‘Do this in memory of me’

Our American bishops have asked all Catholics to begin a three-year Eucharistic Revival emphasizing the significance of the Eucharist in the life of our church.  We spent two years avoiding church gatherings because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Even Sunday Mass was not safe.  Shoulder to shoulder in a pew singing along with the choir was the perfect spreader.  Our bishops did their best to provide TV Masses and are to be commended.  However, ethernet Masses are just not the same as seeing, meeting, greeting, praying and processing to the altar for Communion with the same Catholic community with whom you have shared Sunday worship year after year.  
Will we Catholics return to Sunday Mass in the same numbers, with the same appreciation and even longing we had pre-pandemic?  In some ways the pandemic exposed cracks in our religious community that were already beginning to show before that awful virus struck.  

I have a list of Catholic writers I always check before beginning to prepare my own Sunday homilies.  One is Catholic Commentator columnist Father Ronald Rolheiser.  Others are Bishop Robert Barron, Scott Hahn, Peter Kreeft, Sister Mary McGlone SSJ and the saints of the Second Reading from the Office of Readings in the Breviary, the daily prayerbook for priests.  All of these, except the saints, have spoken of a lessening of fervor for the Mass, which is, in a quote from Vatican II’s Constitution on the Church, “the source and summit of the Christian life.”

Listen to Siste Mary writing about the solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, which we celebrated June 19.  “The Latin Mass, girl acolytes, women preaching, which politicians should be barred from receiving the Eucharist?  What’s the matter here? How has our central act of worship become the center of such contention, at least among Catholics in the United States?” Of all things that should unite us, it should be the Mass, the celebration of the Eucharist.  

This has been the bedrock of our faith.  Jesus left us many teachings and examples reinforcing the commandments and adding that they are summed up in two great ones:  “Love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole mind, your whole strength and love your neighbor as yourself.”  More than two millennia humans have broken all of the Ten Commandments of Moses and failed in the two key ones that Jesus added.  Yet, throughout all that time, we have remembered his words at the Last Supper about celebrating the Eucharist in memory of him, and we have fulfilled them.  

St. Paul gave us the earliest account of the Eucharist and its meaning in the New Testament. He tells us in his First Letter to the Corinthians that it happened on the night Jesus celebrated his last supper with his disciples.  He describes how he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to his disciples, explaining that it was his body he would give up for them and for everyone for the forgiveness of sins.  He did the same with the wine. St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. Luke all describe this meal in their Gospels. St. Luke quotes Jesus’ command once to do this in his memory.  St. Paul cites Jesus’ command to do this in his memory twice.  

It is the early saints of the church who tell us how well the command to celebrate the Eucharist was followed and its importance to our Catholic faith down to today.  I have taken these readings from the Breviary’s Office of Readings in Easter Time. The first reading is always from Scripture.

Second Reading from the treatise Against Heresies by St. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, France martyred circa 200 A.D., speaking about the necessity of Jesus’ death and resurrection:

“If our flesh is not saved, then the Lord has not redeemed us with his blood, the eucharistic chalice does not make us sharers in his blood and the bread we break does not make us share in his body. It was with his own blood that he redeemed us.”

Second reading from the treatise On the Trinity by St. Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, France:
“This is how we attain to unity with the gathered.  Christ is in very truth in the father by his eternal generation; we are in very truth in Christ and he likewise is in us.

“Christ himself bore witness to the reality of this unity when he said: ‘He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I in him.’ No one will be in Christ unless Christ has been in him.  Christ will take to himself only the flesh of those who have received his flesh.”

From the Jerusalem Catechesis, one of the first catechisms of the Christian Church written by St. Cyril of Jerusalem in the 300’s:

“Do not, then regard the eucharistic elements as ordinary bread and wine: they are in fact the body and blood of the Lord, as he himself declared.”

Second Reading from a treatise by St. Gaudentius of Brescia, Italy, bishop:
“Creator and Lord of all things, whatever their nature, he brought forth bread from the earth and changed it into his own body.  Not only had he the power to do this but he promised it; and as he had changed water into wine, he also changed wine into his own blood. We are no longer to look upon the bread and wine as earthly substances.  They have become heavenly, because Christ has passed into them and changed them into his body and blood.  What you receive is the body of him who is the heavenly bread and the blood of him who is the sacred vine; for when he offered his disciples the consecrated bread and wine, he said, ‘This is my body, this is my blood.’ We have put our trust in him.  I urge you to have faith in him; truth can never deceive.”

Second Reading from the first apology in defense of the Christians by St. Justin, martyr in Palestine (Note how early the shape of our present Mass liturgy was developing, including even the offertory procession):

“On Sunday we have a common assembly of all our members. The recollections of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as we have time.  When the reader has finished, the president of the assembly speaks to us; he urges everyone to imitate the examples of virtue we have heard in the readings.  Then we all stand together and pray.

“On the conclusion of our prayer, bread and wine and water are brought forward.  The president offers prayers and gives thanks to the best of his ability, and the people give their assent by saying, ‘Amen.’  The Eucharist is distributed.  Everyone present communicates, and the deacons take it to those who are absent.”

We may not always be faithful to the Gospels.  Turning the other cheek and forgiving enemies are not our usual behavior.  But we do keep the Eucharist going year after year and Sunday after Sunday.  This will save us.  As Father Rolheiser says, “The Eucharist is our one great act of fidelity to Jesus.”

Father Carville is a retired priest in the Diocese of Baton Rouge and writes on current topics for The Catholic Commentator. He can be reached at [email protected].