Celebrating the Eucharist

During these summer months, our readings on Sunday have offered us the opportunity to celebrate the mystery of the Eucharist itself. Often in our spirituality we presume our intimate understanding of the Eucharist within our communities and in our own life. These readings have walked us through several metaphors of understanding the mystery of Christ present among believers within the Church.

We have had the opportunity to explore the images of God’s covenantal love for his People. The People of God have been presented as on a journey in the persons of Moses, Elijah, Joshua, and Jesus himself. The community, whether in the Old Testament People of God or the desert People in the New Testament Church, finds itself in the empty places of the journey with little or nothing to eat or drink. In each case they complain and murmur against God. They sadly lament their inability to find God and their presumed abandonment by God.

Equally important to our hearing of the story is that their lament was heard. The community receives the manna, the bread from heaven, which Moses instructs them to gather each morning. Quail is given each evening in the desert camp. They discover the continued presence of God in the food which he sends them in overflowing measure.

Elijah, likewise, laments the extremes of his life under the broom tree, where he prays and lies down to die. Twice he is awakened to eat and drink hearth cakes and water. He eats and journeys to Mount Horeb, the place of the presence of God.

More than Bread
In the gospel readings, Jesus is surrounded by the community of human need. We learn of his compassion, where he looks on the hungry crowd “as sheep without a shepherd.” He feeds them all from the scarcity of their five loaves and two fish. They eat and are satisfied, with leftovers in overflowing measure. As often in the desert he fed them with more than bread, he instructed them. It was in the instruction that they understood who Jesus was and his invitation to follow.

God’s Word is dynamic and these readings await our hearing and understanding. For the Word to be effective, believers are asked to act on the Word within the community.

When we come to the Eucharist, what more are we invited to do to understand and participate in the mystery of the Lord among us? The two

dimensions of Eucharistic nurturing are Word and Sacrament. We are fed at the two tables within our Eucharistic celebration.

Within the Liturgy of the Word, God’s Word is broken for our nurture and edification. Having been invited by the Word we then move to the Lord’s Table, where bread is blessed and broken and wine is blessed and poured out.

On the Way with the Lord
The gospel story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, which is patterned on the liturgical practice of the early Church, points to understand the Eucharist as an experience of coming to the presence of Christ among us. The evangelist Luke tells us their “hearts were burning within [them],” and “they recognized him in the breaking of the bread.”

How then can we better understand the Word of God in our celebration? God speaks in human words risen from the human experience of the earlier communities of the Church. We, likewise, hear the Word in the context of our faith and our times. Before hearing the readings at liturgy, prayer, discernment, and study would enrich our understanding and involvement in the mystery of God present in Christ’s words and actions. We better understand the Word when we first understand the human history in which it is planted and nurtured.

The Word is best heard when we are in the presence of the Lord. In that presence we are disposed to a more intense hearing of the Word. Early arrival and prayer before the celebration itself increases our openness to hearing and receiving of the Word in our lives. “They came to know him in the breaking of the bread.” Wisdom is an insight and a moment, not to be captured fully: “…And he vanished from their sight!”

Moving through the Word we are invited to the Lord’s Table, where the whole Church in praise and thankfulness realizes the Lord in the breaking of the bread. To best savor the presence of Christ in communion, believers within the community are invited to taste the words of the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving. Having prayed the Lord’s Prayer we come to know the intimacy of the Lord among us. Then in song and silence we find the Lord within us and among us.

The Eucharist is a journey of human words and human actions, which are transformed by the movement of the Spirit among us. The Bread and Wine become the presence of Christ among us. In receiving the transformed gifts of the Eucharist we become food and drink for others. The Word of the Father, the Bread of Life, lives among us.

CDH