It's funny that you mention that one. It's always niggled at me since it seems that the word "Eucharist" can mean different things... the Mass or the Body of Christ or a pronoun as in "Eucharistic Gathering" or "Eucharistic sharing". Now I find this somewhat confusing language. And today I read on another thread the little blurb in the Missals about non-Catholics receiving Holy Communion and I find the same confusion is dispensed by the continued multi faceted use of the word "Eucharist".
The guidelines for receiving Communion, which are issued by the U.S. bishops and published in many missalettes, explain, "We welcome our fellow Christians to this celebration of the Eucharist as our brothers and sisters. We pray that our common baptism and the action of the Holy Spirit in this Eucharist will draw us closer to one another and begin to dispel the sad divisions which separate us. We pray that these will lessen and finally disappear, in keeping with Christ's prayer for us "that they may all be one" (John 17:21)."Because Catholics believe that the celebration of the Eucharist is a sign of the reality of the oneness of faith, life, and worship, members of those churches with whom we are not yet fully united are ordinarily not admitted to Communion. Eucharistic sharing in exceptional circumstances by other Christians requires permission according to the directives of the diocesan bishop and the provisions of canon law. . . . "
Read it a couple of times. It is really confusing.
Eucharist and Communion mean the same thing. Those who say it doesn't just want to fight.
I remember going to Mass on Father's Day 1998 or '97,for the homily,the priest read us a poem by some nun about eucharist,it went something like this:
I went downtown and was standing by a trash can
I saw a pregnant girl coming toward me,she offered mn eucharist.
As I wandered,I saw an old drunk,
I went over to him,hugged him and gave him eucharist.
It went on in the same inane,nonsensical fashion for the standard six minute homily time.It made my skin crawl and I now only use the word when I refer to the eucharistic prayer.
I wrote about the experience in one of my first posts on FR,I said I would not use the word anymore and thought that it was one of the reasons that many catholics no longer bellieved in the Real Presence. One person was very offended and let me have it,other than that I was totally ignored and have been by at least three persons on that particular thread ever since.