In the second reading today, we hear the earliest known text of the Eucharist, written in a letter to the Corinthians around the year 56 AD, some 20 years after Jesus’ Crucifixion. St. Paul wrote:
Brothers and sisters:
I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you,
that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over,
took bread, and, after he had given thanks,
broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying,
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup,
you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.
Paul was sharing what the early Church had been practicing ever since Jesus’ Resurrection and Pentecost, the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
That was the practice of the early Church, and it still is, now some 2,000 years later.