M.K. George S J

The catechism of the Catholic Church says, “the Eucharist is ‘the source and summit’ of the Christian life.…the Eucharist is the sum and summary of our faith: Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking.” (1324 and 1327). Is the Eucharist in reality what Jesus wanted it to be or the Church dreams it to be? Or has it become a weekly social, cultural event or a ‘buying of grace’ for special occasions like birth, death, marriage and so on. Is there an unheard call of the Eucharist?

A call to Self-Examen

The answers to the above questions should come from an honest self-Examen, particularly of our memories and our way of living. I remember a particularly sad event. When I was young and an altar boy, a senior man in our parish used to be very regular for the Eucharistic celebrations and would lead the prayers. But one day while returning from the Mass, he saw his neighbor encroaching his property with a spade and in anger caught hold of his spade and hit him. Something churned in my adolescent heart and I asked myself, did not all those Eucharistic celebrations and prayers make him a little more patient and forgiving?
My early memories of Eucharistic adoration are almost mystical kind of memories. During the Holy Thursday adorations, the singing, prayers, silence and the incense filling the small church with heavenly light streaming out of the candle, I felt close to God and that proximity still remains. My daily participation in the Eucharistic celebrations in my parish, definitely laid the foundations of my religious vocation too.
Can we all then look at our memories and see what role those memories play in our faith life and Eucharistic celebrations today?  Sadly, we are aware also of young men and women who refuse to participate in Eucharistic celebrations because of traumatic memories. One priest or other shouted at them or parents forced them to participate. Or the experience of Eucharist being used as a weapon. Who can forget those stories of priests who refused to celebrate Eucharist for nuns whom they did not like. Or the recent case of the US bishops’ statement on communion. Eucharistic celebrations are at times becoming political tools in the hands of   priests who practice clericalism of the worst type.

Living the Eucharist

Eucharistic celebrations become meaningful only when the participants live the Eucharist. It begins with our way of thinking. St. Irenaeus reminds us, “the Eucharist is the sum and summary of our faith: Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking.”
A life of gratitude is characteristic of a life lived in tune with the Eucharist. “The Eucharist is a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Father, a blessing by which the Church expresses her gratitude to God for all his benefits, for all that he has accomplished through creation, redemption, and sanctification. Eucharist means first of all ‘thanksgiving.’“(catechism1360)

“Genuine celebration of the Eucharist will make us revolutionaries, who fight for justice and peace, even at the cost of our lives.”

“The Eucharist makes the Church.  Those who receive the Eucharist are united more closely to Christ.  Through it Christ unites them to all the faithful in one body – the Church.  Communion renews, strengthens, and deepens this incorporation into the Church, already achieved by Baptism.”
A life of genuine sacrifice like that of Christ himself, our Pasch, is the expected outcome of Eucharistic celebrations. To live a Eucharistic life is ‘to live a life that is taken, thanks-given, broken, and shared. “Take my life and let it be,” O Lord! We offer our lives up unto the Lord that he might take them, consecrate them, and send us out with purpose’.

A lesson from Saint Romero

Living the Eucharist means committing oneself to the Social Teachings of the Church, unfortunately the most well-kept secret of the Church.  There is an unforgettable and stingingly painful event in the life of Saint Archbishop Romero, well depicted in the film on him. When he heard that the Cathedral was desecrated by the military, he walks in to witness the consecrated hosts being thrown about and the inside of the Church destroyed. In pain and sorrow he kneels down and picks up the consecrated hosts. The military officer shoots all around him and pushes him out of the Cathedral. In a little while Romero returns vested and ready to celebrate the Eucharist just ignoring the violent military.
Who can forget the history of Romero closing every church in the country of El Salvador on a Sunday to celebrate the only Mass in the country for the soul of the slain young priest, who was martyred for justice. Genuine celebration of the Eucharist will make us revolutionaries, who fight for justice and peace, even at the cost of our lives.

Teilhard’s ‘Mass on the World’

Peter Gilmour in an article wrote in the midst of the Covid pandemic, ‘Instead of televised Mass, I pray Teilhard’s Mass on the world’. Jesuit Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,  a French priest, philosopher, geologist and paleontologist, who lived from 1881 to 1955 , more than once found himself in remote areas of the world without benefit of a church building, formal altar, paten and chalice, bread and wine, or a congregation. These experiences led him to create “The Mass on the World.” In his book, Hymn of the Universe, he records his Eucharistic liturgy for such occasions. The “whole earth” becomes his altar. The “depths of a soul laid widely open to all the forces which in a moment will rise up from every corner of the earth and converge upon the Spirit” become his paten and chalice. He places the earth’s harvest on this paten and fills this chalice with “all the sap which is to be pressed out this day from the earth’s fruits.” Isn’t this a call to celebrate the Eucharist in a different mode?

A call to conversion

Lenten period is a time for conversion. Most often, we think only of a personal conversion that too from a very narrow perspective of personal sins, in the realms of behavior and often exclusively sexual. But, larger sinfulness of mindsets, structures and ‘the sin of silence’ never gets considered. And most importantly, conversion has to be experienced at the familial, community (religious), and Institutional levels.  If the Church as an institution does not get converted, personal conversion of a Church member has limited potential for change.
What in concrete are the calls for conversion in the Eucharistic celebrations of today?
Mindful celebrations of the Eucharist, instead of ritual and obligatory ones. Every word of the prayer is heard, absorbed, owned up and integrated. Like food masticated gets into the blood stream, the words, symbols and the totality of experience is allowed to transform oneself and the community.
There is a fitting model of how to celebrate the Eucharist and be transformed. The story of the disciples who walked to Emmaus. Luke tells us that they were talking to each other. There was intense listening. Jesus joins them. He listens and then responds. A sense of divine history is shared. The disciples urge Jesus, unknown to them, to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
Yes, that is the criteria for an effective celebration of the Eucharist: Listening, understanding, breaking, sharing, opening of hearts, an inner burning and running to announce the good news.
Celebration of the Eucharist should make us advocates of Justice. Models like Saint Romero challenge us to conversion. Remember, Romero was like any other bishops of the time, conservative, pious and moderate. It was the encounter with violence and death of his own priest that made him a revolutionary to the point to be martyred at the altar.
Every Eucharistic celebration is an invitation to martyrdom. Those who have ears, listen. Others walk away to live a ‘normal life’. Part of the conversion would be to resist the clericalism that uses the Eucharist as power, whether to deny the communion or participation. Another temptation very much alive these days is the tendency to take liturgical modes to take precedence over the core meaning of the Eucharist.

The unheard call from the Eucharist

The Eucharist instituted by Jesus and passed on to us with the mandate, ‘do this in memory of me’, is a call to live like Jesus. To take up our daily cross and follow him. To love and serve like him. Like him to protest when justice is denied. Most importantly to follow Jesus in his words, ‘And since I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet.’ This calls for a conversion, especially during this Lenten season. A personal, familial, communitarian and institutional conversion.