The risen Lord wants us in his eucharistic community

Retreats are great opportunities to consider what God is trying to tell each of us individually, personally, and possibly also as a community. I spent October 3–6 with my brother priests of our diocese and our bishop at Manresa Retreat House downriver in Convent, Louisiana. We had Father Mark Thibodeaux S.J. as our retreat master. To no one’s surprise, he used the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola as the format of his talks. St. Ignatius founded the Jesuits, and he left these “Exercises” to the
m as his legacy. One new thing I learned was that he tinkered with them throughout his life, adding and subtracting the topics and questions the retreatant is supposed to meditate upon.

One talk that truly held my attention was entitled “The Risen Lord wants us in community.” I had brought a book along with me which I completed reading about half way through the retreat. It was Bishop Robert Barron’s 123 page work titled simply “EUCHARIST.” Bishop Barron explains this most important tenent of our Catholic sacraments as a biblical sacred meal, a sacrifice, and the Real Presence of Christ to communicants as individuals and together as the continuation of his body, the Church. I share Bishop Barron’s concern about the apparent loss of faith in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist among younger Catholics of the millennial generation. Having finished “EUCHARIST,” I went looking for more on this sacrament in the Manresa library and found an excellent, down-to-earth book of only 125 pages titled “7 Secrets of the Eucharist” by Vinny Flynn, a Catholic layman, musician and writer. Devotees of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy would like this book, since Flynn uses many quotes from “The Diary of St. Faustina,” whose full religious name happens tohave been Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

Using Bishop Barron’s explanation of the Eucharist as sacred meal, sacrifice and real presence, I would like to offer you a three-part series of columns on the Eucharist. In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, man and woman are created “in the image and likeness of God.” They were sinless then, but did not long remain so. To restore that holy image to humanity, God the Father began a plan of salvation culminating in the birth of his Son, his perfect Divine image in heaven and the perfect human expression of that divinity in the flesh of humanity.

The Old Testament is the story of that restoration to salvation through the various covenants made with the Jewish people through Noah, the call of Abraham, the slavery of the Jewish people in Egypt, their return and wandering in the desert of Sinai under Moses, and finally, settlement in the Holy Land and God’s promises through prophets of a savior, a messiah, from the line of King David. God’s request to his people in response for his saving them time and again is that his saving acts be remembered through a sacred meal, a passover celebration.

Genesis pictures God as creating out of pure love for the sake of his creatures, not himself. He wants his highest creatures, man and woman, Adam and Eve, to flourish, and so places them in the Garden of Eden where they can eat from all of the trees except one (Gen 2:15-17). He wants them to participate in his life through the joy of eating and drinking. God is the ultimate good, and therefore he alone can ultimately determine good and evil. He creates out of his love human creatures who can fulfill their highest good by loving in return. But they want this ability to determine good and evil for themselves, and, as Bishop Barron says, they are “interrupting thereby the loop of grace and ruining the sacrum convivium (sacred banquet). They really killed the party, and worse, broke the loop of grace in which a “yes” to God would have had them growing in love which is grace and their connection with all of God’s creation. In this highly symbolic story, human fear and pride result in division, isolation, violence and recrimination. Bishop Barron says again, “God wants the sacred meal” (eating and drinking in communion with God and others); “we want to eat alone and on our terms.”

But God will not forsake his creation. He led the Jews out of slavery in Egypt to form a “chosen people” who would bring his message of love, peace and unity to the world. And to remind them of their mission, he ordered them to continue the anniversary of the passover meal every year. United to him and to each other, they were to bring his saving grace to the nations.

When they began to fail in this mission, he sent prophets like Isaiah, the greatest prophet, to lead the people back to acknowledging God’s primacy. The sign of this righteous behavior would be peace: in Isaiah’s prophesy, the Lord prophesy would “judge between nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks” (Isa 2:3-4). This will all take place on God’s holy mountain (Jerusalem), the place of the temple, the place of right worship and acknowledgement of God’s sovereignty. And it is also the place of a great meal. “On the mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strail)ed clear” (Isa 25:6). God is feeding his people and they are returning his graceful love by living in nonviolence.

The point here is that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament’s picture of God’s actions.

He freely admits that eating and drinking is part of his mission. And in contrast to the table fellowship of his day, at Jesus’ table all are welcome: saints, sinners, men, women, honest and dishonest (tax collectors like Zachaeus and his apostle Matthew), the healthy and the sick. This is a deliberate picture of God’s intentions for the human race. It is no accident that the account of Jesus feeding thousands with a few loaves and fishes is found in all four gospels. Jesus is training his apostles as disciples.

They are to continue the loop of grace — what they have received from God as a grace they are to give to others as a grace.

The sacred meal has a final meaning, one that is very important for our understanding of the Eucharist. It is a preparation for heaven. When he began the Last Supper, Jesus told his apostles, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for I tell you, I shall not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and said, “Take this and share it among yourselves: for I tell you that from this time on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” Then he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them saying, “This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you” (Lk 22: 15-20).

Jesus commands us to “do this in memory of me.” His real presence in the Eucharist is the fulfillment of his gospel promise, “Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Mt 28:20).

Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church states that, “The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life.” St. Theresa of Avila wrote of the Eucharist: through it “together we become the body of Christ.” “O Jesus hidden God, my heart perceives you, though veils hide you” (veils of bread and wine), (“The Diary of St. Faustina,” p. 524).

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 johnny [email protected].