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11. “The Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed” (1 Cor
11:23) instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of his body and his
blood. The words of the Apostle Paul bring us back to the dramatic
setting in which the Eucharist was born. The Eucharist is indelibly
marked by the event of the Lord's passion and death, of which it is
not only a reminder but the sacramental re-presentation. It is the
sacrifice of the Cross perpetuated down the ages.[9] This truth is
well expressed by the words with which the assembly in the Latin rite
responds to the priest's proclamation of the “Mystery of Faith”:
“We announce your death, O Lord”.
The Church has received the Eucharist from Christ her Lord not as
one gift – however precious – among so many others, but as the gift
par excellence, for it is the gift of himself, of his person in his
sacred humanity, as well as the gift of his saving work. Nor does it
remain confined to the past, since “all that Christ is – all that he
did and suffered for all men – participates in the divine eternity,
and so transcends all times”.[10]
When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, the memorial of her
Lord's death and resurrection, this central event of salvation
becomes really present and “the work of our redemption is carried
out”.[11] This sacrifice is so decisive for the salvation of the
human race that Jesus Christ offered it and returned to the Father
only after he had left us a means of sharing in it as if we had been
present there. Each member of the faithful can thus take part in it
and inexhaustibly gain its fruits. This is the faith from which
generations of Christians down the ages have lived. The Church's
Magisterium has constantly reaffirmed this faith with joyful gratitude
for its inestimable gift.[12] I wish once more to recall this truth
and to join you, my dear brothers and sisters, in adoration before
this mystery: a great mystery, a mystery of mercy. What more could
Jesus have done for us? Truly, in the Eucharist, he shows us a
love which goes “to the end” (cf. Jn 13:1), a love which
knows no measure.
12. This aspect of the universal charity of the Eucharistic
Sacrifice is based on the words of the Saviour himself. In
instituting it, he did not merely say: “This is my body”, “this
is my blood”, but went on to add: “which is given for you”,
“which is poured out for you” (Lk 22:19-20). Jesus did
not simply state that what he was giving them to eat and drink was his
body and his blood; he also expressed its sacrificial meaning and made
sacramentally present his sacrifice which would soon be offered on the
Cross for the salvation of all. “The Mass is at the same time, and
inseparably, the sacrificial memorial in which the sacrifice of the
Cross is perpetuated and the sacred banquet of communion with the
Lord's body and blood”.[13]
The Church constantly draws her life from the redeeming sacrifice;
she approaches it not only through faith-filled remembrance, but also
through a real contact, since this sacrifice is made present ever
anew, sacramentally perpetuated, in every community which offers it at
the hands of the consecrated minister. The Eucharist thus applies to
men and women today the reconciliation won once for all by Christ for
mankind in every age. “The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of
the Eucharist are one single sacrifice”.[14] Saint John Chrysostom
put it well: “We always offer the same Lamb, not one today and
another tomorrow, but always the same one. For this reason the
sacrifice is always only one... Even now we offer that victim who
was once offered and who will never be consumed”.[15]
The Mass makes present the sacrifice of the Cross; it does not add
to that sacrifice nor does it multiply it.[16] What is repeated is its
memorial celebration, its “commemorative representation” (memorialis
demonstratio),[17] which makes Christ's one, definitive redemptive
sacrifice always present in time. The sacrificial nature of the
Eucharistic mystery cannot therefore be understood as something
separate, independent of the Cross or only indirectly referring to the
sacrifice of Calvary.
13. By virtue of its close relationship to the sacrifice of
Golgotha, the Eucharist is a sacrifice in the strict sense, and not
only in a general way, as if it were simply a matter of Christ's
offering himself to the faithful as their spiritual food. The gift of
his love and obedience to the point of giving his life (cf. Jn
10:17-18) is in the first place a gift to his Father.
Certainly it is a gift given for our sake, and indeed that of all
humanity (cf. Mt 26:28; Mk 14:24; Lk 22:20; Jn
10:15), yet it is first and foremost a gift to the Father:
“asacrifice that the Father accepted, giving, in return for this
total self-giving by his Son, who 'became obedient unto death'
(Phil 2:8), his own paternal gift, that is to say the grant of
new immortal life in the resurrection”.[18]
In giving his sacrifice to the Church, Christ has also made his own
the spiritual sacrifice of the Church, which is called to offer
herself in union with the sacrifice of Christ. This is the teaching
of the Second Vatican Council concerning all the faithful: “Taking
part in the Eucharistic Sacrifice, which is the source and summit of
the whole Christian life, they offer the divine victim to God, and
offer themselves along with it”.[19]
14. Christ's passover includes not only his passion and death, but
also his resurrection. This is recalled by the assembly's acclamation
following the consecration: “We proclaim your resurrection”. The
Eucharistic Sacrifice makes present not only the mystery of the
Saviour's passion and death, but also the mystery of the resurrection
which crowned his sacrifice. It is as the living and risen One that
Christ can become in the Eucharist the “bread of life” (Jn
6:35, 48), the “living bread” (Jn 6:51). Saint
Ambrose reminded the newly-initiated that the Eucharist applies the
event of the resurrection to their lives: “Today Christ is yours,
yet each day he rises again for you”.[20] Saint Cyril of Alexandria
also makes clear that sharing in the sacred mysteries “is a true
confession and a remembrance that the Lord died and returned to life
for us and on our behalf”.[21]
15. The sacramental re-presentation of Christ's sacrifice,
crowned by the resurrection, in the Mass involves a most special
presence which – in the words of Paul VI – “is called 'real' not
as a way of excluding all other types of presence as if they were 'not
real', but because it is a presence in the fullest sense: a
substantial presence whereby Christ, the God-Man, is wholly and
entirely present”.[22] This sets forth once more the perennially
valid teaching of the Council of Trent: “the consecration of the
bread and wine effects the change of the whole substance of the bead
into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole
substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. And the holy
Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called this change
transubstantiation”.[23] Truly the Eucharist is a mysterium fidei,
a mystery which surpasses our understanding and can only be received in
faith, as is often brought out in the catechesis of the Church
Fathers regarding this divine sacrament: “Do not see – Saint
Cyril of Jerusalem exhorts – in the bread and wine merely natural
elements, because the Lord has expressly said that they are his body
and his blood: faith assures you of this, though your senses suggest
otherwise”.[24]
Adoro te devote, latens Deitas, we shall continue to sing with the
Angelic Doctor. Before this mystery of love, human reason fully
experiences its limitations. One understands how, down the
centuries, this truth has stimulated theology to strive to understand
it ever more deeply.
These are praiseworthy efforts, which are all the more helpful and
insightful to the extent that they are able to join critical thinking to
the “living faith” of the Church, as grasped especially by the
Magisterium's “sure charism of truth” and the “intimate sense of
spiritual realities”[25] which is attained above all by the saints.
There remains the boundary indicated by Paul VI: “Every
theological explanation which seeks some understanding of this mystery,
in order to be in accord with Catholic faith, must firmly maintain
that in objective reality, independently of our mind, the bread and
wine have ceased to exist after the consecration, so that the adorable
body and blood of the Lord Jesus from that moment on are really before
us under the sacramental species of bread and wine”.[26]
16. The saving efficacy of the sacrifice is fully realized when the
Lord's body and blood are received in communion. The Eucharistic
Sacrifice is intrinsically directed to the inward union of the faithful
with Christ through communion; we receive the very One who offered
himself for us, we receive his body which he gave up for us on the
Cross and his blood which he “poured out for many for the forgiveness
of sins” (Mt 26:28). We are reminded of his words: “As the
living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who
eats me will live because of me” (Jn 6:57). Jesus himself
reassures us that this union, which he compares to that of the life of
the Trinity, is truly realized. The Eucharist is a true banquet,
in which Christ offers himself as our nourishment. When for the first
time Jesus spoke of this food, his listeners were astonished and
bewildered, which forced the Master to emphasize the objective truth
of his words: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the
flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life within
you” (Jn 6:53). This is no metaphorical food: “My flesh is
food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed” (Jn 6:55).
17. Through our communion in his body and blood, Christ also
grants us his Spirit. Saint Ephrem writes: “He called the bread
his living body and he filled it with himself and his Spirit...
He who eats it with faith, eats Fire and Spirit... Take and eat
this, all of you, and eat with it the Holy Spirit. For it is truly
my body and whoever eats it will have eternal life”.[27] The Church
implores this divine Gift, the source of every other gift, in the
Eucharistic epiclesis. In the Divine Liturgy of Saint John
Chrysostom, for example, we find the prayer: “We beseech, implore
and beg you: send your Holy Spirit upon us all and upon these
gifts... that those who partake of them may be purified in soul,
receive the forgiveness of their sins, and share in the Holy
Spirit”.[28] And in the Roman Missal the celebrant prays: “grant
that we who are nourished by his body and blood may be filled with his
Holy Spirit, and become one body, one spirit in Christ”.[29]
Thus by the gift of his body and blood Christ increases within us the
gift of his Spirit, already poured out in Baptism and bestowed as a
“seal” in the sacrament of Confirmation.
18. The acclamation of the assembly following the consecration
appropriately ends by expressing the eschatological thrust which marks
the celebration of the Eucharist (cf. 1 Cor 11:26): “until
you come in glory”. The Eucharist is a straining towards the goal,
a foretaste of the fullness of joy promised by Christ (cf. Jn
15:11); it is in some way the anticipation of heaven, the
“pledge of future glory”.[30] In the Eucharist, everything speaks
of confident waiting “in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour,
Jesus Christ”.[31] Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need
not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life: they already
possess it on earth, as the first-fruits of a future fullness which
will embrace man in his totality. For in the Eucharist we also
receive the pledge of our bodily resurrection at the end of the world:
“He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I
will raise him up at the last day” (Jn 6:54). This pledge of
the future resurrection comes from the fact that the flesh of the Son
of Man, given as food, is his body in its glorious state after the
resurrection. With the Eucharist we digest, as it were, the
“secret” of the resurrection. For this reason Saint Ignatius of
Antioch rightly defined the Eucharistic Bread as “a medicine of
immortality, an antidote to death”.[32]
19. The eschatological tension kindled by the Eucharist expresses
and reinforces our communion with the Church in heaven. It is not by
chance that the Eastern Anaphoras and the Latin Eucharistic Prayers
honour Mary, the ever-Virgin Mother of Jesus Christ our Lord and
God, the angels, the holy apostles, the glorious martyrs and all the
saints. This is an aspect of the Eucharist which merits greater
attention: in celebrating the sacrifice of the Lamb, we are united to
the heavenly “liturgy” and become part of that great multitude which
cries out: “Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne,
and to the Lamb!” (Rev 7:10). The Eucharist is truly a
glimpse of heaven appearing on earth. It is a glorious ray of the
heavenly Jerusalem which pierces the clouds of our history and lights
up our journey.
20. A significant consequence of the eschatological tension inherent
in the Eucharist is also the fact that it spurs us on our journey
through history and plants a seed of living hope in our daily commitment
to the work before us. Certainly the Christian vision leads to the
expectation of “new heavens” and “a new earth” (Rev 21:1),
but this increases, rather than lessens, our sense of responsibility
for the world today.[33] I wish to reaffirm this forcefully at the
beginning of the new millennium, so that Christians will feel more
obliged than ever not to neglect their duties as citizens in this
world. Theirs is the task of contributing with the light of the
Gospel to the building of a more human world, a world fully in harmony
with God's plan.
Many problems darken the horizon of our time. We need but think of
the urgent need to work for peace, to base relationships between
peoples on solid premises of justice and solidarity, and to defend
human life from conception to its natural end. And what should we say
of the thousand inconsistencies of a “globalized” world where the
weakest, the most powerless and the poorest appear to have so little
hope! It is in this world that Christian hope must shine forth! For
this reason too, the Lord wished to remain with us in the Eucharist,
making his presence in meal and sacrifice the promise of a humanity
renewed by his love. Significantly, in their account of the Last
Supper, the Synoptics recount the institution of the Eucharist,
while the Gospel of John relates, as a way of bringing out its
profound meaning, the account of the “washing of the feet”, in which
Jesus appears as the teacher of communion and of service (cf. Jn
13:1-20). The Apostle Paul, for his part, says that it is
“unworthy” of a Christian community to partake of the Lord's
Supper amid division and indifference towards the poor (cf. 1 Cor
11:17-22, 27-34).[34]
Proclaiming the death of the Lord “until he comes” (1 Cor
11:26) entails that all who take part in the Eucharist be
committed to changing their lives and making them in a certain way
completely “Eucharistic”. It is this fruit of a transfigured
existence and a commitment to transforming the world in accordance with
the Gospel which splendidly illustrates the eschatological tension
inherent in the celebration of the Eucharist and in the Christian life
as a whole: “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20).
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