And when he had given thanks... — Better, and having given thanks, He brake it, and said, “This is My body which is for you.” The insertion of the words, “take, eat,” and “broken” is not supported by MS. evidence. The former were probably inserted so as to produce a verbal identity with St. Matthew’s account, and the word “broken” possibly as explanatory. At the institution the act of breaking the bread explained sufficiently what was meant. The Master, while in the act of breaking it, said, “This is My body, which is for you.”
This do in remembrance of me — i.e., all that was done then. Bless the bread, break it, distribute it, eat it. When I am no longer with you bodily, these acts will make memory grow into realisation of My presence in your midst. If the soft music of those words could reach us now, disentangled from the theological discords of intervening ages, surely they would come to us with some such significance. To those who first heard them they certainly must have implied not that a physical presence was about to be perpetuated, but rather that there was now something for them which would in after ages console them for a physical absence.