Jesus Holding Up the Eucharist (SNV 050)

Garbed in primary colors--a bright blue tunic with a yellow collar and red mantle, Jesus holds up and out to His sides the Eucharist—the bread in his upraised right hand; the chalice of wine, in his left. The gesture is open, expansive, invitational. Jesus makes eye contact with the viewer establishing a personal relationship. The image is not grounded in time nor space. Delicately rendered tendrils of grapevines fill the mostly desaturated dark orange background of the roundel. In the corners of the squared circle are symbols of the Evangelist. Reading clockwise from the upper lefthand corner are: the angel of St. Matthew, the eagle of St. John, the winged bull of St. Luke, and the winged lion of St. Mark. + Compare this image with our image of Jesus Instituting Holy Communion (SAU 045). There the figure is closed off, compact, more introspective. Jesus raises his eyes to heaven oblivious at that moment to the viewer. Like the apostles, the viewer becomes a spectator at that first Consecration on Holy Thursday in the Upper Room. Two artists, two very different renditions of essentially a subject in common. + Image Credit (SNV 050): Antique image of Jesus Holding Up the Eucharist from a late 19th-century First Holy Communion certificate in chromolithography, originally published by St. Norbertus Verlag, Vienna, Austria, from the designer’s private collection of religious ephemera.