Is weekly communion a Catholic thing?

Is weekly communion a Catholic thing?

That is a question some of you may have, and it is a justified one. After all, for some of you that may be the only context in which you have experienced weekly communion. The contemporary Roman Catholic church does indeed celebrate their mass weekly.

But in this brief article I want to make the case that weekly communion is not a Roman Catholic thing. We are not interested in becoming more Roman Catholic at Grace!

The first part of the answer is the simple recognition that because the Lord’s Supper is a gift from Christ to His people (as we’ve seen in our previous articles), then it does not belong to any one tradition or denomination or group. If it is the ordinance of His New Covenant people, then it belongs to them.

Biblically, we do not see any direct instruction on the frequency of celebrating the Lord’s Supper, but the indirect evidence suggests that it was celebrated weekly. In Acts 2:42, we read that the early church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Most commentators agree that “the breaking of bread” is not a mere fellowship meal, but a celebration of the Lord’s Supper (not the definite article, “the”).

Then, later in Acts, we read this of the church in Troas, “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight.” What is significant about this text is that Luke says that the purpose for which the church had gathered together on the first day (Sunday) was “to break bread.” Again, this is most likely a reference to the Lord’s Supper.

Finally, when Paul addresses the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11 – the most extended teaching in the New Testament on it – the issues he has to address do not seem to be rare occurrences (as they would be if the church only infrequently celebrated it). Moreover, given the significant abuse of the Lord’s Supper present in the Corinthian church (some members were going hungry, others getting drunk! Cf. 1 Cor. 11:22), the fact that Paul does not command them to practice it less often is significant. His response to an abuse of the Lord’s Supper was to correct the practice, not to recommend they celebrate it less frequently.

The New Testament evidence suggests, then, that the early church celebrated the Supper frequently, and probably weekly.

The second part of the answer is historical. When you look at church history you see that frequent and even weekly communion predates the Roman Catholic church by centuries.[1] The Didache,[2] which is our the earliest existing Christian document outside the New Testament (60-90 AD), assumes weekly communion (Didache 14:1).

Justin Martyr (First Apology, 67, 156 AD) describes the worship of the early church in his and lists communion alongside of reading Scripture, teaching, and praying – all of which occurred in regular weekly worship.

Moving forward a thousand years or so, and we see that in the high middle ages when the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church was developed and its errors had begun to accrue, we actually see the frequency of communion reduced. In 1215 AD, the Fourth Lateran Council said that communion must only be taken yearly, “Let them reverently receive the sacrament of the eucharist at least at Easter unless they think, for a good reason and on the advice of their own priest, that they should abstain from receiving it for a time.”

Next week we will look at more historical voices from the reformation and beyond. For this week, let is be sufficient to know that weekly communion does not belong to the Catholics.

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[1] A compelling argument can be made that the contemporary Roman Catholic church did not even exist until the Council of Trent (1545-1563) in which it officially adopted many erroneous views (such as on justification and works) and rejected others that up until that point were permitted within the church.

[2] Didache just means “teaching.”