A meal but more: a meal for a purpose

by Bob Zyskowski

The Catholic Spirit

Eucharist truly is a banquet, and Christ is the nourishment that Catholics receive at the eucharistic table, Pope John Paul II teaches.

But while we are receiving Christ, we ought to be thinking about all the other gifts that we receive, too, the Holy Father says in his encyclical "Ecclesia de Eucharistia" - ("On the Eucharist in Its Relationship to the Church").

"Christ also grants us his Spirit," the pope notes, something that should be obvious from the prayer that the presider prays that we hear over and over: "Grant that we who are nourished by his body and blood may be filled with the Holy Spirit and become one body, one spirit in Christ."

The encyclical notes that in the Eastern rite, the prayer of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is one that asks God that all who partake of the Eucharist also may be purified in soul and receive the forgiveness of their sins as well as sharing in the Holy Spirit.

Reinforcing the idea that we should be amazed by the wonder of the Eucharist, the pope quotes one of the earliest Fathers of the Church, St. Ignatius of Antioch, who defined the eucharistic bread as "a medicine of immortality, an antidote to death."

"It's almost as if the pope is calling the Eucharist an elixir," said St. Paul Seminary professor Thomas Fisch. "We take Communion to be purified in soul, reconciled with God and empowered by the Spirit."

As we become so changed by the Eucharist, we find ourselves also in communion with the church in heaven, the pope adds, and that is an aspect that merits greater attention.

The Eucharist gives us a foretaste of the joy promised by Christ when we will be reunited with the Creator.

The Holy Father uses this new encyclical to reaffirm the church's teaching of Christ's real presence in the Eucharist. That teaching, he points out, is that Christ is present in the fullest sense, "wholly and entirely present."

Transubstantiation, in which bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Jesus, is "a mystery which surpasses our understanding and can only be received in faith."

Generations of Catholics have referred to the Eucharist as "Holy Communion" because the sacrifice on the altar and the reception of Christ's Body and Blood unites people with Christ in an "inward union," as Pope John Paul puts it.

United with Christ, the pope says, we are spurred on in our journey through history. He says that reception of Communion "plants a seed of living hope in our daily commitment to the work before us."

That work, John Paul says, is the task of "contributing with the light of the gospel to the building of a more human world, a world fully in harmony with God's plan." He goes on to list several urgent needs: to work for peace; to base relationships between peoples based on justice and solidarity; to defend human life from conception to its natural end; to counter "the thousand inconsistencies of a 'globalized' world where the weakest, the most powerless and the poorest appear to have so little hope."

In strong language the pope says that those who are divided from and indifferent toward the poor are "unworthy" of partaking of the Lord's Supper. He adds, "All who take part in the Eucharist (must) be committed to changing their lives and making them in a certain way completely 'eucharistic.'"

The pope sees the Eucharist as the way unity is expressed, the way the faithful will be united further, and the way the church will grow. Those who receive the Body and Blood of Jesus are the people of the new covenant. Taking the Eucharist, then, is a sign that one is a part of the new covenant, this new way of life, that one is one with Jesus and the apostles, with the saints in heaven and with the successors of the apostles.

Eucharist gives the people of God the power needed to carry out the mission to spread the Gospel to others. As a people, we who receive Communion become a "sacrament" for humanity, the pope says, a sign and an instrument of salvation, a sign of our unity with Christ.

It is because of our Communion with Christ and one another and with the whole of humanity that Eucharist "elevates the experience of fraternity . . . to a degree which far surpasses that of the simple human experience of sharing a meal," John Paul II writes.

On a down-to-earth level, Father Phillip Rask, a former seminary rector and now pastor, said others should look inside a Catholic parish and say: See how they love one another; see how they love.

"Our oneness with God in Christ must work itself out in love that is limitless, love that is all-inclusive," Father Rask said.

"People have got to be able to say of us: Look, it really does make a difference in their lives that they gather to worship every Sunday, that they gather to celebrate the Eucharist."

NEXT MONTH: Communion not the same in all Christian churches