Today’s readings: Genesis 14, 18-20; 1 Corinthians 11, 23-26; Lk 9, 11-17.

Christ did not institute the Eucharist for us to keep under lock and key. His presence in the world as projected ‘eucharistically’ in the form of eating, signifies nourishment, openness to others, self-giving and the transformation of all that stinks of death into life.

There are two major themes highlighted in today’s Scriptures on the Eucharist: its connection with daily life and the impact it can have on the world we live in. The Christian calling is a calling to become Eucharist for others. We are not called simply to partake of the Eucharist, stopping at the rite in itself. The challenge is not merely to believe in the body of Christ but to be the body of Christ.

Admittedly there were significant shifts in the understanding of the Eucharist throughout the Church’s life. For the Christians of the first centuries, the Eucharist connected mainly with the building of community life. The text we read today from First Corinthians is probably the most concise with regard to the tradition that was passed on to us as the living tradition of what was mainly a worshipping congregation.

But starting from the sixth and seventh centuries, the Eucharistic celebration was transformed into a sacred spectacle performed in the presence of an ‘ignorant’ people by clergy who effectively reserved the communion for themselves. The Eucharist was thoroughly ‘sacra-lised’, in a setting of reverence and fear. It became an individual matter and lost its connection with community-building. Under the veil of solemnity, even its significance of proclaiming Christ’s death until he comes was lost.

Returning to early times, it was Ignatius of Antioch, a converted pagan and whose Letters constitute the basic text for the understanding of the first Christians’ outlook on the world, who gave the Eucharist its sacramental meaning. Discipleship at the time meant martyrdom. The disciple was the martyr, a living Eucharist, identified with the suffering and victorious Christ.

But the real meaning of the Eucharist as it comes to us from the Scriptures and from the early Christian experience has been constantly veiled to the extent that our multiple celebrations of the Eucharist make of the Eucharist merely a token of what in reality it should signify for the life of the community and the Christian believer.

No wonder Church attendance on Sundays is becoming poorer and poorer; that hardly any concrete and tangible link transpires between the ritual and daily hardships; and that the Eucharist as we transmit it has practically lost its healing and forgiving power as well as its aspect of being food for the journey. This impoverishment makes it more difficult for our Christian communities today to render the true meaning of the words “Do this in memory of me” or of the words in today’s gospel “Give them something to eat yourselves”.

The ‘sacrament of the altar‘ is reflected and extended in the ‘sacrament of our brother’, writes St John Chrysostom. No one can receive God’s pardon and peace in the Eucharist without also becoming a person of pardon and peace. No one can take part in the Eucharistic feast without becoming a person prepared to share. And again: “When you take communion, you receive fire”.

It cannot leave you untouched, because it is not just a ritual we participate in. The divide between the ritual and daily life was already a major theme with the Prophets in the Old Testament, taken up also by Jesus himself whose priesthood was more in line with the prophetic priesthood rather than with the cultic priestly tradition.

This should help redimension also our relationship to the world which we are tempted continually to appropriate and dominate very disorderly. The mystery of Christ shines forth not just in our churches but on the world so much in need of redemption.

If we really respect nature, if we really dream of sharing the blessings of the Earth, our liturgies should disclose more their cosmic character, making us all priests at the altar which is the world, celebrating the praise and thanksgiving due to the Lord of life and the universe.