Dear Friends,
On this First Sunday of Advent, I had planned to recall with
you some of the great themes of this gentle season of preparation for the
coming of Jesus on Christmas – themes like longing for the coming of the
Savior, movement from darkness to light, and waiting patiently but
actively for His coming again in our day. Then I heard the review of the
recently concluded semi-annual meeting of the U.S. Bishops, and their major
document which had been in production over the last year. It was on Eucharist,
and my plans for an Advent overview flew out the window.
In this short space I can’t say much about Eucharist.
Volumes have been written over the centuries. But what I do want to confirm is
that Eucharist is the sustaining center of the Catholic life. By virtue of our
Baptism, we are welcome at the table, not because of any good we are or do. As
Pope Francis put it, Communion “is not the reward of saints but the bread of
sinners.” We are welcome at the table because God, our Father and Mother, the Word
made Flesh and the Holy Spirit welcome us there and has invited us to the table
for the rest of our lives.
From time to time in our history as a church, emphasis has
been put on various aspects of this central act in our Christian lives. Between
the Middle Ages and Vatican II, for example, the Eucharist was thought of
exclusively as the bread and wine changed into the Body and Blood of Christ
through a process called transubstantiation. “What happens to the bread and
wine?” is the most significant question in this period.
After Vatican (1963-1967), the Eucharist has come to be understood
as the whole event, not just the Canon and not just Communion. These are surely
indispensable parts of the Eucharist, but the Eucharist begins when people come
in and ends when people leave.
Bishop Matthew Clark, in a Pastoral Letter on Eucharist to
our Rochester Diocese in 1996 put this new and enlarged perspective on Eucharist
this way:
“This
understanding of the Eucharist as the action of the whole community gathered at
prayer is the defining characteristic of our Catholic faith. In this action of
praise and proclamation, offering and receiving, we know Jesus in the midst of the
assembly, in the proclamation of the Word and in the bread and wine, now the
Body and Blood of Christ. In this Eucharistic action we are fed and nourished to
go out into the world to be the Presence of Christ, to live Christ’s dying and
rising in our worlds of family and friends, work and play, neighbor and
stranger.” (Incidentally, the image at the top of this blog is the image from
the original text of Bishop Clark’s letter.)
When we come to celebrate Eucharist, we celebrate the
generosity of Jesus in his self-giving at the Last Supper. We remember His passion,
death, and resurrection. And we are caught up in each other’s lives as at no
other time during the week.
Pope Leo the Great summed up rather succinctly in the fifth
century, the sweeping meaning of the Eucharist in the lives of believers, but
we seem to forget. Pope Leo told us, “The effect of partaking of the Body and
Blood of Christ is that we are changed into what we receive.” Not just when we
are together at Eucharist. We become what we receive throughout our daily
lives.
In other words, “We are a sacred and precious people who
come together to celebrate a sacred and precious action which spills over into
our daily lives.” (author unknown)
To infuse our celebration of Eucharist with new depth of
meaning and appreciation may be for us this year the best way to enter and live
out Advent. Come, Lord Jesus!
~Sister Joan Sobala
