"THE Breaking of Bread is a meeting for the expression of thanks to God. In all the New Testament records of its institution, the attitude of Jesus is one of mingled blessing and thanksgiving; the invocation of the blessing of his Father on the bread and the wine, and all it signified and was to signify for so many generations of believers; the offering of thanks that so great a provision for men had been made. As for believers themselves, of whatever age or nation, they may reflect before the Table that without that life, death and resurrection, they would be in the condition described by Paul as aliens from the commonwealth of God's people, strangers from the covenants of promise, without God, and in the presence of death sorrowing without hope (Ephesians 2:12).

JAMES NORRIS, The First Century Ecclesia, page 168