Jesus illustrated that fact that he was the bread of life which came down from the heaven. According to John 6:48-51, Jesus said that he was the living bread of life, and he told people that they can live forever through eating his flesh. He said this bread was his flesh, which he would give for the life of the world (John 6:48-51). Therefore, Jesus namely said his flesh was the bread, the believers obtained his body through eating his flesh, the bread (“The Meaning of Bread and Wine”). The choice of bread has a difference between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Christianity: Roman Catholic prefers to use unleavened bread which is different from the leavened bread that Eastern Christianity used in Mass. Wine is the sign of Jesus’ blood. Return to the night that Jesus had his Last Supper, he took the cup containing “fruit of the vine” and gave it to his disciples saying that this was his blood (Matthew 26:27-29). Some people argued that the “wine” which produced from the “fruit of the vine” was actually not necessarily produced by grapes, since the word of grape in Greek didn’t exists in the bible. However, the answer was given that the word “vine” actually means “grapevine” in Greek, therefore, “the fruit of the vine” what Jesus said at the mean indeed meant “the fruit of grapevine”(Lang, “Why Grape Wine”). In order to preserve and imitate the model that Jesus had set up for them, a Mass is only valid when using wine as the consecration into Jesus’ blood. And this has become a definitive doctrine of the Catholic Church (Land, “Why Grape Wine”). “Do this in remembrance of me” Jesus’ disciples followed his teaching to celebrate the Eucharist. As time goes on, the rite is no longer only offered by Jesus, but also the Church, according to Yperman, the Eucharis of Church has been endowed with more meanings: Firstly, it represents Jesus’ attitude to life and the revelation of his death, by celebrating the event, Jesus’ believers inherit his example through the remembrance of him; Secondly, it is the renewed revision of the new covenant that Jesus proclaimed at the beginning, which brings the believers together and unites the Church; Thirdly, it functions as the “Viaticum” referring to Yperman, the new aim of the Eucharist celebration is to bring people out of suffering, the Church would bring people out of the turbid secular life and into the Paradise which God created for them (Yperman, 64). The Eucharist has evolved a lot through the course of time. Based on Yperman, the structure of the Mass which we know today is not simply imitating what Jesus actually did on the Holy Thursday. People have diminished something and also added new things to several aspects of the Eucharist: The Eucharist actually came from the Jewish memorial meal, but the meanings of prayers spoken over the bread and wine which both were the important rituals were latterly developed by Jesus; during the apostolic period which is considered as the period when the apostles were alive in the history of the Christin church, people brought the two offerings together and put them at the end of the meal as one total ritual; And then those new Eucharistic rituals were separated from the meal itself, people paid more attention to the thanksgiving prayers and less to the consumptions of food, but it also led to the result that people gradually forgot the nature of the former memorial meal, it no longer took the character of sacrifice but thanksgiving and remembrance; When it turned to the period between third and fourth centuries, the reading and prayer service reached a full development in the celebration, while it used to be done in the visit to the synagogue for the Jewish which already being omitted; the thanksgiving prayer used to be free expression, but, after the fourth century, it became a fixed prayer: the canon; After the eighth century, a significant shift in the explanation and experience of the Eucharist emerged: the Eucharist was no longer taken as the offering of Jesus but the gift of the God (Yperman, 65-70). To sum up, even though the Eucharist has changed a lot since its beginning, during the Last Supper, Jesus sacrificed himself but later the sacrifice itself became the gift for all mankind who hold solid faith. Today, people begin to pay more attention to its sacramental sign, making it more comprehensible, and they are making effort to continue this tradition. Citation: Mauriac, F. (1944). The eucharist: the mystery of Holy Thursday. Longmans, Green and co: New York. Yperman, J. (1968). Teaching the Eucharist. Paulist Press: New York. Emminghaus, J H. (c1978). The Eucharist: essence, form, celebration. Liturgical Press: Collegeville, Minn. "The meaning of Bread and Wine." Christian Church of God . Christian Church of God, n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2017. Lang, David P. "Why Grape Wine." Catholic Answer 25 Aug. 2011: n. pag. Print. Luotong Liang