"This is my body…This is my blood…"
Central to the faith and worship of Roman Catholics and many other Christians is the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist. To Catholics, Eucharist is the Most Blessed Sacrament, and indeed it should be central to the spirituality of each Catholic Christian. Eucharist is largely viewed in its communal context, as the culmination of the Church’s worship of God the Father, through his Son, Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit, Eucharist means prayers of praise and thanksgiving to the Father.
The meaning of Eucharist to the Church and the individual cannot be exhausted. There are, nevertheless, aspects of Eucharist which clearly deserve discussion in any consideration of the intimate relationship to which God calls each person. Like matrimony, Eucharist finds profound meaning as a sacrament when the verse from the Fourth Gospel is recalled:
"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us" (Jn 1:14).
The full meaning of the sacrament is inseparable from the Incarnation. When we truly believe that the bread is his body and the wine is his blood, then
"we have seen his glory; the glory of an only Son coming from the Father, filled with enduring love" (1 Jn 1:14);
"This is what we proclaim to you; what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked upon and our hands have touched – we speak of the word of life" (1 Jn 1);
"This is how you can recognize God’s Spirit: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God" (1 Jn 4:2).
In many of Jesus’ signs and miracles, Eucharist plays a critical role. In his first sign, at Cana, in the miracle of water made wine, he connects the idea of Eucharist with matrimony as indicative of the future wedding of Christ with his bride, the Church (see also Mt 22:1-14 and Rev 19;6-S). That there is more wine — the choice wine at that — than can possibly be consumed at the Cana wedding celebration no doubt foreshadows the abundance of mercy provided by the blood which flowed from his side on the Cross (Jn 19-34):
"[T]his is my blood, the blood of the covenant, to be poured ‘out in behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins." (Mt 26:28).
In the miracles of the multiplication of loaves, the abundance of food foreshadows the abundant life of the kingdom:
"I myself am the bread of life. No one who comes to me shall ever be hungry, no one who believes in me shall ever thirst" (Jn 6:35).
It is clear, however, that one can receive the body and blood of Jesus, and go unfed, remain unfilled. There is first the necessity of being prepared to recognize Jesus and his body, and then act on that recognition. As Paul wrote,
"He who eats and drinks without recognizing the body eats and drinks a judgment upon himself" (1 Cor 11:29).
Recognition of Jesus and his body means recognizing Jesus in his body, the Church, and, in fact, recognizing him in each person, Christian or not:
"Is not the cup of blessing we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ-? And is not the bread we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Because the loaf of bread is one, we, many though we are, are one body, for we all partake of "the one loaf" (1 Cor 10:16-17).
This may be part of the meaning contained in the encounter on the road to Emmaus:
"Two of them that same day were making their way to a village named Emmaus seven miles distant from Jerusalem, discussing as they went all that had happened. In the course of their lively exchange, Jesus approached and began to walk along with them. However, they were restrained from recognizing him. He said to them, ‘What are you discussing as you go your way?’ They halted, in distress, and one of them, Cleopas by name, asked him, ‘Are you the only resident of Jerusalem who does not know the things that went on there these past few days?’ He said to them, ‘What things?’ They said; ‘All those that had to do with Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet powerful in word and deed in the eyes of God and all the people; how our chief priests and leaders delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. We were hoping that he was the one who would set Israel free. Besides all this, today, the third day since these things happened, some women of our group have just brought us some astonishing news. They were at the tomb before dawn and failed to find his body, but returned with the tale that they had seen a vision of angels who declared he was alive. Some of our number went to the tomb and found it to be just as the women said, but him they did not see.’ "Then he said to them, ‘What’ little sense you have! How slow you are to believe all that the prophets have announced! Did not the Messiah have to undergo all this so as to enter into his glory?’ Beginning, then, with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted for them every passage of Scripture which referred to him. By now they were near the village to which they were going, and he acted as if he were going farther. But they pressed him: ‘Stay with us. It is nearly evening — the day is practically over,’ So he went in to stay with them. "When he had seated himself with them to eat, he took bread, pronounced the blessing, then broke the bread and began to distribute it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him; whereupon he vanished from their sight. They said to one another, ‘Were not our hearts burning inside us as he talked to us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?’ They go up immediately and returned to Jerusalem, where they found the Eleven and the rest of the company assembled. They were greeted with, ‘The Lord has been raised! It is true! He has appeared to Simon.’ Then they recounted what had happened on the road and how they had come to know him in the breaking of the bread" (Lk 24:3-35).
Despite the witness of the women who saw angels near the empty tomb, angels who told them that Jesus was risen, two disciples still departed Jerusalem. We can only imagine their pain and confusion as they expressed their distress at the stranger who joined them on the roa, at his seeming ignorance of all of the events, surrounding their master’s death. As they walked farther from the city, the stranger – Jesus, unrecognized – begins to open their minds to all in the Law and Prophets which prophesied the Passion. Still, even with hearts burning within them, they did not recognize the stranger. It was not until they invited him to eat, and he broke the bread, that they recognized him. As a result of the revelation, the two quickly returned to Jerusalem – we can imagine they ran all the way – to report what they had seen to the rest of the disciples.
Consider what occurred on the road to Emmaus; despite their distress, the two disciples shared their witness with a stranger. They invited him to stay with them. They responded, almost instinctively, to the prophecy of Malachi, by not turning aside a stranger (Mal 3:5). Perhaps they were recognizing Jesus unconsciously. Nevertheless, when Jesus revealed himself in the breaking of the bread, their response was to return immediately to the rest of the disciples. The Eucharist became the channel of recognition, and Eucharist united the disciples once again.
"Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts" (Mal 3:7).
Just as the wedding alone isn’t the totality of the sacrament of matrimony, so Eucharist as sacrament isn’t limited to the Mass and Communion. When we do it for the least of the brothers, we do it for the king – Jesus – and that is a fulfillment of Eucharist. When we live the Gospel, we live Eucharist. The two disciples ran back to Jerusalem to share their good news, a consequence of Eucharist.
There is in Eucharist, then, a very powerful and different kind of intimacy with God. It- is an intimacy with his people, sharing our goods, our talents, or love, even our pain, indeed our very selves. We become part of Eucharist ourselves, for we are part of the body. The Church emphasizes this when the offertory prayer refers to the work of human hands. When we adore the Eucharist, we see not only Jesus and his resurrected body, we see his glorified body the Church; we see ourselves. We become the living sacrifice in the praise we offer him:
"For from the rising of the sun, even to its setting, my same is great among the nations; And everywhere they bring sacrifice to my name, and a pure offering; For great is my name among the nations, says the LORD of hosts" (Mal 1:11).
When Jesus says, through the priest, "This is my body", he is also talking about us, for we can unite ourselves with his body, and give ourselves up for all our brothers and sisters. We can share in his passion, his death, his resurrection; we, too, can run back to Jerusalem to bring the good news – the master lives and we live also for we have recognized him and ourselves, in the breaking of the bread.
Deacon's Bench 