Understanding our Faith

What are we doing at the Eucharist?

Last week in this segment, we looked at what we, the People of God, are doing during the Liturgy of the Word.  This week we want to look at what we are doing in the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

Do you notice that the words of the Lord at the Last Supper ask us to DO this in memory of him?  It is something we are called to do! – not listen to or be attentive but to do this in his memory!

What did he do?  He took bread and then a cup of wine and gave thanks to the Father, he broke the bread and gave the broken bread to his disciples to eat and the cup of wine to them to drink.  And as they took the bread and ate it and the cup and drank from it, so do we.

And as he did these actions, he explained their meaning by saying ‘This is my body, given for you.  This is the cup of my blood shed for you……”.  

He did not ask us, his first disciples, to fall down and adore him but to eat and drink.  When we eat and drink we take that food and drink into us; it becomes part of our very bodies; when we eat and drink the bread and wine that Christ gives us, we take bread and wine into ourselves; we enter into union with him. 

There is a twist to all of this: ordinary food and drink becomes part of our bodies; in the Eucharist, Christ gives himself to us and draws us into union with himself; we become part of his body which is the Church, that great communion of human beings in living union with him.  What happens in the Eucharist is described by St Paul using the image of the human body which has many parts and functions but lives with the one life of the person.  So we are drawn into this wonderful union of life with Christ.

This is a wonderful gift which comes to us because Christ loved us and gave himself over to death for us.  He gave himself to us and for us.

But he asks us to make this gift our own, to take it to ourselves and let it flow through our thought and action.  We take possession of ourselves as part of the communal body of Christ, to take possession of this gift and let it penetrate us. 

At the end of the Eucharistic Prayer and at Communion, we say ‘Amen’.  So be it.  Let what we have celebrated take root in me, let it take root in us and join us to Christ and each other. 

This is a rich mystery with many aspects to it.  But one crucial aspect is that we live out those words of Jesus on the cross: ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’  In whatever circumstances of our lives we find ourselves – joyful or sorrowful or somewhere in between – our ultimate attitude finds expression in those words of Jesus on the cross.

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin