We have been journeying through Ordinary Time for a few weeks now, but we have also had a number of special feast days or solemnities on Sundays. For example, last weekend we had the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. This weekend, we continue our post-Easter celebrations as we celebrate “Corpus Christi”, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ.  The importance of the Eucharist as the “source and summit” of the life of the Church and the richness of our faith in the sacrament make it very difficult to offer a brief reflection on this great gift. Nonetheless, perhaps we can explore together what we believe about the Eucharist, why we believe what we believe and how we may live and so be a truly Eucharistic people.

Perhaps we can begin our reflection by recalling that in the Eucharist, we have an abiding memorial of the presence of Jesus to us in every place and age.  Here we have two key words that tell us much about the Eucharist: memorial and presence.  The Eucharist is indeed a memorial or a remembering. As our Lord said at the Last Supper, “do this in memory of me.” However, it is not simply a remembering in the usual way that we remember or recall events or people. Instead, when we celebrate the Eucharist, in our “remembering”, what, or rather who we remember, is truly present. An analogy might help us here. When we remember a person, or an event, in an intense way, it is almost as though that person is actually with us, or the event is happening to us again. In the Eucharist, this sort of remembering is taken to a deeper and higher level. The Eucharist is indeed a real presence of the Lord (as we shall explore shortly), but it is also a real remembering. As we remember, the Lord is truly present to us in the Eucharist. He is truly with us and we enter into a “holy communion” with him. Our Lord said: “Do this in memory of me”: and so we do! 

This understanding of remembering means that the Eucharist is also fundamentally about the presence of Jesus Christ: a real presence.  Again, we remember the words of Jesus: “This is my body…this is my blood.”  All the sacraments make Jesus present in some way and continue His saving work, but it is only in the Eucharist that we have this real, or what is often called a “substantial” presence of Jesus. We do need to be careful about the word “substance. It literally means what “stands under” (sub-stare) something: what something is in its essence. In the Eucharist, we receive Jesus in a substantial and sacramental way under the form of the consecrated and converted bread and wine. The substance of the bread and wine has been changed, transubstantiated, into the real presence of our Lord, body, blood, soul and divinity. As St. Ambrose wrote over 1600 years ago: “be convinced that this is not what nature has formed but what the blessing has consecrated… for by the blessing, nature itself is changed.”

The Eucharist is also a true memorial and presence of Jesus’ sacrifice for us and it is the sacrament, above all, where we partake in the fruits of that sacrifice.  As we have reflected, in the Eucharist, Jesus is really present “body, blood, soul and divinity.” His sacrifice for us on the cross and the fruits of that sacrifice for us are also truly present to us in a special, sacramental way. Another way of putting this is to say that in the Eucharist, Jesus’ once-and-for-all sacrifice for us on Calvary, is truly made present, not in a bloody way as on the cross, but in a true, real and sacramental way. Let us not forget that in the Eucharist, we join our sacrifices with the one sacrifice of our Lord. That is why at Mass, the priest says “pray brothers and sisters that my sacrifice and yours…” We then pray that the sacrifices offered may indeed be, “for our good and the good of all his holy Church.”

The Eucharist is also “real food and real drink” (John 6:55) where we are fed and sustained. As many spiritual writers such as St. Augsutine have said, the Eucharist differs from ordinary food. When we eat food, we digest it and it and it becomes, so to speak, part of us. With the Eucharist, the opposite happens: we become like the one we have received and consumed! In this way, we therefore enter a “holy communion” with Jesus Himself (and also His body, the Church).

Finally, let us recall that the Eucharist is a sacred meal. Meals and eating are vital (literally!) to our human life. We eat to survive, of course; but for human beings, eating together is so much more than this: it is rich in meaning and symbolism. Eating together builds up connections and relationships, often we share memories and new ones are made, and we can build up bonds and strengthen ties and identity. This is why key moments or events in our lives such as baptisms, weddings, funerals, birthdays, anniversaries, graduations etc. are often celebrated and completed with some sort of meal.

With this in mind, it should not surprise us that God has taken this very human action of eating together with all its deeper significance and associations and chose it as THE way of being with us and of building up our church family. In fact, God has often done this over the ages. In Israel there were many types of sacred meal. Many meals involved giving thanks to God for the good things of creation and for all that He had done for His people. God reinforced  and sealed the covenant with His people with a meal (Exodus 24: 9-18) and the annual Passover meal remembered, in a real and living way, that God had rescued His people from slavery; that He had made them His people and that He had lead them to the Promised Land.

All this is also true for the Eucharist that we celebrate, instituted by Jesus Christ. The Eucharist is indeed a sacred meal where so many things happen. We gather, we celebrate, we remember and give thanks for all that God has done for us. We deepen our bonds with God and each other (which  remember, is why we offer each other the sign of peace just before going to communion) and so we have our identity as disciples of the Lord (or, the Church, “the body of Christ”) strengthened and affirmed.

The high point of the sacred meal occurs when we are fed by Jesus Christ himself: “this is my body, this is my blood”. We truly “taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” The ancient Christians called the Eucharist “viaticum”. This was a term used by the Roman army for all the supplies that they would take on a journey, or campaign, to feed and sustain the troops. It is a great image of the Eucharist: a food that sustains and feeds us on our journey through life and that helps us in all our battles and struggles too.

Sometimes people have a problem with all this realism and presence: do we really eat Jesus’ body and drink His blood?  There are other questions too. How can our Lord be present in the Eucharist when He is in heaven, or how can He be present in so many places at once?  We need to remember that His presence is a sacramental one; a presence that is most certainly real and substantial, but that also transcends time and space.  Jesus is truly present to us in a radical way in the Eucharist: a presence that is substantial and real, and this presence is under the appearance of bread and wine that symbolize His Body and Blood. We do indeed have the real presence of our Lord, “body, blood, soul and divinity.”

We can also recall that the Eucharist is about action and imitation.  This is of special importance to us in the Order. We know that the Eucharist is at the heart of all we do and all we are as members of the Order. On Holy Thursday in particular, we are reminded of the link between the Eucharist and charity. Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. We call this “the mandatum”, that is the mandate or command given by the Lord at the Last Supper, to love and serve others. It is another expression of the way in which we are to become like the one we receive in Holy Communion.

The final purpose of the Eucharist is to feed us and sustain us so that we can follow Jesus more faithfully.  When we receive the Eucharist, the priest or minister says, “the Body of Christ”, and we respond “amen” (meaning “so be it”).  The Eucharist is indeed the Body of Christ, but then so are we.  The amen that we say should also mean that we will try and be more like Christ and so build up His body, the Church. In the Eucharist then, we are called to become more and more like the one whom we receive: Jesus Christ, After all, we call the Eucharist “Holy Communion” and so it is! It is a holy communion between Jesus Christ and all of us and it should also be a real sign of the communion of love that exists between all the members of the Church community.

Today, let us renew our thanks for the great gift of the Eucharist.  It has been described as the “source and summit” of the life of the Church.  Let us never take this great gift for granted. Remember too that a great source of spiritual strength and focus is to spend time in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. It is a wonderful and very effective way of praying and of giving thanks to God. After all, we have our Lord truly present right before us. In Eucharistic adoration, for example, we prolong the wonderful gift of the Lord that we have received at Mass. We might therefore say that we also prolong our holy communion with Jesus and His Body, the Church. The benefits and the joy of giving an hour before the Lord in the Eucharist will be many indeed and it will transform our work of the Order!

Very Rev Msgr. Anthony M. Barratt, STL, PhD, EV, ChM