EUCHARIST MAKES THE CHURCH
Remember your story, and so make sense of your rituals. This sums up St. Paul’s sacramental message to the Corinthians. The people the Church are the story. The Church makes Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the church. The Church is the people of God, the Body of Christ, the gathered community of the Holy Spirit. “Eucharist is the liturgical event in which the church is realized,” (LG 26) and it recognized that this happens in local communities. Early Christians resisted using church to refer to a building because they clearly understood that each person was a temple of Christ. St. Clement of Alexander about 200 AD said, "It is not the place but the assembly I call the Church." This assembly is a redeemed people "bought at a great price" and joined in the royal priesthood of baptism.
Worshipping communities celebrate the work of Christ all week in prayer, living and doing the work of the gospel in their vocations and ministries. But to do the work of the gospel well, people must be nourished. They nourish themselves through communal support of mutual or individual needs. They nourish themselves through good liturgy, which washes through them like a beautiful symphony. They nourish themselves in becoming the Body of Christ through the full celebration of Eucharist, and they nourish themselves by becoming a tabernacle for Christ when they receive communion with the gathered assembly.
A discussion of Eucharist is incomplete without brief discussion of the setting for Eucharist. While Eucharist can be celebrated anywhere, even an open field of wildflowers, it is supposed to be celebrated in a building for ritual if one is available. The ideal building is one that expresses ritual architecture, meaning the building tells a story even when empty. The altar stands with the empty chairs around it saying this is a gathered meal. The significant font says this is a baptizing people. The Reconciliation Chapel, if there is one, says this is a place where forgiveness occurs. The cross says this is a place of passage, of healing, of waiting with Christ for healing. Stations may be present to enshrine the passion story, and images hold up models of discipleship for meditation prayer opportunities. This is a place for memory. Our church is rich in history and story. But it is essential to remember that every time an assembly gathers a new story is being created. This is living church and the living present changes the story. Gustave Weigel reminds us that “only God is changeless.”
We need to always be aware when we gather for worship that this setting is also a place of parable and myth. Parables are all those things that are not supposed to happen. The myth is the promise of hope, of healing, of reconciliation. God promised us He would never leave us orphans, and we would live forever. Eugene Walsh says, “If you get a better offer, take it.” God’s promise that He would always be with us in our pain is at the heart of our petitions and his promise of hope the root of our trust in praise and prayer.
Liturgy, leitourgia, means work of the people. Liturgy is the act of Christ worshipping God. St. Augustine defined the totus Christus, the whole Christ, as head and members. The action of the body of the church is the action of Christ and vice versa. The two main parts of this Divine Liturgy are essentially Jewish in origin. Liturgy of the Word is based on the synagogue service, and the Liturgy of Eucharist is based on the Passover and Sabbath meals.
The liturgical movement is recognizing the inequality of treatment of the word and Eucharist and recognizing the desirability of weekly communion. Christ is present in the word. We hear God speaking to us. The Gospel book, like the altar, has always been a Christ symbol and our patristic Fathers kissed the book in recognition of this. The place of proclamation was called the ambo, the old word for footstool of the prophet. Only when it was moved out into the assembly, was it called a pulpit. Even then, the gospel itself was proclaimed from the sanctuary ambo. From the ambo is proclaimed the Word of God, responsorial psalm, homily, general intercessions and the singing of the Exultet at the Easter Vigil. Nothing else is to be spoken from here
The Eucharistic Prayer was not originally a prayer at all but rather a part of three gospels. Then the presider's began to act them out. By the end of the first century, these blessing prayers evolved into a single, longer, and more theologically developed prayer which we call the Eucharistic Prayer. We have evidence of this in a document called the Didache, written about the year 98 and rediscovered in an ancient monastery library 100 years ago. The Apostolic Tradition document written in 215 records the Eucharistic Prayer much as it is celebrated today.
. The liturgy underwent many variations and cultural differences in the intervening millennium. Starting originally in Greek, the language changed to Latin, as that became the assembly’s vocabulary. As the Christian church grew without benefit of common missal, liturgy evolved differently all over the world. The bishops remind us that 700-800 years ago during the middle ages, when our core symbols were gradually taken away and even hidden, people attached themselves to new symbols like the rosary, images, and monumental crucifixes which often came to mean more than the liturgy. Watching the Eucharist took precedence over hearing and participation. Eucharist became a thing, not an event, an object not a relationship (Age to Age 92). This happened because religion is invisible and people need something to see or touch. This "ocular theology" substituted for receiving the sacrament for many (Age to Age 92).
One great influence was the liturgical drama of the 10th and 11th century that slowly inserted itself into the ritual. By the 14th century, “boundary lines separating dramatic liturgy and liturgical dramas was thus very thin.” (Eucharist in the Third Millennium 10). In 1570, Pope Pius V issued a new Roman Missal for the Catholic church encompassing reforms from the Council of Trent that addressed many abuses that led to the Protestant Reformation. 1634 saw more reforms for both Protestants and Catholics, and the printing press made possible a standardized prayer book. However, the liturgies still varied greatly from region to region with Ireland, Spain, France, Germany and Italy each having their own versions.
The age of Enlightenment in the 18th century tried to stop liturgical drama. The renewed thrust emphasizes transforming the entire person into a gift to God in thanksgiving for the gift of Eucharist.
Change happens slowly in a church based on ritual, which by its very nature is conservative. Walter Grueggeman in Prophetic Imagination says a “Royal Consciousness” holds existing traditions sacred. Established institutions and traditions become canonized as the embodiment of the ideal. They are thus defended against intrusion or innovation. But God seeded the world for change and renewal was birthed.
The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy charged the Roman church to carefully study all the past liturgies, and “elements that have suffered injury through accident of history are now, as may seem useful or necessary, to be restored to the vigor they had in the traditions of the Fathers.”SC 50 The result was a return to the Roman liturgy of the 5th and 6th centuries, a new liturgy that was in fact very old in their tradition. The only new addition is the acclamation of faith in 1014.
The actions of Eucharist are not unusual things. We meet, greet, smile, respond, sing, listen, pray, and hopefully leap. John Buscemi says we often find the sacred when we do the ordinary extraordinarily well. When our spirituality of church is not at odds with our spirituality of the everyday, the celebration happens easily and jubilantly.
Eucharist is very complex. When we do it to the fullest, using all our senses and intelligence, we are what we eat. St. Augustine said the ideal to strive for as we come to the table is to 'be what you see and receive what you are...the Body of Christ'. Understanding the Body of Christ and Eucharist is one of our greatest challenges in the church today.
It comes as a shock to many that Eucharist is more than communion and communion alone is not Eucharist. When Christ instituted Eucharist, he took, blessed, broke, and shared. He then said, “Do this in memory of me.” LK 22:19 That is more than communion. The take is preparation of the gifts. The blessing is Eucharistic prayer. This blessing is not blessing of the beauty of the earth in the bread and wine, but the blessing of God for it. It is a true berakah, the theology of Jewish blessing. The first Christians were marginal Jews, and attended synagogue for several decades in addition to Christian worship. The theology of berakah says a gift requires a response. Berakah says all things come from God, and you may not use any of those gifts until you have thanked God for them. The praise of Eucharistic prayer is just such a prayer to God the Father, the creator of all good gifts. The break is the fraction rite when the priest breaks
the host. The sharing and eating is the distribution of Body and Blood consecrated at that Eucharist. It takes all these to create Eucharist. That is why we are supposed to consume only those hosts consecrated at that mass. The hosts in the ambry are for emergencies or illness.
That said, it becomes apparent we should not ask what Eucharist is, we should ask what Eucharist is for. Eucharist makes us the Body of Christ. The Apostolic church understood this so well. Augustine: “Let us rejoice and give thanks. We have not only become Christian, but Christ himself…stand in awe and rejoice: We have become Christ.” Tractatas in evengelium, Ioannis, 21.8. “Eucharist is the dynamic reality of God giving himself to us, then Christ and us giving ourselves back to God through Christ,” John Baldovin. Christ is emptying God for us. Phil 2 says goal is to become one with God. This is how we do it. Eucharist is an ever present and inexhaustible resource for God helping us become what we already are, the Body of Christ. Eucharist is a sacramental gift of presence and promise. Eucharist is memorial of the past; Eucharist is an ongoing present event; and Eucharist is the forerunner in the banquet feast in the kingdom, an eschatological event.
That is how Eucharist makes the church. It is also a surprise to many today that the church, not just the priest, makes Eucharist. Theologian Nathan Mitchell says, “Eucharist is not a thing a priest produces by some magical power. It is the dynamic reality of God giving God’s self to us in Christ and us giving ourselves back to God through Christ.” Eucharist is not produced by a priest. Eucharist is a holy gift. Eucharist and the love in Eucharist is not earned, it is given undeserved and unearned. The priest or minister, ordained by Christ, is required for the words of institution, but the assembly celebrates and creates Eucharist by their full, conscious, and active participation. The ritual is only words on a page until it is acted out by all. This entire process is active and communal. How could it be otherwise when all communicants are being merged into Christ's divinity? Christ comes physically into us while we move spiritually into Him.
Scholars think it was no accident that Jesus chose a meal for the vehicle to God. For the Oriental world in Jesus' day, a meal was more than just the opportunity to gain nourishment. Meals had great symbolic value. To share a meal with another person was a sign of peace, trust and unity between the two. Jesus powerfully proclaimed the breadth of God's love and God's kingdom by the meals he ate with the outcasts of society. Bread and wine were more than simply physical nourishment for the Jews; bread and wine recalled their history as God's people. Bread reminded them of the covenant relationship God established through Moses with the manna, "bread from heaven". By his actions at the Last Supper, Jesus was interpreting himself as the "new Moses" and "new manna" (John 6:25-70).
There is another element of Eucharist that is not often discussed. We give a nod to it on Holy Thursday when the priest washes the feet of twelve parishioners. Yet few people connect it with Eucharist. It was the first thing Christ did at the Holy Thursday Passover meal, then told his apostles to do as he did. In John’s gospel, he only has foot washing as the way of showing Eucharist. He doesn’t have the breaking of the bread. Isaiah foretold this. In prophesizing the death of Jesus, Isaiah continually refers to Jesus as “my servant”. Isaiah 52:13-53:12 The message is very clear from the gospels and Acts that whoever prays at this table must be as one who serves, and whoever drinks of the cup must drink of it to the dregs of self-giving, that others may have life.(note 2) What if charity isn’t optional? What is charity is as integral to Eucharist as berakah and bread and wine? Love is a verb, a choice. To love is to act justly and mercifully on others behalf without counting the cost and without controlling the result. Humans have always been torn between ethics and esthetics. Esthetics, our art and music and literature, is what make life bearable. But our innocence is sometimes illusory. Nathan Mitchell says our affluence has no defense in the face of famine. So we strive for balance. The role of the Church is to make the world a better place. The Christian churches say we believe we can do that.
The shape of our worship spaces helps us to understand all are equal. As the medieval Church grew, many ordinary Christians lost their sense of being baptized into the priesthood of Christ. The altar was removed from the midst of the congregation and was confined to that part of the worship space restricted to the clergy. Now, the table has been returned to its proper place among the people where they celebrate Eucharist. We need to be conscious of removing all physical barriers to the table, too. If we don't, we may have eliminated restricted turf for the clergy only to create restricted turf for the unimpaired.
In the Sign of Peace, we pray to Christ for the first time. By our sinning we reject God’s gift of Himself, so this is not intended as a social event. This is an extension of the penitential rite at the beginning of liturgy and is a time of reconciliation with those around us so that we may proceed to communion in peace and unity. We need to remember that Jesus never alienates us. We alienate ourselves from him. It has been said there should be a sign over the altar that reads, "Warning: you are about to love unconditionally, forgive others unconditionally, and be called to forgive yourself."
So, now we humans struggle with buildings to house God's chosen people. The Dedication Rite says worship buildings are a symbol of Christ, his people, the Church. It is a high expectation to design a church building to reflect the metaphor of this deeper reality called Church. But we keep trying.
We must start with a spiritual vision to get to the mystery of the holy. It's a paradox of splendor vs. austerity, magnificence vs. inadequacy of material things to symbolize that. When we talk about honest buildings or Christ's poverty, we do not mean poverty of design, poverty of materials or poverty of imagination. The Constitution on Sacred Liturgy calls for "noble simplicity" (34) and "noble beauty rather than sumptuous display" (124). That doesn’t mean it can not be elegant or beautiful, just not ostentatious. It is imminently desirable to give back to the God of Beauty the beauty of his creation in abundant water and fire and oil, in clouds of sacred smoke, in lovely vesture and generous gesture, and in wheat made bread and fruit of vine.
Not all places of worship are sacred spaces. Some just choose to be. We can not make them such. We can, however, with the help of the Holy Spirit, build or renovate a space that will allow us to become the people God wants us to be. There's an age-old wisdom that "the rule of praying establishes the rule of believing." Gaynell Cronin says the Holy Spirit robes us in a cloak of gladness, and God expects us to dance in those robes no matter how tattered they may seem to us. This Eucharist celebration is one place we can dance, young and old, rich and poor, sick and healthy, all equal in the eyes of God...best of all, we dance with our Christ. And we should never forget that those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.
Christine Reinhard 2000
Beguerie, Philippe. How to Understand The Sacraments
CSL – Constitution on Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) Vatican Council II
Foley, Edward. From Age to Age
Jungmann, Rev. Joseph A., S.J. The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its orgins and development
Power, David. Eucharist Toward the Third Millennium
Woodman, Marion. The Pregnant virgin
Conference papers and presentations by
John Baldovin
John Buscemi
Larry Madden
Nathan Mitchell
And much contemplation and prayer…