Eurcharist Prefigured and Instituted

The Eucharist Prefigured and Instituted Commentary by Victoria Emily Jones Cite Share Show Bible Passage Executed by anonymous Antwerp Mannerist painters, this eucharistic-themed triptych shows Jesus offering himself as the bread of life (John 6:35) who feeds and redeems. The central panel depicts the Last Supper. Jesus and his disciples are seated in a lavish Renaissance interior before a brocade cloth of honour. As the host of the Passover meal, Jesus leans over the table to give a piece of bread to Judas, who clutches his moneybag and whose foot is poised to leave the room. After this, Jesus will institute what the Church often calls the Lord’s Supper, a ritual to regularly commemorate his death. This scene is the antitype of the two ‘types’ portrayed in the wings. Typology is a Christian way of seeing the person and work of Christ foreshadowed in the Old Testament. On the left, one such ‘shadow’ of Christ is Melchizedek, an ancient Canaanite priest-king who ‘has neither beginning of days nor end of life; rather, resembling the Son of God, he continues a priest for ever’ (Hebrews 7:3). Melchizedek predated the Levitical priesthood that began with Aaron, the older brother of Moses. (And Moses, in a further typological pairing, is depicted as a bronze statue above Christ’s head.) But Melchizedek served El Elyon, ‘God Most High’ (Genesis 14:18). Hebrews 7, and this left wing, recounts the story from Genesis 14, where Abraham returns triumphantly from the armed expedition that saved his nephew Lot and is presented with bread and wine, and blessed, by Melchizedek. Christ arises as a priest ‘after the order of Melchiz’edek, … the surety of a better covenant’ (Hebrews 7:11, 22)—‘better’ because ‘he continues for ever. Consequently, he is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them’ (Hebrews 7:24b–25). The right wing of the altarpiece depicts Moses and the Israelites in the desert fed by manna from heaven (Exodus 16:11–36; Numbers 11:7–9), and the outer panels (not pictured) depict the Temptation of Adam and Eve. The Latin inscription on the lower section of the original frame that runs beneath all three panels makes clear how the giving of bread in blessing unites all three episodes. Taken from Matthew 26:26, it translates: While they were eating Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying…