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by Bishop William E. Lori As a re-presentation of the death and resurrection of Christ, the Eucharist should transform every aspect of our lives.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: The following address was given Aug. 7 at the second Knights of Columbus Eucharistic Congress, which was dedicated to Pope John Paul II's encyclical on the Eucharist, Ecclesia de Eucharistia. The complete text of the encyclical can be read at the Vatican Web site: www.vatican.va.
Several years ago, The New York Times ran a poll about belief in the Eucharist. All of us understand the limited value of polls, but this one deserves careful attention. It seemed to show that only about a third of Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist!
Without vouching for poll or pollster, I hasten to add that it prompted me, as a teacher of the faith, to examine my conscience. I am afraid that many Catholics do not receive sound religious instruction on the fundamental truths of our faith, including the Eucharist, the Mass and the Blessed Sacrament reserved in the tabernacle.
Sometimes that instruction is incomplete, and sometimes it is erroneous. At the same time, many complain that they "don't get much out of Mass." That may well be true if they do not really know what actually happens at Mass and if they are not prepared to enter into this wondrous mystery.
I invite you, as Knights and Knights of Columbus families, to see Pope John Paul II's encyclical on the Eucharist as an invitation and a means to spread the good news about the Eucharist, a mystery at the very heart of the Church we love so much.
Chapter 1 of the pope's encyclical, entitled "The Mystery of Faith," deals with the basic teaching of the Church on the gift and mystery of the Eucharist. It helps us see how the Mass is related to three realities: Christ's death and resurrection that took place nearly 2,000 years ago; the liturgy of heaven, where saints and angels rejoice in the presence of the Trinity, and our daily lives and the concern we must have for the world in which we live.
When we come to Mass, we come into real contact with the saving deeds of Christ from the past, with the glory that is to be ours in the future, and with our needs and the needs of the world here and now. Building on these basic points of this chapter, let us proceed to pull out some key ideas.
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The Eucharist is the Lord's gift to us, instituted at the Last Supper. The pope reminds us that Jesus instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of his body and blood "on the night he was betrayed" (no. 11; 1 Cor 11:23).
The Eucharist is not just any gift, but the greatest gift the Lord gave us. The Eucharist is Christ's gift of self! In the Eucharist Christ, who died on the cross and rose from the dead, endlessly gives himself to us.
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Jesus is God's Son made man. He gave himself to us by becoming one of us, by assuming our humanity, our human nature, by offering his life on the cross and by rising from the dead.
He did this to deliver us from sin and to enable us to share his Father's life and love. What the Lord did for us some 2,000 years ago is not stuck in time. As the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, Jesus sacrificed himself "once for all," that is, for all time. What Jesus did to save us "participates in the divine eternity, and so transcends all time" (no. 11, Heb 7:27).
It is an "act of God" that took place at a certain point of history. But because God knows no past or future, only an "eternal now," what Jesus did to save us long ago can be accessed by us here and now.
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The death and resurrection of Jesus is the central saving event of all history. For that reason, Jesus offered this sacrifice only after he left us the means of sharing in it as if we had been present at Calvary. The Eucharist is the means. So when we come to Mass, we not only encounter Jesus in a vaguely spiritual sense.
Through sacramental signs, we truly encounter and share in what Christ did to save us. Let me clarify this. In the Eucharist, we don't merely "remember" the death and resurrection of Christ, like we remember some historic event. Rather, the Eucharist is a living memorial that makes Christ's sacrifice present anew in every parish community which offers it at the hands of a bishop or priest. Unfortunately, some current translations and the songs that are used in the liturgy do not help us grasp the actual presence of the death and resurrection of Christ.
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Without the Mass we cannot offer our personal sacrifices to God. Years ago, we used to speak regularly of "the sacrifice of the Mass." Unfortunately, that term is not used much today by those who stress the Eucharist as a banquet or meal. Yet the two aspects of the Mass, sacrifice and meal, are not opposed or mutually exclusive. We don't have to choose whether the Eucharist is a sacrifice or a meal; it is both! Our food is Christ, "the living Bread come down from heaven" (John 6:34), who offered himself for us to the Father. The heart of the Eucharist is Jesus' total offering of himself to the Father in loving obedience. The Father accepts Jesus' sacrifice, and in turn gives to his eternal Son (who shares our humanity) the new and imperishable life of the resurrection. By taking part in the Eucharist, you and I, as members of the Church, can offer our lives to the Father as an acceptable sacrifice that truly gives praise to God the Father.
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Sometimes people speak of Christ's death as if that were the last chapter of his life. They almost forget to mention that he rose from the dead! At other times, people prefer to overlook the price Jesus paid for our redemption, namely, his death on the cross, and speak only of the resurrection. The pope reminds us that Jesus' Passover (pasch) includes both his saving death and resurrection.
At Mass we capture this truth when we say, "Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life." By our union with Christ at Mass we pass from the old life of sin leading to death to the new life of grace, leading to glory.
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Jesus Christ is present in many ways. In recent times, some have preferred to focus on Jesus' presence in the Word of God and in the Mass community and downplay Jesus' substantial presence in the Eucharist. That may be why only about one-third of Catholics believe in the Real Presence. But the ways in which Jesus is present to us do not compete with one another; they reinforce one another. Jesus' substantial presence in the totally transformed bread and wine takes nothing away from the power of his word, nor does it diminish his presence in the assembly.
What does "transubstantiation" mean? It means that the bread and wine are completely changed into the body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ. They are no longer bread and wine but truly they are Christ — not just because we think and believe they are Christ, but because they are Christ in actuality (cf. no. 15).
This is truly "the mystery of faith!" The host we consume and the cup we drink from really and truly are Christ, coming to us as food and drink, bringing us the power of the paschal mystery and granting us an ever greater share in the Holy Spirit, so that we can live the life we receive!
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To those who claim to be bored at Mass, I have bad news: Heaven will be one long liturgy! The Mass is a pledge of future glory.
The Eucharist looks toward eternity. It is a foretaste, a glimpse of heaven, where saints and angels are rapt in joyful adoration of God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The foretaste is not simply a preview; in the Mass we actually share in the liturgy that goes on eternally in heaven. Those who feed on Christ, who died and rose, share already in the life to come, the life we shall live fully in eternity.
The pope teaches us so profoundly that "with the Eucharist we digest, as it were, the secret of the resurrection" (no. 18). We should mediate on this truth before each and every Mass!
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Sometimes it is claimed that when we focus on the presence of Jesus' death and resurrection and the future glory in which we now share, we miss the significance of the Eucharist for our everyday lives. Again, that's just not the case!
In a misguided effort to show how contemporary the Church is, some say that the Church's mission is simply to affirm what's good in the world and not to hold out hope of paradise. But that is not the faith of the Church. The pope reminds us that we are expecting "a new heaven" and "a new earth" (Rev 21:1).
The hope of new and eternal life doesn't give us an excuse to turn our back on this world or on our role in making it more humane. Rather, because "God so loved the world" and because each person is called to share in the divine life of the Trinity, we are obliged to allow the truth of the Gospel and the light and love of the Eucharist to shine on the earth. We are called to transform the world into a place where the poorest, the weakest, the most powerless are respected and loved. The hope we experience in the Eucharist is what motivates our solidarity with the unborn, the poor, the persecuted, the sick and the dying. Hope is what enables us to imitate Christ, who washed the feet of the disciples and washed our sins away upon the cross.
Mother Teresa constantly pointed out the relationship between Christ's body on the altar and the broken bodies of the poor. I hope these reflections will help all of us grow in our love for the truth, reality and gift of the most holy sacrament of the altar and equip us to spread the good news of God's love which it reveals and contains.
Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., is a member of Msgr. James F. Murphy Council 4716, also in Bridgeport.
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