A Gift for the World
A Gift for the World
How the Eucharist Can Change Our Hearts--And Change History
By the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the church was born and set out upon the pathways of the world, yet a decisive moment in her taking shape was certainly the institution of the Eucharist in the Upper Room. Her foundation and wellspring is the whole Easter Triduum, but this is as it were gathered up, foreshadowed, and concentrated for ever in the gift of the Eucharist. With it Jesus brought about a mysterious "oneness in time" between that Triduum and the passage of the centuries.
My Experience of the Eucharist. The thought of this leads us to profound amazement and gratitude. In the paschal event and the Eucharist that makes it present throughout the centuries, there is a truly enormous "capacity" that embraces all of history. I would like to rekindle this Eucharistic "amazement." How could I not feel the need to urge everyone to experience it ever anew?
When I think of the Eucharist and look at my life as a priest, as a bishop, and as the successor of Peter, I naturally recall the many times and places in which I was able to celebrate it. I remember the parish church of Niegowi´c , where I had my first pastoral assignment; the collegiate church of Saint Florian in Krakow; Wawel Cathedral; Saint Peter's Basilica; and so many basilicas and churches in Rome and throughout the world. I have been able to celebrate Holy Mass in chapels built along mountain paths, on lakeshores, and seacoasts; I have celebrated it on altars built in stadiums and in city squares. This varied scenario has given me a powerful experience of its universal and, so to speak, cosmic character.
Yes, cosmic! Because even when it is celebrated on the humble altar of a country church, the Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on the altar of the world. It unites heaven and earth. It embraces and permeates all creation. The Son of God became man in order to restore all creation, in one supreme act of praise, to the One who made it from nothing. He, the eternal high priest who by the blood of his cross entered the eternal sanctuary, thus gives back to the Creator and Father all creation redeemed. Truly this is the mystery of faith that is accomplished in the Eucharist: The world that came forth from the hands of God the Creator now returns to him redeemed by Christ.
Receive the Holy Spirit. The Church has received the Eucharist from Christ her Lord not as one gift-however precious-among so many others, but as the gift par excellence, for it is the gift of himself as well as the gift of his saving work. What more could Jesus have done for us? Truly, in the Eucharist, he shows us a love that goes "to the end" (John 13:1), a love that knows no measure.
Through our communion in his body and blood, Christ also grants us his Spirit. Saint Ephrem writes: "He called the bread his living body and he filled it with himself and his Spirit. . . . He who eats it with faith, eats Fire and Spirit. . . . Take and eat this, all of you, and eat with it the Holy Spirit. For it is truly my body and whoever eats it will have eternal life."
The Church implores this divine Gift, the source of every other gift, in the Eucharistic Prayer. In the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, for example, we find the prayer: "We beseech, implore and beg you: Send your Holy Spirit upon us all and upon these gifts . . . that those who partake of them may be purified in soul, receive the forgiveness of their sins, and share in the Holy Spirit." And in the Roman Missal the celebrant prays: "Grant that we who are nourished by his body and blood may be filled with his Holy Spirit, and become one body, one spirit in Christ." Thus by the gift of his body and blood, Christ increases within us the gift of his Spirit, already poured out in Baptism and bestowed as a "seal" in the Sacra-ment of Confirmation.
The Eucharist in the World. It is not by chance that the Eucharistic Prayers honor Mary, the angels, the apostles, the martyrs, and all the saints. In celebrating the sacrifice of the Lamb, we are united to the heavenly "liturgy" and become part of that great multitude which cries out: "Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb" (Revelation 7:10)! The Eucharist is truly a glorious ray of the heavenly Jerusalem which pierces the clouds of our history and lights up our journey.
A significant consequence of this truth is the fact that it plants a seed of living hope in our daily commitment to the work before us. Certainly the Christian vision leads to the expectation of "new heavens" and "a new earth" (Revelation 21:1), but this increases, rather than lessens, our sense of responsibility for the world today. I want to reaffirm this forcefully at the beginning of the new millennium, so that Christians will feel more obliged than ever not to neglect their duties as citizens in this world. Theirs is the task of contributing with the light of the Gospel to the building of a more human world, a world fully in harmony with God's plan.
Many problems darken the horizon of our time. We need but think of the urgent need to work for peace, to base relationships on solid premises of justice and solidarity, and to defend human life from conception to its natural end. And what should we say of the thousand inconsistencies of a "globalized" world where the weakest, the most powerless, and the poorest appear to have so little hope! It is in this world that Christian hope must shine forth!
Significantly, in their account of the Last Supper, the synoptics recount the institution of the Eucharist, while the Gospel of John relates, as a way of bringing out its profound meaning, the account of the washing of the feet, in which Jesus appears as the teacher of communion and of service (John 13:1-20). Proclaiming the death of the Lord "until he comes" (1 Corin-thians 11:26) entails that all who take part in the Eucharist be committed to changing their lives and making them in a certain way completely "Eucharistic." It is this fruit of a transfigured existence and a commitment to transforming the world in accordance with the Gospel that illustrates the eschatological tension inherent in the celebration of the Eucharist and in the Christian life as a whole: "Come, Lord Jesus!" (Revelation 22:20).
The Church's Treasure. For over a half century, every day, beginning on 2 November 1946, when I celebrated my first Mass, my eyes have gazed in recollection upon the host and the chalice, where time and space in some way "merge" and the drama of Golgotha is re-presented in a living way. Each day my faith has been able to recognize in the consecrated bread and wine the divine Wayfarer who joined the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and opened their eyes to the light and their hearts to new hope (Luke 24:13-35).
Allow me, dear brothers and sisters, to share my own testimony of faith in the Most Holy Eucharist. Here is the Church's treasure, the heart of the world, the pledge of the fulfillment for which each man and woman, even unconsciously, yearns. Here our senses fail us; yet faith alone, rooted in the word of Christ handed down to us by the apostles, is sufficient. Allow me, like Peter, to say once more to Christ, in the name of the whole Church and in the name of each of you: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life" (John 6:68).
At the dawn of this third millennium, we, the children of the Church, are called to undertake with renewed enthusiasm the journey of Christian living. Ultimately, it has its center in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved, and imitated so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity, and with him transform history until its fulfillment in the heavenly Jerusalem.
Every commitment to holiness, every activity aimed at carrying out the Church's mission, every work of pastoral planning, must draw the strength it needs from the Eucharistic mystery and in turn be directed to that mystery as its culmination.
In the humble signs of bread and wine, changed into his body and blood, Jesus walks beside us as our strength and our food for the journey, and he enables us to become, for everyone, witnesses of hope. If, in the presence of this mystery, reason experiences its limits, still the heart, enlightened by the grace of the Holy Spirit, sees the response that is demanded and so bows low in adoration and unbounded love.
This article has been adapted from Pope John Paul II's 2003 encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia.