By DON FIER
The Holy Eucharist, as we saw last week, completes Christian initiation. “Those who have been raised to the dignity of the royal priesthood by Baptism and configured more deeply to Christ by Confirmation,” states the Catechism of the Catholic of the Catholic Church (CCC), “participate with the whole community in the Lord’s own sacrifice by means of the Eucharist” (n. 1322). It is the “Sacrament of sacraments” toward which all the others are ordered.
Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ, summarizes why the Holy Eucharist is so augustly referred to as the “source and summit” of ecclesial life: “Where the other sacraments give the grace they signify, the Eucharist contains the Church’s spiritual treasury, who is Christ Himself. That is why the other sacraments are directed to the Eucharist and the Eucharistic celebration is already the heavenly liturgy by anticipating eternal life” (The Faith, p. 117).
To accentuate that very point, in an apostolic letter promulgated in 1995, Pope St. John Paul II proclaimed that “the liturgy is heaven on earth” (Orientale Lumen, n. 11). Moreover, as articulated by the Vatican II fathers, through ardent interior participation in the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the faithful are able to “offer the divine Victim to God, and offer themselves along with it” (Lumen Gentium, n. 11).
The Catechism now treats a thought-provoking topic, namely the many expressive and varied titles which refer to the Eucharist. In five paragraphs (1328-1332), it lists nearly 20 different names. To be sure, any and all words that could conceivably be linked together to describe the profundity and majesty of the Eucharist fall far short of the reality; however, a limited notion of “the inexhaustible richness of this sacrament is expressed in the different names we give it” (CCC, n. 1328).
Each descriptor, beginning with that of “Eucharist” itself, is able to evoke certain aspects of the boundless grandeur and dignity which the sacrament contains.
The etymology of the word “Eucharist” comes from the Latin eucharistia (the virtue of thanksgiving or thankfulness) and is a transliteration of the Greek word eucharistein (gratitude, to give thanks). The sacrament “is called Eucharist, or ‘thanksgiving,’” explains Fr. Hardon, “because at its institution at the Last Supper Christ ‘gave thanks,’ and by this fact it is the supreme object and act of Christian gratitude” (Modern Catholic Dictionary, p. 194).
This is clear in scriptural accounts of the Last Supper: “[Jesus] took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me’” (Luke 22:19). St. Paul says, “When [Jesus] had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me’” (1 Cor. 11:24).
The Eucharist, then, “is an action of thanksgiving to God” (CCC, n. 1328). It is “a sacrifice of praise in thanksgiving for the work of creation. In the Eucharistic Sacrifice the whole of creation loved by God is presented to the Father…in thanksgiving for all that God has made good, beautiful, and just in creation and in humanity” (CCC, n. 1359). As expressed by Dr. Peter Kreeft, “In the little round Host is offered up the entire universe” (Catholic Christianity, p. 323).
The second name for the Eucharist as enumerated by the Catechism is “the Lord’s Supper, because of its connection with the supper which the Lord took with his disciples on the eve of his Passion [when he instituted the Eucharist] and because it anticipates the wedding feast of the Lamb in the heavenly Jerusalem” (CCC, n. 1329).
“Jesus’ passing over to his Father by his death and Resurrection, the new Passover, is anticipated in the [Lord’s] Supper and celebrated in the Eucharist, which fulfills the Jewish Passover and anticipates the final Passover of the Church in the glory of the kingdom” (CCC, Glossary).
Next, the Catechism considers the Eucharist as the Breaking of Bread, which immediately recalls for us the two previously cited Scripture verses when Jesus blessed and broke bread on Holy Thursday at the sacrament’s institution. We see a prefigurement of the Eucharist in the two miracles of the multiplication of the loaves when Jesus “took the seven loaves, and having given thanks he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people” (Mark 8:6) and again when Jesus “broke the five loaves for the five thousand” (Mark 8:19).
To the crowd that followed Jesus after one of these episodes, but didn’t understand the miracle’s deeper meaning, Jesus explains by referencing the manna of the Old Testament: “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world” (John 6:32-33).
Likewise, “it is by this action [breaking of bread] that his disciples will recognize him after his Resurrection” (CCC, n. 1329). After journeying to Emmaus with the intention of stopping for the night, and as Jesus “was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight” (Luke 24:30-31). Similarly, as recorded multiple times in the Acts of the Apostles (see Acts 2:42, 46; 20:7, 11), it is also this expression that “the first Christians [used] to designate their Eucharistic assemblies” (CCC, n. 1329). As St. Paul rhetorically asks, “The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? (1 Cor. 10:16).
The “body of Christ” is none other than “the visible expression of the Church,” the eucharistic assembly of the faithful who gather together to spiritually enter into communion with Christ the Head.
The Eucharist is also referred to as “the memorial of the Lord’s Passion and Resurrection” (CCC, n. 1330). Our Lord’s command to His apostles at the Last Supper to repeat His actions and words “in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:24, 25) is not only a directive to remember Him and what He did. It is also “directed at the liturgical celebration, by the apostles and their successors, of the memorial of Christ, of his life, of his death, of his Resurrection, and of his intercession in the presence of the Father” (CCC, n. 1341).
The memorial “is not merely the recollection of past events but the proclamation of the mighty works wrought by God for men . . . [that] become in a certain way present and real” (CCC, n. 1363).
The Catechism now groups together several terms that are used in reference to the Eucharist: Holy Sacrifice, holy sacrifice of the Mass, sacrifice of praise, spiritual sacrifice, and pure and holy sacrifice (cf. CCC, n. 1330). Note that each has in common the term “sacrifice.”
As Dr. Scott Hahn observes in his superb work entitled The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth, “Sacrifice is a need of the human heart” (p. 26). He explains that “man’s primal need to worship God has always expressed itself in sacrifice” (ibid.).
Indeed, we see the concept and practice of sacrifice deeply rooted in the pages of the Old Testament; however, until Christ’s perfect oblation of self, no sacrifice sufficed. It is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that “makes present the one sacrifice of Christ the Savior and includes the Church’s offering….It completes and surpasses all the sacrifices of the Old Covenant” (CCC, n. 1330).
The next two expressions for the Eucharist as mentioned in the Catechism are the Holy and Divine Liturgy and the Sacred Mysteries, terms used especially in Eastern Rite Churches. These descriptors convey the spiritual reality that “the Church’s whole liturgy finds its center and most intense expression in the celebration of this sacrament” (CCC, n. 1330).
Similarly, the Holy Eucharist is called the Most Blessed Sacrament to highlight an important aspect that was treated earlier, namely, that it is the “Sacrament of sacraments.” This designation also reminds us that it is the Eucharistic Species that is reserved in tabernacles and placed in monstrances for adoration.
The ensuing term in the Catechism, Holy Communion, is one with which we are all familiar, for it designates the act by which we bodily partake of the Body and Blood of Christ. Recalling the words of St. John Damascene, St. Thomas Aquinas explains that “it is called Communion because we communicate with Christ through it, both because we partake of His flesh and Godhead, and because we communicate with and are united to one another through it” (Summa Theologiae III, Q. 73, art. 4). It is also called the holy things, the bread of angels, bread from heaven, medicine of immortality, and viaticum (cf. CCC, n. 1331).
Viaticum designates the Eucharist when administered as one approaches death — it is “the sacrament of passing over from death to life, from this world to the Father” (CCC, n. 1524).
The Catechism’s final descriptor for the Eucharist, Holy Mass, recalls for us the missionary mandate of the People of God. “The liturgy in which the mystery of salvation is accomplished concludes with the sending forth (missio) of the faithful so that they may fulfill God’s will in their daily lives” (CCC, n. 1332).
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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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