Go to the readings.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church has a beautiful explanation of our faith about the Mystery of the Eucharist, starting in paragraph 1324: “The Eucharist is ‘the source and summit of the Christian life.’ …For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our [Passover]. ‘The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God’s action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit.’ Finally, by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all.’”
- The source and summit of the Christian Life
- The whole spiritual good of the Church: Christ himself
- The sign of unity by which the Church is kept in being
- Culmination of God’s sanctifying action and our worship
- We are united with the heavenly liturgy
1. The Eucharist is ‘the source and summit of the Christian life.’
In our Gospel reading, Jesus is teaching us repeatedly and clearly that his body and blood are for us to eat and drink. At first, he uses the word, “soma,” for body, and “phagein” the common word for eating, or even to feed our minds by new ideas. And the people murmur amongst themselves about his words. So he changes them, in the direction of being even more clear: he uses the word, “sarx” for flesh, like the skin and meat of a Knights of Columbus chicken barbecue. Then he changes “phagein” to the highly graphic “trogon,” to chew and gnaw like an animal over prey. We are to gnaw the flesh of his body and drink his blood. And by this, he says, we have eternal life, and unless we do this, we do not have life within us. Jesus is not being symbolic or metaphorical; he is leaving no room for that misinterpretation. Now at this point in the gospel, we’re still a long way before the Last Supper. So I imagine, as the apostles were expecting at some point to have to eat the flesh of Jesus, that at the Last Supper when Jesus took bread and said, “This is my body,” and they all breathed a sigh of relief. Now, this IS his body, his flesh, and his blood, under the sacramental mystery of the bread and wine which, though appearing no different to our senses, change invisibly in their essential reality. As Jesus says, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.”
This was the first point of the Catechism description of the Eucharist as the “source and summit” of the Christian life. It is the source, because it is by the Eucharist that we are united with Christ not only in what we know and believe, our mind and heart, but in our whole human nature which Christ heals and transfigures, including our body. And it is the summit because union with God is what we are made for, why we were created, as the human race, and as individual persons, to be forever united to God, starting here in this life and world, which we have through the sacrament of the Eucharist, the source and the summit, the beginning and end, of our union with God.
2. ’ …For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our [Passover].
It is Jesus himself, and not just the Church, who teaches, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” Consecrating or consuming the Eucharist is not salvation by our works. Rather, it is the offer of salvation by the work of God himself. It is Jesus present through the ministry of the priest who consecrates the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus. And it is Jesus in his body and blood who nourishes us and unites us to himself when we worthily receive the Eucharist. We adore the Eucharist because it is Jesus, the Son of God. It is Jesus who is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the New Covenant Passover Lamb. And it was Jesus who in the Last Supper on Holy Thursday instituted the Eucharist, the New Covenant Passover meal, in anticipation of and in connection with the Good Friday New Covenant Passover sacrifice.
3. ‘The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being.
I love this definition of a sacrament: “An efficacious sign instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church to communicate grace (divine life) to those who receive it with the necessary disposition proper to each sacrament.” An efficacious sign makes happen what it signifies. A stop sign is red and says stop, indicating it is important you should stop. But it doesn’t make you stop. You could ignore it. An efficacious sign would be a thick wall that shoots up out of the road to stop you, and on it is written, “I said, STOP.” That is a sign that makes happen what it signifies. The Eucharist, Holy Communion, is an efficacious sign: by all of us sharing in the sublime and divine gift of the one bread that is in mystery the Body of Christ, it is nourishment that unites us as members of the Body of Christ, the Church, as Saint Paul teaches in our second reading. It is this sublime and divine gift of this mystery that unites us, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, by which the Church is kept in unity in its mission of being the ongoing presence of Christ in the world in every generation.
4. It is the culmination both of God’s action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit.’
In the Israelite sacrifices, a person would present a priest with their flesh offering, an animal without blemish. The priest offered the sacrifice to God, and also returned a portion to the person, who would then return home and consume it in a ritual meal with his family, and it was by this that the family, even others nearby such as the poor, would be participants in the sacrifice. Almost all of the sacrificial liturgies had this two part structure of a ritual sacrifice and ritual meal by which others participated in the benefits of the sacrifice. Of course, the paradigm for this was the first sacrifice in Egypt, the Passover. The self-offering of Jesus the Lamb of God, on the cross for the salvation of the world was established by Jesus as a single event in unity with the Last Supper. With just the Last Supper alone, Jesus says, this is my body given up for you, this is my blood poured out for you, but they were not given up or poured out until the cross. At the same time, with just the cross alone, it was a Roman execution, it wasn’t a sacrificial offering of Jesus giving himself in his body and blood. It’s only when the two parts, the meal and the sacrifice, are united that they each receive their full significance. The cross, the ritual sacrifice, happened once for all, the perfect offering for the salvation of the world. The Last Supper, the ritual meal by which others are participants in the benefits of the sacrifice, is repeated in every Mass, following Christ who established this memorial in saying, “Do this in memory of me.” These words don’t make it symbolic, a pretend re-enactment: this is sacrificial language, echoing the instructions God gave Israel for being a holy people, for their trust and worship and thanksgiving to God. And that is reconfigured in Christ as the New Passover in the Last Supper as the sacrificial memorial repeatedly united to the single offering of Christ on the Cross, not a repeated death, but a repeated sharing for the Church, for all the world for all generations. In our sequence for today, we heard, “What he did at supper seated, Christ ordained to be repeated, His memorial ne’er to cease.” And so through the Holy Spirit by which all the sacraments have their power, the bread and wine, as they did at the Last Supper, are changed in their essential substance, whereby they still appear to be bread and wine, which we share and consume, but are truly the full and perfect offering of the paschal mystery: the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus for the salvation of the world. And by our offering of this perfect offering that God himself provided, we can make the offering to God in which we are sanctified, and we offer to God our trust, worship, and thanksgiving, in Greek, Eucharistia, our Eucharistic celebration.
5. Finally, by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all.
I mentioned that the Ascension is the mystery of Jesus in his resurrected body returning to heaven, to the Father. What is the body of Christ? The Church. And so the Ascension is an ongoing mystery as the members of the Body of Christ ascend to be united to our head in joy and glory. And as we see so many places in Scripture, both Jesus and the Book of Revelation describe the heavenly kingdom as a banquet feast, a wedding banquet feast of the Lamb and the Bride, the Church. It is the feast of Christ’s obedience to his mission in the Father’s will to redeem, rescue, purify, and be united to his bride. Of course, this is a mystery outside of time and is going on now and forever. The Mass is a foretaste, a participation in mystery and faith, in this heavenly banquet. We join the angels in singing the glory of God, and with them praising him forever, Holy! Holy!! Holy!!! And we feast on the Bread of Heaven, the Panis Angelicus, the Bread of Angels, the spiritual food of the heavenly banquet. And we hear the angelic invitation: “Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb!” This is why we dress well for the Mass: it’s our wedding day, the Mass is our consummation of our union with our divine bridegroom, whom we receive in his body giving for us, his Bride.
And so to end where we started: “The Eucharist is ‘the source and summit of the Christian life.’ …For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our [Passover]. ‘The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God’s action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit.’ Finally, by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all.’”
The Snarky Vicar 