 The
Eucharist and the Christian Life Part 4
Fr Raniero Cantalamessa OFM Cap, the preacher to the papal household, finishes his teaching on the relationship between the Eucharist and Christian
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Communion under both kinds is not only permitted but also encouraged on the strongest theological grounds. In the instruction regarding the application of the norms of the Council, Eucharisticum Mysterium, we read "The significance of the Holy Communion is expressed with greater fullness, if it is administered under both kinds. For in fact the Eucharistic banquet is then more evident as sign, there is a clearer expression of the divine will to ratify the new and eternal covenant in the Lord's blood, and there is a more intuitive link between the table of the Eucharist and the end-time banquet in the kingdom of the Father." The new Missal lists as many as fourteen situations in which it is allowed to give communion from the chalice to those present. Many Episcopal conferences have added other situations to the list. We need to say that the practical implementation of the liturgical reform in this matter, has not gone beyond the norms set by the ecclesiastical authority, but fallen far short of them. Jesus instituted the Eucharist in the signs of bread and wine, that is, of things to eat and to drink, and these together present the image of a meal or a banquet. What kind of meal would we be offering if we invited guests to our table and provided only food to eat but nothing to drink? In his discourse at Capernaum, Jesus said "If you do not eat the fl esh of the Son of Man and drink his bood, you will not have life in you" And again, "For my fl esh is real food and my blood is real drink" (John 6.53, 55) And later, when he instituted the Eucharist, handing them the cup, he said, "Drink all of you from this" (Matthew 26.28). He did not say "some of you" or "those who want to". He said "all of you". It is important to give greater value to the element of the blood in the context of the Eucharistic mystery, not only from the theological point of view, but also for pastoral reasons. Why did Jesus choose wine to represent his blood? Only because of the red colour? To us human beings wine stands for joy and celebration; it is not simply useful (like bread) but also delightful. We read in the Psalm (104.15) that God gives his people "wine to make them cheerful… and bread to make them strong." Sacrifice & Banquet In our life wine represents poetry and colour. To drink wine is as dancing is to simply walking, or as playing in comparison to working, or like singing instead of just talking. In the desert Jesus multiplied the loaves to satisfy the hunger of the crowd, but at Cana he "multiplied" the wine for the joy, not for the thirst of the people. (There were six jars full of water ready for that.) The Eucharist is not only sacrifice, but also a banquet (Sacrum conivium)! By instituting it Jesus wanted to establish the messianic banquet, foretold by the Prophets in imagery of such splendour: "On this mountain the Lord will prepare for all peoples a banquet of rich food, a banquet of fine wines, of food rich and juicy, of fine strained wines" (Isaiah 25.6) It is only when it retains these two aspects of sacrifice and of banquet, that the Eucharist fully expresses the nature of the Christian life, which is not just sacrice, mortification and renunciation, but also joy, happiness, togetherness, poetry and song. Nietzsche, the 19th century philosopher, justified his open opposition to Christianity precisely on this accusation "Christians only think about suffering. I will believe in the resurrection of Jesus when I shall see it on the faces of Christians." It is up to us to correct this misunderstanding, and the Eucharist provides us with the best occasion to accomplish the task. If Jesus had chosen bread and water for the Eucharist, he would have brought about the sanctification only of suffering ("bread and water" suggests fasting, austerity and penance") But Jesus chose bread and wine; he wanted to open the way for the sanctification of joy as well as suffering. But how is it possible that one and the same sign, as blood, should represent suffering and death, and as wine, joy? Are these not mutually exclusive? No, not if we understand, that it was for love that Christ sacrificed himself. Wine, that the Bible often calls the "blood of the grape", calls to mind the mysterious relationship, in human experience, between love and sacrifice. "It is not possible to live a life of love without suffering". How many sacrifices a young couple have to make as they await the arrival of their first baby, yet how joyfully they do it! The wine of the Eucharist is the sign of the joy that comes through sacrifice! Christianity has never exalted sacrifice for its own sake, but only sacrifice offered out of love. "he loved us and gave himself for us" (Ephesians 5.2) The Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, of Vatican II, opens with the words: "The joy and the hope, the grief and the anguish of the men of our time… are the joys and the hopes, the grief and anguish, of the followers of Christ, as well. Nothing that is genuinely human fails to find an echo in their hearts." Nothing, we can add, that is genuinely human fails to find an echo in the Eucharist! In the Eucharist we gather and present to God, all at one time, all the joys and all the sufferings of all humankind. We find it quite natural to turn to God in times of trial. Happy things, on the other hand, we prefer to enjoy by ourselves, out of sight, as if hidden from God. Yet how right it would be to live also the joys of our life in accordance with the Eucharist, in a spirit of thanksgiving! One final reflection. In Tertio Millennio Adveniente, John Paul II wrote that the year 2000 would be an intensely Eucharistic year. There is a strong link between the Eucharist and the Great Jubilee. What distinguished the second millennial celebration of the birth of Christ from any other anniversary celebration in the world? It was the fact that we were not celebrating someone who was dead, but someone who is alive and present with us. And it is the Eucharist, precisely, that makes Jesus of Nazareth a living presence among us today. Present not only in memory, but in reality. There is no need for us, sad at heart, to say of Christ as we would of any other person who lived at his time, "two thousand years separate us from him". Thanks to the Eucharist, thanks to the Church, thanks above all to the Holy Spirit, we can say, "Two thousand years unite us to him!" God's Storehouse of Grace In the Eucharist we experience, to the full, the grace of the Jubilee which is not primarily something we do, but a gift of God to us. I remember what happened at the end of the second world war, on the day the German army began to withdraw from my town. In no time at all, the news spread that the army's supply stores were wide open and that all could freely go and help themselves. Just imagine the reaction of the local people who had suffered real hunger and had had to do without the bare necessities! A procession of people from the countryside went towards the town, returning loaded down with supplies: groceries, blankets, whatever they found. Eucharistic conferences should be like this for the Church. God's storehouses of grace and mercy are wide open! The Church offers again, to everyone the invitation we read in Isaiah: "Oh come to the water all you who are thirsty; though you have no money, come! Buy corn without money, and eat, and at no cost, wine and milk!" (Isaiah 55.1) If you sense that you are not worthy, if you feel you have made a mess of your life, if up to now you have been far from the Church, far from God and far from holiness: come, all the same! "Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation." ( 2 Cor 6.2)
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The
Second Vatican Council opened the way for the practice of receiving
Communion under both species. The Council says: "The doctrinal
principles established at the Council of Trent (that is, that in each
of the two species Christ is truly and totally present) remaining
firmly in place, communion under both kinds may be allowed given
to all, clerics, religious or lay people, in situations determined
by the Apostolic See and according to the judgement of the bishop." 
