Each year when our faith formation teachers are giving the First Communion Class their retreat, I gather with their parents for a session on the meaning of the sacrament that their children are about to receive. After a little introduction, I ask them if they have taken their children to dine with Jesus and to see God. Some look puzzled, while others realize that I am speaking about the Mystery of the Eucharistic Liturgy.
At each Mass, we meet Christ in Word and Sacrament, in sign and symbol, and in the community, I tell them. Soon their children will not only dine with Jesus at the Eucharistic banquet but will also be nourished with Him under the appearances of bread and wine. Jesus will do for them what He did for the Apostles at the Last Supper when He instituted the Eucharist – “Take this, all of you, and eat of this, for this is my Body, which will be given up for you (plural).” “This is the chalice of my Blood, of the new and everlasting covenant, that will be poured out for you (plural) and for many, for the forgiveness of sins.”
We then go on to discuss the many names that this sacrament has: Eucharist, Communion, the Body and Blood of Christ, the Real Presence, the Blessed Sacrament, Viaticum, the Host. Each name points to a dimension of the sacrament we receive. Each one helps us to go deeper into the Mystery we receive.
What is a sacrament? My favorite definition is that a sacrament is an outward, communal symbol of inward grace. The very word “sacrament” means to make holy. To be holy is to be like Christ. We are to become what we eat: the Body of Christ. To say that a sacrament is outward is to say that it is physical. It involves the senses – sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell. Just as the Word of God became incarnate in Mary’s womb and was born in Jesus, so the physical becomes a carrier of the spiritual, so that we might one day say with St. Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20).
This is what the inward grace is doing in us when we receive the Eucharist in faith.
But note that it is a communal symbol. It is not just Jesus and me, but Jesus and we. We call the sacrament Communion. Its root meaning is “to be united with.” I am united not just to Christ but to all Christians, to all who are baptized into Christ, and through Christ I am united to all people, for He came to save all. It is here that we often need ongoing conversion. It is here that we can have a real absence – an absence not of Christ in the Eucharist, but an absence of finding Christ in our neighbor. Part of the grace of Communion is to unite all in Christ Jesus, to expand our hearts. Just as Jesus reached out to Samaritans, sinners, tax collectors, lepers, a Roman centurion and a pagan woman, so we are called to reach out to those on the margins in our world: the sick, the homeless, the immigrant, the refugee, the lonely, the mentally ill. Whenever I act out of malice or fear and practice racism, prejudice, social snobbery, the denigration of others, I am absenting grace and the work of Communion in me. I am not letting Christ be the Lord of my life, but following a false god, a god of selfishness. I need the sacrament of reconciliation. Such conversion is the work of a lifetime, not just in me, but in every church, every city, every society, every nation, and every era.
How do we grow from “me and Jesus” to “we and Jesus,” to the graceful working for all in Jesus? It begins with the recognition that I and we need God.
In humility we pray for what only comes as gift. We can be helped by pondering the words of St. John Chrysostom, an Eastern Church Father, who preached, “Do you want to honor Christ’s body? Then do not scorn Him in His nakedness, nor honor Him here in the church with silken garments while neglecting Him outside where He is cold and naked. For He who said: This is my body, and made it so by His words, also said: You saw me hungry and did not feed me, and inasmuch as you did not do it for one of these, the least of my brothers, you did not do it for me. What we do here in church requires a pure heart, not special garments; what we do outside requires great dedication.” To live in Christ is to live like Christ, to see in every one a neighbor, and, like the Good Samaritan, to work for the healing of others. As St. Augustine said so well, the Eucharist is “the sign of unity and the bond of charity.”
Let us pray: Lord, on the cross You cried out, “I thirst.” Your thirst was not just for water but for all people to drink of Your grace, the living waters that alone can nourish the human heart. You thirst for the communion of all peoples in You, to become one in the Body of Christ. Each time we receive Communion may we learn to thirst like You, to open our lives to a deeper compassion, to a wider reconciliation, and to see others as You see them. May
Your Presence in the Eucharist enable me to be more present to others and may our sharing in Communion help us to work for communion with all. May Your Presence in the Eucharist enable us all to become what Saint John XXIII called us to be: “The Christian is the eighth sacrament, the only one that a non-Christian can receive.” We ask this in Your Name, Jesus, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jesuit Father John Michalowski is parochial vicar of St. Peter Church in Charlotte.