So, just as last night we looked at the way early Celtic Christians stretched out the significance of the bread in the Eucharist into s more elaborate and involving ritual, so, tonight, my reading covered the same for the wine, including how larger quantities are usually involves than today, that the experience might be savoured, how water was added to the chance first to represent the church and wine, return-to-normality at this point the Spirit of Christ, gets added later, and how the president would circle the heads of t the communicants with the chalice whose reciting a classic Celtic encircling player of protection.

All of these things point to the immense significance the Celtic Christians saw both in the Eucharist as a sacrament and the blood of Christ itself which the wine represented. This was no mere memorial ritual, but an effort to be drenched anew in the powerful, saving blood of Christ.

For the Hebrews, blood represented the life of a person or animal and, in the Eucharist, when we eat the bread and drink the wine we are taking in representative form both the form and the life of Christ, as well being reminded of His suffering and death, through which we are granted eternal life with Him. It is for this reason that many church traditions, including the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, teach that Christ is really present in the Eucharist in a way somehow more profound than his omnipresence in this world. These elements contain or symbolise the real presence of Christ in the Church and we should dwell on the significance of that when we take them.

Have you ever taken communion? Did you see the significance of what you were doing it did you let the ritual pass you by? Think about the elements and what they represent. Do you think you could be moved by such thoughts?