Origin of the Eucharist Origin of the Eucharist Church teaching places the origin of the Eucharist in the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples, at which he is believed to have taken bread and given it to his disciples, telling them to eat of it, because it was his body, and to have taken a cup and given it to his disciples, telling them to drink of it because it was the cup of the covenant in his blood. The earliest extant written account of a Christian "eucharistia" (Greek: thanksgiving) is that in the First Epistle to the Corinthians (around AD 55), in
Real presence of Christ in the Eucharist by the ordinance of Jesus. This view is known as Memoralism or the Zwinglian view, as it was taught by Huldrych Zwingli, a Swiss Reformer. Many Christian churches holding to a doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (for example, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed, and Methodist) require ordained clergy, to officiate at the Eucharist, consecrating and distributing the elements to communicants. Some groups, mostly Protestants, require church leaders who may or may not be ordained (pastors, elders and deacons) to preside over the elements and distribute them. Real presence of Christ in the Eucharist The