Bread of life

The Eucharist is the nourishment by which Jesus feeds his pilgrim people, as they move through the world toward greater faithfulness and missionary justice. In this sense, when we speak of the Eucharist, we need to let it launch us into the world and be outward-looking, just as much as we need to find the inner path in silent adoration.

Much of our present-day understanding of the Eucharist has been shaped by the teaching of the Council of Trent in the 16th century, probably with an emphasis on the Eucharist's real presence and sacrificial character. This may sound too inward-looking when we are actually speaking about the way Christ gave up his life for the salvation of the world. The Eucharist is not ours. In different ways it needs to be continuously celebrated on the altar of the outside and fragmented world.

While we hold on to doctrine truths that come to us from the Church's long tradition, we need to explore more deeply this mystery. It is not just something we venerate or food for thought, but food for the journey. Belief in the Eucharist, as it is portrayed in John's gospel today, is a matter of life and death.

Here Jesus is not saying you have to believe what I am saying. But rather: "If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you". This is too much for us to take in, just as it was for the Jews at that time.

Catholics had accepted in principle that the Eucharist was viaticum, food for the journey, but the resemblance of that wafer to real food became increasingly notional. The ritual structure which resulted, and which tended to become 'frozen' after Trent, is sometimes dismissed as non-participatory. Change the ritual, and you change the beliefs, or at any rate, radically refocus them. This has been always feared and it actually happened.

Looking back, we need to see where two generations of liturgical upheaval have left Catholic understanding of the Eucharist. Many Catholics would now seek to make sense of that belief not in terms of the sacred detail of what the priest does at the altar, but in relation to the Church's engagement with the world in which Christ is daily crucified, in the person of the poor and the marginalised. We cannot authentically share the Eucharistic bread if this does not lead to active engagement for justice, peace, and respect for the human person and the dignity of life itself.

When Jesus hands over his body to the people and to his disciples, he becomes vulnerable. He is in their hands for them to do as they wish. The Last Supper, writes Timothy Radcliffe, shows us with extreme realism the perils of giving ourselves to anyone. It is the story of the risk of giving yourself to others. Maybe that's why for St Ignatius of Antioch, the Eucharistic elements were 'the medicine of immortality'. Maybe also that's why Jesus speaks of his body and blood as the antidote of death and of whatever leads to it.

In the darkness that seems to take over in spite of our believing, what Therese of Lisieux writes in her autobiography makes a lot of sense: "Yet Lord, your child knows that you are the light. She asks you to forgive her unbelieving brethren; she will willingly eat the bread of sorrow for as long as you wish; she will, for love of you, sit at this table where the wretched sinners eat their bitter food and will not leave it until You give her the sign."