The Eucharist

Summary

1 The Current Reality of the Eucharist

2 Valorization by the Magisterium

3 Principal Sacrament

4 Names

5 The Fundamental Doctrine

5.1 Instituted by Christ at the Last Supper

5.2 Memorial of the Supper

5.3 Memorial of the Sacrifice

5.4 The Real Presence of Christ

5.5 Transubstantiation

5.6 The Question of the Species and the Essential Formula

6 The Eucharist and the Church

7 The Celebration, in Summary

References

1 The Current Reality of the Eucharist

The Eucharist, as the main liturgical celebration of the Church, suffers in these times the same tensions and contradictions as the Christian faith in contemporary societies. This is not strange, because it precisely celebrates the faith in Jesus Christ, who died and rose again, in the current life of humanity and of each believer. The liturgy is sensitive to changes in the world and in the Church, because it is not celebrated in abstract spaces and times, but in the concrete human, cultural, and ecclesial contexts of each believer and each community. In general, it can be said that in the last decade, a large number of Catholics have stopped participating in the Sunday Eucharist and practicing the sacramental life. Generally, these are those whose relationship with the Church was based above all on the reception of the sacraments and participation in funerals and the great Christian feasts of the liturgical year or at shrines. The base ecclesial communities, chapels in more homogeneous neighborhoods or rural sectors, on the other hand, tend to maintain a more lively and regular celebratory practice. But they too, very frequently, have felt the distancing of young people and the difficulty of engaging lay men and women in the various liturgical roles linked to the Eucharist: choirs, lectors, acolytes. The crisis resulting from the abuse of power, conscience, and sex by members of the clergy, which in recent years has been widely publicized and has strongly affected the Church in many countries of the continent, has been a factor that, for many Catholics with a more fragile belonging to the Church and/or a more superficial formation, leads them to practically cease all participation in it, starting with the Sunday Eucharist.

Certainly, the reality of the celebration of the Eucharist is too vast and diverse to be summarized or generalized in a few lines. On the one hand, there are communities with very lively and participatory celebrations, and on the other, churches where the number of faithful who go to Sunday Mass has drastically decreased, while the average age of the participants has increased with the same radicality. The diocesan pastoral plans, the charism of the parish priests or the priests who preside over the Eucharist, the formation of lay men and women, and the tradition of the local Church are decisive for the quality of liturgical life and, in particular, of Eucharistic celebrations. The great differences in these aspects also largely determine the differences in the quality, participation, and liveliness of the Masses.

This realistic look, which does not intend to be pessimistic, is necessary at the beginning of a doctrinal treatment of the Eucharist, because we, as Catholics, place this sacrament in the highest place of the liturgical life of the Church and do not cease to proclaim its centrality and importance. For many, it may seem that these statements do not correspond to the reality at the moment, and to tell the truth, they would not be wrong. On the other hand, can the Church renounce affirming and teaching the importance and centrality of the Eucharist, without thereby affecting the very core of its liturgical-sacramental praxis?

2 Valorization by the Magisterium

The Magisterium of the Church continues to place the Eucharist in an eminent place in its cultic practice. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) reaffirms that the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the entire Christian life,” citing Lumen Gentium n.11 (CCC n.1324); that it “contains the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch,” citing Presbyterorum ordinis n.5 (CCC n.1325), and ends by stating that “the Eucharist is the summary and sum of our faith” (CCC n.1327).

Previously, the constitution on the liturgy of the Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC), stated that the liturgy, of which the Eucharist is the maximum expression, is “the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows” (SC n.10).

Pope St. John Paul II dedicated important pages to the Eucharist in his magisterium, among which his last encyclical letter, in 2003, Ecclesia de Eucharistia (EdE), stands out. In it, there are testimonial passages of great depth, such as the one that says: “Here (in the Eucharist) is the treasure of the Church, the heart of the world, the pledge of the end to which every man, even unconsciously, aspires. A great mystery, which certainly surpasses us and puts to the test the capacity  of our mind to go beyond appearances” (EdE n.59).

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI also wrote about the Eucharist. Particularly important is his apostolic exhortation Sacramentum caritatis (SC), from 2007, in which he integrates the reflection of the Synod of Bishops of 2005, whose theme was precisely the Eucharist.

The magisterium of Pope Francis, in turn, offers a large number of catecheses, homilies, and phrases about the Eucharist. In the catechesis of November 8, 2017, Francis recalls the ancient and impressive episode of the martyrs of Abitina:

We cannot forget the great number of Christians who, throughout the world, in two thousand years of history, resisted to the death to defend the Eucharist; and how many, even today, risk their lives to participate in Sunday Mass. In the year 304, during the persecutions of Diocletian, a group of Christians from North Africa were surprised celebrating Mass in a house and were imprisoned. The Roman proconsul, during the interrogation, asked them why they did it, knowing that it was absolutely forbidden. And they answered: “Without Sunday we cannot live,” which meant: if we cannot celebrate the Eucharist, we cannot live, our Christian life would die. Indeed, Jesus said to his disciples: “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day” (Jn 6:53-54). Those Christians from North Africa were killed because they celebrated the Eucharist. They left the testimony that one can renounce earthly life for the Eucharist, because it gives us eternal life, making us participants in Christ’s victory over death. A testimony that challenges us all and demands an answer about what it means for each of us to participate in the Sacrifice of the Mass and to approach the Lord’s Table. (FRANCIS, 2017)

The question of Pope Francis is key in our days: what does the Eucharist mean for us today? If there were times when it was not necessary to ask such a question, these are not the times we live in. Certainly, to appreciate the Eucharist it is not enough to know more about it. If knowledge is not in vital connection with the whole life of faith, it is of little use. It can make us wiser, but it does not help us to better celebrate our faith. The Eucharist is, above all, an experience. A celebratory, festive experience, born from the gratuity of being a Christian. We can know a lot about it, but for it to acquire its full meaning as a sacrament of the Church, it must be experienced, lived, and celebrated in the community of the faithful. From this perspective, an attempt is made here to synthesize its fundamental doctrine.

3 Principal Sacrament

The liturgy and ministries of the Church are oriented towards the Eucharist. “The other sacraments,” states the CCC n.1324, “and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it.” Its centrality in the Catholic Church is clear and is well-founded in the praxis and doctrine of its history. Therefore, it is necessary to know these foundations in these times when the catechetical formation of the Church is often weak and scarce.

The Eucharist is the principal of the seven sacraments. In the sacramental world, it is ordered with the set of sacraments of Christian initiation, along with baptism and confirmation. The triad baptism-confirmation-Eucharist was, during the first centuries of Christianity, the gateway to the Christian community, as a single and simultaneous sacramental celebration, of which the Eucharist was the culminating point. Very late in the history of the Church, only at the beginning of the 20th century, did the custom of anticipating the Eucharist for the youngest become generalized, thus altering the traditional order in which the sacraments of initiation were administered: 1-baptism, 2-confirmation, and 3-Eucharist; to a new one: 1-baptism, 2-Eucharist, and 3-confirmation. But even before, in the Latin Church, confirmation had been separated from baptism at the moment of administration. The reason is that, in the West, unlike the communities of the Christian East, the bishop (and not the priest) was instituted as the ordinary minister (today we call him the original) of confirmation. The priests baptized the newborns and only when the bishop visited the locality, or when children or young people could go to the episcopal see, could they be confirmed. And often years passed between the two sacraments. But even so, the Eucharist was received for the first time only at confirmation, thus preserving the traditional order: 1-baptism, 2-confirmation, and 3-Eucharist and, therefore, preserving the concrete sign of the Eucharist  as the culmination of Christian initiation.

Today it is considered important to recover the unity of these three sacraments, theologically and pastorally linked and interdependent. Since in the Latin churches this unity cannot be temporal – the custom and certain pastoral advantages of administering the first Eucharist first and then confirmation are very ingrained – an attempt is made for it to be at least catechetically and liturgically clear: in formation and in the ritual. Considering the Eucharist as the culminating point of Christian initiation can only be affirmed theoretically, as the sign establishes the sacrament of confirmation as the culminating point (at least temporally).

Baptism and confirmation imprint character, that is, they are sacraments that are only received once in a lifetime, as they leave an indelible spiritual mark on those who have received them. The Eucharist, in turn, is the sacrament of the Christian journey: it is received as many times as necessary, as food to live the personal union with Christ and discipleship. It is the sacrament of the traveler, of the pilgrim who wishes to live their faith in following and in fidelity to the entrusted mission. In the homily of Corpus Christi of 2015, Pope Francis stated that “the Eucharist is not a reward for the good, but a strength for the weak; for sinners it is forgiveness, the viaticum that helps us to walk, to journey.” A profound and realistic image: Eucharistic communion cannot be a reward for the merits a Christian possesses, but it is precisely the food they need in their fragility and vulnerability to live and witness to their faith in today’s complex world.

4 Names

The Eucharist has received several names throughout history. Each of them highlights some aspect of its theological content or its celebratory form. The CCC lists them more completely in numbers 1328 to 1332. Three of them are particularly important:

Breaking of the Bread. This expression is found in Acts 2:42-46, in the context of the description of the first Christian community, and in Acts 20:7-11, in a context that can be called liturgical, of an assembly on the “first day of the week” (Sunday, the Lord’s Day), with a long talk (homily) by Saint Paul. The expression “breaking of the bread” refers directly to an action proper to the Eucharist, which is to break the bread to distribute it, but it has its roots in a much older Jewish custom: that of the father of the family who, after blessing the table, broke and shared the bread with his family. In the Jewish Passover meal, which is the immediate antecedent of the Eucharist, this gesture was particularly significant.

The Lord’s Supper. In 1Cor 11:20, Saint Paul uses this expression to distinguish the fraternal meal that preceded the “Lord’s Supper” (the Eucharist) in the first Christian communities. In the community of Corinth, the preceding meals were a scene of excesses and contempt for the poorest, which motivates Paul’s criticism. Although this is not reproduced in the Lord’s Supper itself, its proximity to it should make them consistent with the Christian spirit of fraternity, solidarity, and appreciation for the poorest.

Eucharist. This name is found, in its verbal form, to give thanks, in Lk 22:19: “He took bread, gave thanks (…)” and in 1Cor 11:24: “took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it (…)”. Very close is the term to bless, used in Mk 14:22 and Mt 26:26: “he took bread, and blessed it (…)”. Since the action of thanksgiving and blessing are inherent actions of the Christian liturgy, and are manifested with particular clarity in the Eucharist, this is the term that the current liturgy has privileged over others.

Mass? Although the expression “mass” continues to be used in colloquial and pastoral language in Portuguese, Spanish, and other languages, it is a term that has ceased to be used in theological language due to its scarce relationship with any central aspect of the Eucharist. Its origin is in the Middle Ages, in the formula for dismissing the faithful at the end of the Eucharist: “Ite, missa est” (literally, “go, it is sent,” implicitly referring to the celebration). From there, by metonymy, the Eucharist came to be called “mass.”

5 The Fundamental Doctrine

5.1 Instituted by Christ at the Last Supper

The Christian tradition, based on the New Testament, affirms that the Eucharist was instituted by Jesus Christ at the supper he celebrated with his apostles on the night before his passion. The fundamental texts are Mt 26:26-29; Mk 14:22-25; Lk 22:19-20; 1Cor 11:23-25. They transmit, with slight variations, the account of the institution that to this day constitutes the central part of the Eucharistic Prayers. Also fundamental is Jn 13:1-15, which recounts the washing of the feet that Jesus did during the supper, considered a sign whose content and meaning are parallel and analogous to that of the breaking of the bread: the radical giving of his life in service to humanity. It says that the Lord, having loved his own, loved them to the end. Knowing that the hour had come to leave this world to return to his Father, during the dinner, he washed the apostles’ feet and left them the commandment of love as a mission. It is the same content as the offering of the broken bread and the shared wine, signs of Jesus’ radical self-giving to his own, which his disciples must imitate in his memory.

At the supper, Jesus gave the Passover, the main Jewish feast, its “definitive meaning” (CCC n.1340). “Our Savior, at the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice, (…) a paschal banquet in which Christ is received, the soul is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us” (SC n.47).

To leave them a pledge of this love, to never depart from his own and to make them participants in his Passover, he instituted the Eucharist as a memorial of his death and resurrection and ordered his apostles (“those whom he constituted priests of the New Testament,” Council of Trent, Denziger-Hünermann (DH), n.1740) to do the same “in his memory” (Lk 22:19 and 1Cor 11:24). The Eucharist and the ministerial priesthood are two themes that the Catholic tradition has kept essentially linked.

When speaking of the institution of the Eucharist, it is necessary to refer to the contemporary understanding of “institution”: it is not only the founding moment of a sacrament, but above all the will of Jesus to save through certain ritual signs in which He himself continues to act through the Holy Spirit, through ministers who do so in his name and in his place. That is, the institution is not only an action of the historical past, but a permanent effect of it, each time the sacrament – in this case, the Eucharist – is celebrated again: there is Jesus Christ, now risen and glorious, presiding over each assembly that celebrates his faith.

5.2 Memorial of the Supper

The Eucharist is a “memorial”: “Do this in memory (commemoration) of me.” This concept is fundamental in contemporary sacramental understanding. It allows us to better understand the mystery of the presence and actualization of Christ’s salvific work in the liturgy, and especially in the Eucharist. It is not a mere individual subjective memory, but a ritual and ecclesial action that makes the liberating force of Jesus’ actions current and present. The Eucharist is, therefore, the memorial of the paschal mystery of Christ: it not only evokes or recalls, but also brings, in some way, to the here and now, the work of salvation accomplished by his life, death, and resurrection. This work becomes present and current through the liturgical action celebrated by the Church.

The rites and words constitute the “raw material” of the Christian sacramental world and, in particular, of the Eucharist. These rites, which are symbolic actions performed by the faithful in significant places and with significant objects, and accompanied by equally significant words, spoken or sung, are the basic elements of every liturgical celebration. In the history of the Eucharist, the significant scope extended, beyond the rites and words, to the building in which it is celebrated, whose visual and ritual center is occupied by the altar, accompanied by the ambo for the Word, to other significant places within it (baptismal font, tabernacle, presider’s chair, place of penance, images), and to the vestments of the ministers. All these signs are elements that “speak,” communicating a meaning that surpasses mere rational understanding and involves the whole being of those who form the assembly celebrating their faith. In the “church building,” the “Lord’s Supper” is held, which in its ritual form evokes the supper of Jesus with his disciples before his passion and death. The table (food) and the word (communication) are also the central elements of any convivial meal.

The Eucharist is a memorial of the one historical supper that Jesus celebrated with his disciples before he suffered. Both the Last Supper narrated by the Gospels, and the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus that occurred immediately after, happened only once in history (ephapax). What was given temporally was given once for all, sacramentally, by the work of the Holy Spirit, and can be done “in his memory” every time and in any place that a group of Christians wishes to celebrate their faith, “until He comes” (1Cor 11:26), actualizing hic et nunc (here and now) the salvation that occurred in the paschal mystery. Thus, each Eucharist in history participates, sacramentally, in the one supper of the temporal past by the work of the Holy Spirit. Each Eucharist is a memorial or commemoration of the Last Supper.

5.3 Memorial of the Sacrifice

SC n. 47 states: “Our Savior instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of his Body and his Blood at the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again (…)”.

Just as it is a memorial of the supper, the Eucharist is also a memorial of the one historical sacrifice of Christ on the cross. This is commonly expressed simply by saying that the Eucharist is a sacrifice. But this expression can give rise to mistaken interpretations. As with the supper, when it is said that the Eucharist is a sacrifice, it is not affirmed in a historical sense, because historically Jesus died only once on the cross, but in a sacramental or memorial sense: the Eucharist is the “sacrament of the sacrifice (of the cross)”. However, this does not explain why or in what sense the cross itself, that is, the historical death of Jesus Christ crucified, is a sacrifice. The biblical book that develops this idea is the letter to the Hebrews (Heb 7:26-27; 10:1-14), affirming that Christ is the one priest who offers a single sacrifice (offering himself on the cross), once and for all. That is, the sacrifice is made by Jesus offering himself. Hence the expression that he is “priest, victim, and altar.” Outside the Bible, the Didache, a writing contemporary with the last books of the New Testament, is the first writing to speak of the Eucharist as a “sacrifice.”

The Eucharist is not a “sacrifice” in the usual sense of the word, that is, an offering made to God to attract some favor, atone for a fault, or purify oneself. The God of Jesus Christ does not need blood or human sacrifices – like the terrible torture and death on the cross – to love and favor his people. Jesus did not offer himself as a sacrifice in that sense. The “lamb of God,” Jesus Christ, who evokes that lamb sacrificed in each Jewish Passover to be eaten in family, recalling the quick meal of roasted lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs before departing for the exodus, cannot be understood as an offering presented by human beings as a sacrifice to God, to appease him or obtain favors.

On the other hand, the prophetic critique of the Old Testament had already warned that bloody sacrifices (of animals sacrificed in different ways) do not please God if they do not imply a daily life consistent with worship. “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” says Hosea 6:6, prophesying against empty worship. And Isaiah says: “I have had more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams… and the blood of bulls and goats I do not please. (…) Seek justice, give their rights to the oppressed, do justice to the orphans, defend the cause of the widow” (Is 1:11,17). A “spiritual” sacrifice, that is, believing prayer and love for one’s neighbor, pleases God more than material sacrifices of animals.

What Jesus did was to give his life out of extreme, radical love for humanity, thus crowning a life and a ministry of humble service to humanity, represented in the washing of the feet that the Gospel according to John places in the place of the Lord’s Supper. Jesus did not want to die in the way he foresaw: hence his poignant prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. His surrender to the Father’s will is a consequence of a mission entrusted to giving life, which with his death would have its maximum expression, the resurrection of the dead. Only in this sense can it be said that Christ’s death was a sacrifice. His whole life was to be broken bread/body given and wine/blood poured out for his neighbor. In the sacrifice of the cross culminates a permanent attitude of Jesus, which he understood as essential in the mission entrusted by the Father: the stripping of himself by taking the condition of a slave (Phil 2:6-8), serving humanity until the voluntary surrender of his own life.

The sacrificial character of the Eucharist, always affirmed by the doctrine of the Catholic Church, with extreme force after Luther and the Reformation of the 16th century denied it, must be understood as a memorial participation in the voluntary and extreme surrender of his life, accepted by Jesus Christ as a consequence of his mission in the world. At the same time, and hence the true meaning of the presentation of the offerings in the celebration of the Eucharist, the assembly actualizes the sacrificial meaning of its own Christian life, that is, it offers itself as an instrument of God’s love for humanity, and is committed to perpetuating Christ’s mission of announcing and making present the Kingdom of God in the world.

The Eucharist is a sacrifice in this horizon. To the extent that it is a gift received from God, the Eucharist is a memorial of his extreme love and, to the extent that it is an offering to God, it is a sacrifice: not to obtain something from him, but to give one’s own life for his Kingdom, like Jesus.

5.4 The Real Presence of Christ

The Church has always affirmed that, in the “eucharistized” species of bread and wine, Christ is present. The fundamental biblical basis is the words of Jesus in the institution narratives: “This is my body … this is my blood” (Mt 26:26-28). The faith in the presence of Christ in the celebration and in the Eucharistic species has been present since the beginning of the formation of the Christian liturgy.

Then came, in the historical development of the Eucharist, the veneration of the species, especially the bread, when pieces were left over after the celebration. They were preserved with respect to be distributed to the sick or those unable to participate in the Eucharist and, later, they became an object of devotion and were kept in tabernacles made especially for this purpose. Finally, in parallel with the loss of the sense of Eucharistic communion, when no one or very few approached to receive communion, the adoration of the consecrated bread developed more intensely as a proper liturgy independent of the celebration of the Eucharist, and the construction of baroque altars, which often exalted the monstrance for adoration in exuberant altarpieces that occupied the entire width and height of the apse of the churches.

The presence of Christ in the Eucharist is a firm doctrine of the Catholic Church, which the great reformed churches also share, although with different nuances in its interpretation. The Council of Trent dogmatically formulated this affirmation saying that under the consecrated species Christ himself, living and glorious, is present in a true, real, and substantial way, with his Body, his Blood, his soul, and his divinity (DH n.1640, 1651) .

However, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist has never been easy to understand rationally; less still for the contemporary technical-scientific mentality. It is perceived with great clarity, as happens with all fundamental Christian truths, that it is only through faith that it can be accepted. The question of how this can happen has always accompanied Christians.

5.5 Transubstantiation

It was the permanent difficulty in rationally understanding the affirmation that the consecrated bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ – when common sense and the evidence of the senses of sight, smell, taste, and touch say there is only bread and wine – that led, as early as the late Middle Ages, to complex reflections and arduous discussions on how the change in the species occurs. The result was the theory finally accepted by the Catholic Church: the doctrine of transubstantiation (DH n.1642).

According to it, in the narrative of the institution, the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ occurs. The doctrine explains that a change of substance, or essence, of the bread and wine occurs, which become the Body and Blood of Christ, but without changing their accidents of bread and wine (appearance, weight, color, taste, smell, and texture), so that, although they maintain the characteristics of bread and wine, they have changed in essence, now being, truly, that of the Body and Blood of Christ.

The doctrine of transubstantiation continues to be a plausible explanation of how the transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ occurs, but it has been complemented or expanded by other contributions in contemporary times, which criticize its concentration on what happens to the species without considering an essential factor of the Eucharist: its meaning and its purpose; that is, they affirm that the doctrine of transubstantiation considers the species statically and postulate that the transformation of the species should be understood dynamically and according to the meaning of the sacrament of the Eucharist: spiritual food, strength for ecclesial life. Hence the names of these theories: transignification and transfinalization.

Especially interesting is the second, because Jesus, at the last supper, did not limit himself to saying: “This is my Body, this is my Blood”; instead, he made the gestures and pronounced these words with a purpose: to distribute that food and that drink among the guests to be also consumed by them. That is to say: to the affirmation that this bread is his Body and that the wine is his Blood, its consumption at the festive and fraternal supper belongs theologically and ritually, as a single liturgical action. And, even more, this consumption aims to nourish the inner life and fidelity to the following of Christ on the part of those who do it, not only individually, but as the Church, the Body of Christ. It is not enough to consider transubstantiation in itself, without doing so together with its purpose. That is why there could not be a Eucharist in which only the celebrating priest received communion, since it is celebrated for Eucharistic communion, although part of the species are preserved to be distributed later or for Eucharistic adoration.

5.6 The Question of the Species and the Essential Formula

Bread made from wheat flour and natural, uncorrupted grape wine are the “matter” of the sacrament. A little water must be mixed with the wine. The Code of Canon Law specifies that “ according to the ancient tradition of the Latin Church, the priest is to use unleavened bread wherever he celebrates” (CIC n.926 §1). Unleavened bread is bread made without yeast. The Eastern rites generally use leavened bread for the Eucharist.

Communion, according to the Introduction to the latest edition of the Roman Missal (2002), can be offered on many occasions under both species (with bread and wine), more so than in the past. But communion remains valid under the single species of bread and, if necessary, when someone is not in a condition to swallow solids, under the single species of wine. More than validity, the truth of the sign advises habitually receiving communion under both species, since this was done by the Lord at the last supper and so it was done for centuries in all Christian communities.

All sacraments have an essential formula, to whose proclamation their validity is linked and which is traditionally very carefully guarded by the Church. In the Eucharist, this formula is considered the complete Eucharistic Prayer, from the dialogue before the Preface to the doxology with the final Amen. The core of the prayer is constituted by the narrative of the institution, which does not literally correspond to any of the biblical accounts mentioned above (Mt, Mk, Lk, and 1Cor), but contains their essential elements: “Take this, all of you, and eat of it, for this is my Body, which will be given up for you. / Take this, all of you, and drink from it, for this is the chalice of my Blood, the Blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me.”

6 The Eucharist and the Church

Saint Paul affirms that Christians are the body of Christ and Christ is its head (1Cor 12:13-30). This image has a particularly intense expression in the celebration of the Eucharist. In it, the faithful gather as an “assembly” and identify themselves as the “church” of Christ (church derives from the Greek ecclesia, which originally means assembly). Each time they celebrate the Eucharist, Christians constitute themselves as a community of disciples that continues the mission of Jesus in history. They celebrate together in his name and “in his memory,” presided over by Christ himself, present in the minister (SC n.7) and in the assembly itself, which is his Body.

The entire liturgy, and in a very special way the Eucharist, is an “exercise of the priestly office of Christ,” according to the expression of SC n.7. Here lies the theological root of the active participation that the reform of Vatican II promoted in the liturgy. The whole Christ, that is, Head and Body, exercises his priesthood in the celebration of the Eucharist. Therefore, it is not the minister priest alone or isolated, but he together with the whole assembly, which by baptism was constituted a “priestly people” (1Pet 2:9), and each baptized man or woman, into “priests, prophets, and kings” (Ritual of Baptism, prayer of anointing with chrism), which makes them protagonists of the liturgy through their active, full, conscious, and fruitful participation (SC n.48). The Eucharist, each time it is celebrated, is an expression of the entire Church, a historical sign of the heavenly Church.

The active participation of the faithful in the liturgy was one of the great achievements of the Second Vatican Council. Since then, it has been desired that Christians should not attend the Eucharist as strangers and silent spectators, but, aware that in the Eucharist there is an encounter with the living Jesus Christ, and at the same time, understanding it as much as possible, they should participate in it through the intimacy of faith, through the rites and prayers, services and ministries, songs and symbolic gestures, in the richness of the celebration. The renewal of the rites, texts, and songs, and especially the efforts of inculturation have facilitated this purpose, although today, as has already been mentioned, the Eucharist suffers other threats from our secularized societies.

The Church is nourished by the Eucharist: she lives from it because it is the sacrament of the journey, of the Christian pilgrimage through the lights and shadows of life and history, continuing the mission of Jesus Christ, for the fullness of the Kingdom. The relationship between the Eucharist and the Church particularly emphasizes the soteriological dimension (relative to salvation) and the eschatological dimension (relative to the end of time), which are also closely linked between si. When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, it is a Church that experiences salvation and is nourished to be liberating and, at the same time, participating in advance in the heavenly liturgy (SC n.8), it is a Church of hope.

This does not mean that the life of Christians is reduced to the Eucharist; it means rather that, since the Eucharist is the summit and source (LG n.11) of the life of the Church, it is the moment in which our whole life is offered to God and from him receives strength to continue its journey. The Eucharist presupposes life and is for life, just as it presupposes faith and must strengthen it. All the sacraments nourish the Christian life, but the Eucharist does it in a unique way, as an encounter of the believer at the center of their faith: Jesus Christ died and rose again so that all may have “life in abundance” (Jn 10:10).

Active participation in the celebration of the Eucharist is a sign of Christian maturity. Responding to the dialogues with the presiding minister, singing in the choir, greeting neighbors in the rite of peace, and especially, receiving communion are an integral part of a good celebration of the Eucharist. They are a visible sign that it is not a simple human party, but a personal and ecclesial encounter with the risen and living Christ in humanity.

7 The Celebration, in Summary

The liturgy of the Eucharist unfolds according to a fundamental structure that was formed and consolidated very early on and is preserved to this day. It comprises two major moments that form a basic unit, “a single act of worship” (SC n.56): the liturgy of the Word and the liturgy of the Eucharist. Associated with them are the two main significant centers of the liturgical space: the altar and the ambo, which should always be unique. Thus we speak of the “two tables”: that of the word and that of the Eucharist. These two major parts are framed by the introductory rites and the concluding rites. To the first belong the penitential act and the Gloria; to the second, the final blessing that sends the assembly to live out what was celebrated.

The liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council markedly emphasized the importance of Sacred Scripture in the Eucharist and in the entire liturgy of the Church. For this, it enriched the previous annual cycle, which repeated every year and offered far fewer biblical passages and much repetition of some of them, by planning a three-year cycle for Sundays and a two-year cycle for weekday masses (ferial), with a much greater richness of biblical passages whose selection and distribution criterion was that whoever celebrates the Eucharist every Sunday, over the three years, has a global view of all of Sacred Scripture. The Sunday cycles (or “years”) were called A, B, and C, and each of them received the reading of a Gospel: Matthew for cycle A, Mark and John for cycle B, and Luke for C. For the Sunday Eucharist, readings from the Old and New Testaments were also established.

For ferial Eucharists, a two-year cycle was established, named I (odd years) and II (even years), in which the Gospel is repeated every year, but the first reading is different in odd and even years. Both in quantity and especially in quality (criteria for the selection of texts), the Bible has, since the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council, a presence worthy of its status as the “table of the Word,” an essential part of the Eucharist and not a mere preparation for communion. In relation to the biblical richness, which should be read and welcomed as a living word, that is, as an illumination of the reality of the celebrating assembly, the reform asks priests to give a homily every Sunday and, hopefully, at every Eucharist, and that it be based on the proclamation of the Word of God.

The celebration of the Eucharist was not and cannot be static. Maintaining the core witnessed by the Bible, especially the entire New Testament and the first Christian praxis, it carries the destiny of everything that is human: it develops, adapts, changes throughout history. The sclerosis of its norms or the inflexibility to adapt them to cultures and human groups has only alienated it from the People of God, who need to celebrate their faith and always find a way to do so. That this form always keeps the Eucharist in first place, is a permanent task of the Church to be faithful to Jesus, who asked us to  do this “in his memory.”

Guillermo Rosas, SSCC. Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Original Spanish text. Posted on December 30, 2020.

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