By DON FIER
The immeasurable richness of the Holy Eucharist as the central mystery of the Catholic faith is reflected by its many designations, each of which evokes an aspect of its wondrous profundity.
The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church provides a list of its more common names, many of which we considered last week: “the Eucharist, Holy Mass, the Lord’s Supper, the Breaking of the Bread, the Eucharistic Celebration, the Memorial of the Passion, death, and Resurrection of the Lord, the Holy Sacrifice, the Holy and Divine Liturgy, the Sacred Mysteries, the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, and Holy Communion” (n. 275).
Truly, the Eucharist is “our highest act of thanksgiving to God” (Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ, The Faith, p. 117).
In its next section, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) treats the institution of the Holy Eucharist by our Lord at the Last Supper. It begins with a reflection on the signs — bread and wine — which are the focal point of every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. “At the heart of the Eucharistic celebration,” teaches the Catechism, “are the bread and wine that, by the words of Christ and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, become Christ’s Body and Blood. . . . The signs of bread and wine become, in a way surpassing understanding, the Body and Blood of Christ; they continue also to signify the goodness of creation” (n. 1333).
This is evident in the words of the Offertory at each Holy Mass: “Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread we offer you: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life . . . [and] the wine we offer you: fruit of the vine and the work of human hands, it will become our spiritual drink.”
Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the significance of offering bread and wine in his 2007 apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis: “In the bread and wine that we bring to the altar, all creation is taken up by Christ the Redeemer to be transformed and presented to the Father. In this way we also bring to the altar all the pain and suffering of the world, in the certainty that everything has value in God’s eyes. . . . It enables us to appreciate how God invites man to participate in bringing to fulfillment his handiwork, and in so doing, gives human labor its authentic meaning, since, through the celebration of the Eucharist, it is united to the redemptive sacrifice of Christ” (n. 47).
The Catechism reminds us of “the gesture of the king-priest Melchizedek” (CCC, n. 1333) with regard to the offering of bread and wine. Melchizedek, an enigmatic Old Testament figure whose precise identity saints and scholars have long debated, is seen to prefigure Christ as the High Priest of the New Covenant as well as the ministerial priesthood of the Church. He is mentioned only twice in the Old Testament, the first time in the Book of Genesis upon the triumphant return home of the venerable patriarch Abraham after a successful military campaign:
“Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High. And he blessed him and said, ‘Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!’” (Gen. 14:18-20).
The presentation of the gifts at the altar which takes place at Mass, then, “takes up the gesture of Melchizedek and commits the Creator’s gifts into the hands of Christ who, in his sacrifice, brings to perfection all human attempts to offer sacrifices” (CCC, n. 1350).
The other reference to Melchizedek in the Old Testament is in the Book of Psalms: “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek’” (Psalm 110:4). It is thus that the Messiah is foretold to have a priesthood that is prefigured by Melchizedek, a figure that is further developed in the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews. Furthermore, with regard to the offering of Melchizedek, St. Thomas Aquinas says, “The chief figure of this sacrament [the Eucharist] was the oblation of Melchizedek, who offered up bread and wine” (Summa Theologiae III, Q. 73, art. 6).
The Catechism affirms that bread and wine were among the first fruits offered in the Old Covenant as sacrifices to gratefully acknowledge the superabundant blessings bestowed upon the People of God by their Creator. It goes on to state that these signs received new significance in the context of the exodus of the Israelite people from their bondage in Egypt:
“The unleavened bread that Israel eats every year at Passover commemorates the haste of the departure that liberated them from Egypt; the remembrance of the manna in the desert will always recall to Israel that it lives by the bread of the Word of God (cf. Deut. 8:3); their daily bread is the fruit of the promised land, the pledge of God’s faithfulness to his promises. The ‘cup of blessing’ (1 Cor. 10:16) at the end of the Jewish Passover meal adds to the festive joy of wine an eschatological dimension: the messianic expectation of the rebuilding of Jerusalem” (CCC, n. 1334).
Of interest to note are other Old Testament incidents involving miraculous bread that foreshadow the Eucharist. Centuries after the Israelites reached the Promised Land and the daily miracle of manna had long since ceased, God saved faithful believers by providing them with miraculous bread. Three instances involve remarkable prophets, Elijah and his successor Elisha, both of whom served the Lord during a period of divided kingdoms and wicked kings.
Consider the poor widow of Zarephath whom Elijah requested to prepare a meal with the last of her flour and oil. Trusting unreservedly in God, she did as the prophet requested and “she and he and her household ate for many days. The jar of meal was not spent, neither did the cruse of oil fail” (1 Kings 17:15-16).
Likewise, during another time of famine, Elisha requested his servant to set before a hundred men a few barley loaves that was far surpassed by what they naturally would have needed. The result: “They ate, and had some left, according to the word of the Lord” (2 Kings 4:44).
The final example again concerns the Prophet Elijah. At a time when he was exhausted to the point of death, but trusting in the word of the angel of the Lord, Elijah “arose and ate and drank [a cake and a jar of water], and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God” (1 Kings 19:8).
Each of these three examples can be seen as shadows of the Eucharist, the true “Bread of Life” that they prefigure.
What about the New Testament prefigurations that specifically involve the signs of bread and wine? In paragraph 1335, the Catechism explicitly refers to two such miracles: the multiplication of loaves and fishes and the changing of water into wine at the Wedding Feast of Cana. All four Gospels record one account of multiplication of loaves and fishes (see Matt. 14:15-21; Mark 6:35-44; Luke 9:12-17; John 6:1-13), and two of the Gospels also record a second similar phenomenon (see Matt. 15:32-39; Mark 8:1-9).
We will consider St. John’s account where Jesus multiplied five barley loaves and two fishes to feed the multitude that had come to hear Him preach.
This account, which appears in the pivotal sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel, is especially significant because Jesus soon thereafter proclaims His “Bread of Life Discourse” in which He speaks of Himself as the true heavenly Bread which gives eternal life to the world.
The Living Bread
Our Savior is very clear in His explanation: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:47-51).
The Catechism makes special note that this “first announcement of the Eucharist divided the disciples, just as the announcement of the Passion scandalized them” (CCC, n. 1336). As Sacred Scripture attests, “Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’” (John 6:60).
Several among His followers, perplexed and even dismayed at this mysterious teaching, could not accept it and departed from Him: “After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him” (John 6:66).
Yet Jesus remained steadfast in His teaching and offered no qualification — both the crowd and His disciples understood that Jesus literally meant that we must eat His Flesh and drink His Blood to gain eternal life.
St. John’s account of the Wedding Feast at Cana where Jesus changed water into wine (see John 2:1-11) can also be seen to prefigure the far greater wonder in which wine is changed into His most precious Blood. This sign of water turned into wine “makes manifest the fulfillment of the wedding feast in the Father’s kingdom, where the faithful will drink the new wine that has become the Blood of Christ” (CCC, n. 1335).
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(Don Fier serves on the board of directors for The Catholic Servant, a Minneapolis-based monthly publication. He and his wife are the parents of seven children. Fier is a 2009 graduate of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology. He is doing research for writing a definitive biography of Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ.)
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