John 6:35-40
A word on the Eucharist from Pope Benedict
"Jesus died praying, and in the abyss of death he upheld the first commandment and held on to the presence of God. Out of such death springs this sacrament, the Eucharist...
The Eucharist is the sacrament of those who have let themselves be reconciled by God, who have become members of his family and put themselves into his hands...
Jesus in dying shows himself to be the one who brings us all into the Father. He institutes a communion of God and man; he opens the door that we could not open for ourselves...
The Lord gives himself to us in bodily form. That is why we must respond to him bodily...our religion, our prayer, demands bodily expression. Because the Lord, the Risen One, gives himself in the body, we have to respond in soul and body. All the spiritual possibilities of our body are necessarily included in celebrating the Eucharist: singing, speaking, keeping silence, sitting, standing, kneeling, marching."
The bread of life is the door to new life. Every time we say "Amen", Jesus brings us to the Father and we share the communion he shares for all eternity. As we stretch out our hands and receive, we enter into that communion of the Father and the Son that opens the door to new life. In the palm of our hands, not only do we hold communion, we enter into communion and thus we are no longer lost but found within that meeting place in the Blessed Trinity.
3 comments:
As a side question -- I've heard contradictory statements concerning the Last Supper and the Eucharist. A few years back at a Holy Saturday Mass, a deacon preached from the pulpit that Jesus truly gave his disciples his very body and blood [as in, the bread and wine was transubstantiated]. However, a couple years later, I heard a priest stating that this was NOT the case at the Last Supper.
Furthermore, the fifth Luminous Mystery of the Rosary is the "Institution of the Eucharist."
What gives, Padre? Just curious.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states this in section 1323 "At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of his Body and Blood. This he id in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again, and so entrust to his beloved spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love,a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a Paschal banquet in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us."
The Eucharist is the memorial of the passion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus. The Eucharist itself was not fully instituted until the resurrection. The Last Supper was the means by which the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus would be accessed once it was complete.
Catechism of the Church 1329 states, "Jesus used the rite, part of Jewish meal, when as master of the table he blessed and distributed the bread, above all at the Last Supper. It is by this action the disciples will recognize Jesus after the resurrection."
1340 "By celebrating the Last Supper with his apostles in the course of the Passover meal, Jesus gave the Jewish Passover its definitive meaning. Jesus' passing over to his father by his death and Resurrection, the new Passover, is anticipated in the Supper and celebrated in the Eucharist, which fulfills the Jewish Passover and anticipates the final Passover of the Church in the glory of the kingdom."
The key word is anticipates...
Much thanks for the clarifications, Father. Godspeed and Gig 'em!
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