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The Eucharist and the Christian
Life (Part 1)
Fr Raniero Cantalamessa OFM Cap, the papal preacher, gave an address on the meaning of the Eucharist in Washington during the Jubilee year. we will be reprinting it in Goodnews over the coming four issues
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I shall never forget the impression these words made on me. I understood
that the word "here" really meant here, in this precise
place, at this precise moment, and not only when Jesus was on earth
many centuries ago. The risen Jesus was speaking to us. A shudder
ran through me and I was shaken out of my torpor. There, right there,
in front of me, was something greater than Jonah, greater than Solomon,
than Abraham, than Moses. There was the Son of the Living God. This title, "The Eucharist and the Christian Life" is taken from Vatican II where the Eucharist is defined as "the source and summit of the Christian life." It is particularly interesting that this definition comes in the context where the "common priesthood" of all the faithful is spoken of. We read in Lumen Gentium: "The faithful indeed, by virtue of their royal priesthood, participate in the offering of the Eucharist... Taking part in the Eucharistic sacrifice, the source and summit of the Christian life, they offer the Divine Victim to God and themselves along with it. And so it is that, both in the offering and in Holy Communion, each in his own way, though not of course, indiscriminately, has his own part to play in the liturgical action." This royal priesthood makes no distinction between priests and lay persons, being common to both. Every priest could say to his people, in the words of St Augustine: "For you I am a priest, with you I am a Christian." Let us try to look at the Eucharist in the light of this universal priesthood of all the baptised. It will perhaps help us to gain some new appreciation of the mystery. The Council document tells us that the priesthood of all believers is manifested and exercised during Mass in the two key moments. These are the oblation (that is the offering and the consecration) and Holy Communion. Our participation in the Eucharistic consecration Let us first recall what the essential content of this moment is. What do we affirm when, at the end of the consecration, we proclaim "the mystery of faith". Jesus renews or re-presents (in the sense of making present anew) the action by which, out of love, he offered himself to the Father for our salvation. The whole Trinity is engaged in the Eucharist and the entire history
of salvation is celebrated in it: The Incarnation, the Paschal mystery
and Pentecost.
Let me share with you how I myself came to discover the ecclesial and personal implications of Eucharistic consecration. When I was ordained (it was before the Council) the priest at Mass stood face to the wall and read from the missal in Latin. When he came to the consecration the rubrics said he should bow his head and speak quietly, cut off as it were from everyone and everything around him. (I was in the habit of closing my eyes as well) in order to be wholly at one with Jesus in saying those words he said at the Last supper: "Take, eat: this is my body given for you." Then came the liturgical reform, and we began to celebrate the Mass facing the people and using the vernacular. The rubrics no longer said we should bow our head and speak softly, but that the words of consecration should be said in a normal audible voice. All of this helped me to understand that my old way of living the moment of consecration, by myself alone, did not really express all of my part in it. The real Jesus is now the risen Jesus. But the risen Jesus is the "whole Christ", Head and body inseparably united. It follows, therefore, that if it is the whole Christ who now says the words of consecration, I too say them with him. Within the great "I" of the Head, the little "I" of the whole body, that is the Church, is contained. Within that in turn, there is also the tiny little "I" that is me, and I too am saying to the people before whom I stand, "Take, eat: this is my body, given for you!" This ecclesial dimension of consecration is very much part of the authentic tradition of the Church. Taking up the thought of St Augustine, an instruction of the Sacred Congregation for the Liturgy, Eucharisticum Mysterium says: "The Eucharistic celebration that takes place in the Mass is the action not only of Christ but of the whole Church. The Church, spouse and servant of Christ, fulfilling with him his office as priest and as victim, offers him, and her whole self with him, to the Father." From the day I understood this, I have no longer closed my eyes at the consecration, but I look at the people before me, or if I am alone, I think of the people I am called to minister to during the day, or I think of the Church as a whole. And together with Jesus I say to them all, "Take, eat: this is my body" ("my", yes, specifically mine). While, as an ordained priest, my intention in speaking those words is to consecrate the real body and the real blood of Christ, as a Christian with other Christians, my intention is to consecrate my own self along with Christ. Take and Eat; This Is My Body We need to be clear about one thing. Is it possible for a lay person, whether a man or a woman, so to be at one with the celebrant as to be able to say, as their very own, those words of Christ? One thing, as we have seen, is quite certain: all of us are called, lay people included, to offer ourselves at that moment together with Christ! That, of all moments is the one when we most fully act out the reality of our royal priesthood. Is it right for us to do it using the very words of Christ, "Take, eat: this is my body"? There is no reason why we should not. Are we not doing exactly the same thing when we use Christ's own words to express our abandonment to the will of God, saying "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" or when in the time of a particular trial we say, "May this cup pass from me" or any other time when we use Christ's own words as our own? Lay believers know that these words, as they say them, do not have the effect of making the body and blood of Christ present on the altar. They do not act, at that moment, as representing Christ (in persona Christi) as the ordained minister does, but they simply unite themselves to Christ. And so they do not say the words of consecration aloud, like the priest, but quietly, in the stillness of their own heart. All is thus quite clear and theologically sound in this view of the consecration. Two bodies of Christ are on the altar: there is his real body (the body "born of the Virgin Mary" that died, was buried, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven), and there is his mystical body which is the church. The real body of Christ is really present and the mystical body of Christ is mystically present, that is, by virtue of its inseparable union with the Head. Because there are two offerings and two bodies to be consecrated,
there are also two epicleses in the Mass, that is two invocations
of the Holy Spirit. In the first we say, "Let your Spirit come
upon these gifts to make them holy, so that they may become for us
the body and blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ". In the second,
which is said after the consecration, we say, "Grant that we
who are nourished with the body and blood of Christ, may be filled
with the Holy Spirit and become one body, one spirit, in Christ. May
he make us an everlasting gift to you." (Eucharistic Prayer III)
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To
be faithful to its object, every teaching on the Eucharist should
begin with an act of faith in the real presence of Jesus. In my life
this act of faith is linked to a vivid memory. One summer's day, I
was celebrating Mass in a convent. The gospel passage was Matthew
12:41,42, where Jesus says to the people: "Behold something
greater than Jonah is here! Behold something greater than Solomon
is here!" 
