Eucharist

Continuing our study of liturgical theology and the Eucharist, here are several more insights that flooded my mind with light and warmed my heart, the seat of my faith.

1. In Christian worship, and especially the celebration of the sacraments, it is first of all Christ who shares with us, not we who share with God. We can offer only what we have received first from God in Christ. Through its celebration of the Eucharist, the Church does what Jesus did, but it must be kept in mind that Jesus Christ has done and is doing the work of God before any human initiative.

2. From the account of the Last Supper in the Gospel of Matthew, which is an elaboration and development of the account in Mark's Gospel, we learn that early Christian communities recognized the Eucharist as itself the principal sacrament of the forgiveness of sins. The Church knew and affirmed this before there even was a distinct sacrament of reconciliation. In truth, all the sacraments of the Church contain God's power of forgiveness, because all the sacraments convey grace.

3. In the beginning of the Church, Eucharist was not celebrated daily in the morning. Rather, it was celebrated on the evening of the first day of the week, the day of Resurrection: the Lord's Day, that is, Sunday. This was in accordance with Scripture accounts of the appearances of the risen Christ. Also, these celebrations were held in believers' households, as at this time there were no special buildings to gather assemblies for public worship.

4. The presiders at these ancient eucharistic celebrations were the apostles and first disciples themselves, as well as missionary preachers and travelling prophets. But mainly the heads of households were themselves the presiders, and they were both men and women. There were no cultic priests at this time. Jesus Christ was seen as the sole "high priest" of believers' worship, because he had offered himself as the once-for-all sacrifice. Furthermore, the Christian community itself was identified as a priestly people, that is to say, a holy people set apart to inherit the kingdom of heaven promised by God and inaugurated by Jesus.

5. Only later, as a concern for order brought about the hierarchical church and the charismatic church faded away, did the offices of bishop, presbyter, and deacon evolve and the cultic priesthood emerge. Over time, the office of bishop became spiritualized. Drawing upon the ancient Israelite cultic priesthood of service and sacrifice under the covenants God made with Abraham, Moses, and David, these leaders figured themselves as priests of the New Covenant sealed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

6. As the cultic priesthood developed, the meaning of Eucharist evolved from that of gift to offering, then oblation, and ultimately sacrifice. By analogy, the table of fellowship became the altar, and bread and wine became the real presence of the body and blood of Christ. The bishop-priest saw himself as offering the sacrifice of the high priest Jesus. And, along the way, the people stopped taking communion; rather, they attended the sacrifice of the Mass. Adoration of Christ present in the reserved sacrament superseded the act of receiving Christ in the bread and wine. Eucharist had ceased to be an interactive and transformative encounter with the living God.

7. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, biblical scholarship on the historical Jesus revealed the history of the early Church and awakened a desire among Catholics to have Eucharist as the early Church had done. The liturgical movement was born, leading to a reform of the entire sacramental system, beginning with Easter and Holy Week celebrations. By mid-century and the Second Vatican Council, the Church came to understand that worship is the central act of Christian life and that because of this, the liturgy had to be renewed. More than this, however, the renewal had to restore to all the baptized faithful their proper role in worship.

8. Baptism is the sacrament that both grounds and leavens liturgical practice. The renewal of the Eucharist would flow from a baptismal warrant for the full, active, and conscious participation of all the faithful, all the people of God.

9. As the theology of the Mass had changed, so would the identity and function of its ministers. The priest leads worship, not for the people, but with the people. The priest is not the sole minister at Eucharist; all the faithful in Christ, are ministers. The priest-presider brings together the assembly of the baptized, not by any special virtue of his office of priest, but by virtue of his own baptism. And as the priest offers the sacrifice of the Mass, it is an offering with the people who learn to offer themselves as they participate with devotion and full involvement.

10. What is the meaning of all the disputes over real presence and transubstantiation? It has to do with the belief that God is with us through Christ in the Eucharist. The basis for this claim is Jesus' own words at the Last Supper, which Christians interpret as God's promise to them that Christ will be there in the bread and wine offered and received in his memory. The desire to understand how the historical Jesus is connected to the Christ of the Eucharist prompted centuries of reflection, and no little controversy, on the mystery of real presence. The doctrine of transubstantiation emerged as a way around difficulties that surrendered the Eucharist into the traps of magical and literalist thinking. By moving all understanding of Christ's presence in the Eucharist from the physical to the metaphysical, the Church preserved the Eucharist as a symbol and, therefore, as a most deeply real encounter of God.

Okay, that is enough for now. Tomorrow I hope to do some backtracking and follow up with highlights of the lessons of the day.