Saint Paul — "For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to him…"
For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Paul warns that participating in the communal meal commemorating Jesus without proper reverence or self-examination brings spiritual harm to the participant. Treating the bread and wine as ordinary food, while ignoring what they represent, turns an act meant to nourish the soul into one that condemns it. The believer must pause, reflect on their own conduct, and recognize the sacred meaning before partaking.
Relevance to Saint Paul
Paul wrote this in a letter to the Corinthian church, where communal meals had become chaotic feasts marked by drunkenness and social division between rich and poor members. As a former Pharisee obsessed with ritual purity, Paul carried that sensitivity into Christian practice, insisting sacred acts demand inner preparation. His pastoral role required correcting such abuses to preserve the movement's integrity across scattered Gentile congregations.
The era
In first-century Corinth, a wealthy Roman trade hub, early Christians gathered in house churches for shared meals blending ordinary supper with ritual remembrance of Jesus. Greco-Roman banquet customs favored the wealthy, who arrived early with abundant food while poorer workers came later to scraps. This social stratification clashed with the egalitarian vision Paul championed, making proper reverence during the communal meal a matter of both theology and justice.
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