Broken body

Today's readings: Exodus 24, 3-8; Hebrews 9, 11-15; Mark 14, 12-16. 22-26.

How did the Last Supper come to be something so characteristic of Christianity? While Jesus certainly instituted his sacrament in the context of a meal, he had not ordered a repetition of the Passover supper.

The early Christians had come to understand that the essence of Last Supper was not the traditional eating, but the great prayer of praise with Jesus' words at the centre.

The Passover meal merely provides the context for the Eucharist, and does not exhaust its meaning. The Eucharist is not a Christianised Passover.

The Letter to the Hebrews today insists on the discontinuity between the old and the new. Progressively, the Church freed the specific gift of the Lord from the old context and gave it its own form.

If we fail to grasp the real meaning of the Eucharist today, we are totally missing our identity as Christians. We should be greatly concerned that so many fail to grasp what the Eucharist is and are never touched by our celebrations.

The Eucharist forms part of the Christian community's very powerful sign language. The sacraments are signs that signify something. And it is important to come to terms with the difficulties we are experiencing to make ourselves understood.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams speaks of "cultural bereavement" and of the need for a renewed language for the soul in a culture that finds it so hard to handle certain concepts and images.

The Eucharist is the synthesis of Jesus' entire existence spent for others. Jesus' words at the Last Supper evoke those of the prophet Isaiah about the suffering servant whose mission was to take upon himself the people's iniquities for their justification. Jesus now "entered the sanctuary once and for all".

The easiest way out for us would be to keep the Eucharist in the realm of cult and temple, taken mainly as a most sacred rite. Many, in fact, opt for this way of looking at the Eucharist and focus on making liturgy sound and look solemn, detached from life. But the challenge is how to translate the sign of the meal into what it really signifies.

Jesus' real presence in the Eucharist is not something static. It is real because it is dynamic. It rests on us all to make this dynamic presence manifest and meaningful. The incarnation becomes sacrament when Jesus makes himself into Eucharist "for the life of the world". This is the Church's mission even when it celebrates the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is not communion achieved. It is the sign to those in search of God, who need to be accompanied in their anguish, fears, hopes, discouragement and joys. To the disciples on their way back to Emmaus, Jesus did not give a lecture on his divinity. He was just there, journeying with them, and sharing the Scripture which of itself has the power to rekindle the hearts of men.

St Augustine writes: "Give me someone who loves, and he will understand... But if I speak to someone cold and without ardour, he will not know what I say". This should make us think what may be lacking in so many people who are regular churchgoers who lament that they feel nothing. It is only love that makes us understand.

As long as the Eucharist fails to address our public conscience, we are only perpetuating a faith that is closed in on itself and sterile. In this context I wonder what the words of Jesus "This is my body" would mean. He gave his life, he shed his blood to give everyone the chance to sit at table, to pick up the pieces of our broken bodies.

The greatest modern heresy is the contradiction between what Christians celebrate and the way we live. This brings to mind the significant words that welcome visitors entering the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem: "A country is not just what it does - it is also what it tolerates".