And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.
And he took bread, and gave thanks (see the note at Mark 6:41). In Matthew and Mark it is "and blessed it." The one act includes the other. He "gave thanks," not so much here for the literal bread, as for that higher food which was couched under it; and He "blessed" it as the ordained channel of spiritual nourishment.
And brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. 'The expression, "This is my body,"' says Alexander most truly, 'which is common to all the accounts, appears so unambiguous and simple an expression, that it is hard to recognize in it the occasion and the subject of the most protracted and exciting controversy that has rent the Church within the last thousand years. That controversy is so purely theological that it has scarcely any basis in the exposition of the text; the only word upon which it could fasten (the verb is) being one which in Aramaic (or Syro-Chaldaic), would not be expressed, and therefore belongs merely to the Greek translation of our Saviour's language. [But this supposes our Lord now spoke in Aramaic-the contrary of which we believe.] Until the strong unguarded figures of the early Fathers had been petrified into a dogma, at first by popular misapprehension, and at last by theological perversion, these words suggested no idea but the one which they still convey to every plain unbiased reader, that our Saviour calls the bread His body in the same sense that He calls Himself a door (John 10:9), a vine (John 15:1), a root (Revelation 22:16), a star, and is described by many other metaphors in Scripture. The bread was an emblem of His flesh, as wounded for the sins of men, and as administered for their spiritual nourishment and growth in grace.'