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

In the context of the debate on marriage and the family, the Eucharist ended up being a bone of contention. This is typical of a distorted, narrow understanding of the Eu­charist as a reward for the good. In his The Joy of Love, Pope Francis did not go that way and avoided entering the dispute, which does no justice at all to the richness of the mystery of the Eucharist and its deep meaning for Christian living.

When we speak of the Eucharist, we often refer to it in terms of spiritual food and nourishment. Yet our discourse on the Eucharist has to be always inclusive of all that concerns life in its entirety, spiritual and not. From the Didache, an early Christian treatise that was discovered as late as 1873, we gather that there was an intimate link between the Jewish liturgy and the Christian supper.

The Synagogue rite consisted of a series of prayers known as Beraka, which in Greek means ‘eu­charist’. The Beraka includes the spirituality of the old covenant and was the blessing and thanks­giving that Israel gave to God’s manifested love. It is important to keep in mind, when we celebrate Corpus Christi today that the Easter night, represented in the four cups of wine and recalling Egypt’s slavery, makes the Exodus, or the liberation from all that enslaves, ever present in the Christian community’s life through time.

The paschal character of the last supper is undeniable and it reveals the connection between the Eu­charist and Jesus’ death on the cross. The biblical memorial is more than a commemoration of something past. In the entire celebration of the Eucharist, at least if we take things as they should be, there is a particular underlining on the present, on how that celebration should impact on specific life circumstances.

This is the backdrop of the insistence on the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, which marks the evolution of theology from Ambrose, bishop of Milan and an influential figure in the fourth century, to scholastics of the Middle Ages and down to the Council of Trent. This was a major doctrinal issue at Trent, given that the Council had to react to Luther’s denial of the intrinsic efficacy of the sacraments, considering them as merely privileged incitements to greater faith.

We need to ask ourselves what role we have in the hu­man-divine drama evoked in the biblical narrative from the exodus story to Jesus giving up his life. There are two major transformations that the Eucharist points to: one is that of the bread and wine that become the body and blood of Christ; the other is that which makes of us a living sacrifice pleasing to God.

Jesus invited his disciples to take up the cross and follow him, to be actors rather than spectators. Unfortunately, our liturgies often leave little space for participation. And for many, this turns it into anything but a celebration. The celebration of the Eucharist is something dynamic, it is an ongoing process; surely it cannot be taken as a miracle confined to the moment of consecration.

If the second transformation that concerns what needs to occur in our being does not happen, then the Eucharistic pro­cess is interrupted. Augustine says the Amen we pronounce at the mo­ment of communion is a personal signature. With our Amen to ‘The body of Christ’, we are committing ourselves to be living members of that same body.

There is here a whole eucharistic theology that is not simply pointing to what happens on the altar at the moment of consecration, but that entails our deep commitment to transpose what happens at the altar to life out there. It is the honouring of a commitment signed, as Augustine would say. The Eucharist becomes truly the perfect gift as long as we, partaking of it, become gifts for others and for the world at large.

Jesus’ words in today’s gospel, “Give them something to eat yourselves” point to the hunger, spiritual and otherwise, that still distresses so many. Our under­standing of that distress and our commitment not to be accomplices, makes it possible for the real presence of the Lord to become truly the gift it is meant to be.

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