Ecclesia de Eucharistia

The Church’s Treasure, the Heart of the World

The Eucharist is too great a gift to tolerate ambiguity and depreciation. Stripped of its sacrificial meaning, often it is experienced as if it were simply a fraternal banquet. With his new encyclical, the Pope dispels all doubt, reawakening wonder at a Real Presence

by Marina Ricci

“For over a half century, every day, beginning on November 2, 1946, when I celebrated my first Mass in the Crypt of Saint Leonard in Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, 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, thus revealing its mysterious ‘contemporaneity.’”
Let’s try to read the encyclical like this, by starting from the “heart filled with gratitude” that John Paul II confesses in his fourteenth encyclical, devoted to the Eucharist. Its 76 pages are certainly dictated by his worry about the “shadows” obscuring the meaning in our time of the sacrament that is at the center of the life of the Church, but above all they come from a personal history that has drawn life and nourishment from the daily encounter with the mystery of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Thus, at the age of 83, John Paul II has written words that are not only an exposition of the Church’s doctrine on the Eucharist, but also the testimony that this Mystery has been real in his life and that, as he just recently said during his latest trip to Spain, it has been worthwhile to spend his life for Jesus Christ.

An awareness filled with gratitude
John Paul II had already written about the Eucharist in his apostolic letter Dominae Cenae in February 1980. Twenty-three years later, he takes up the same topic, and his words reveal an awareness that the years have filled with peace.
“Today,” the Pope writes, “I take up anew the thread of that argument, with even greater emotion and gratitude in my heart, echoing as it were the word of the Psalmist: ‘What shall I render to the Lord for all his bounty to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.’ 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.”
This is the premise that helps us to read a text that at times is difficult, that like a catechism explains once again “to the bishops, priests and deacons, men and women in the consecrated life and all the lay faithful” what the Eucharist is, hoping, as he says, to succeed in reawakening “the Eucharistic amazement”–amazement at a sacrament which contains “the Church’s treasure, the heart of the world, the pledge of the fulfillment for which each man and woman, even unconsciously, yearns.”

Countering ambiguity and reduction
Counterpoised to this wonder is the description of the painful necessity that called for a new encyclical. In one of its passages, the Holy Father synthesizes this necessity in these words, “In some places the practice of Eucharistic adoration has been almost completely abandoned. In various parts of the Church abuses have occurred, leading to confusion with regard to sound faith and Catholic doctrine concerning this wonderful sacrament. At times one encounters an extremely reductive understanding of the Eucharistic mystery. Stripped of its sacrificial meaning, it is celebrated as if it were simply a fraternal banquet. Furthermore, the necessity of the ministerial priesthood, grounded in apostolic succession, is at times obscured and the sacramental nature of the Eucharist is reduced to its mere effectiveness as a form of proclamation. This has led here and there to ecumenical initiatives which, albeit well-intentioned, indulge in Eucharistic practices contrary to the discipline by which the Church expresses her faith. How can we not express profound grief at all this? The Eucharist is too great a gift to tolerate ambiguity and depreciation.”
Even if in the encyclical this section is preceded by a series of positive references and accompanied by numerous subtle distinctions, so as not to generalize the negative impression, the long list of shadows obscuring the perception of the Eucharist is inevitably impressive, as is the Pope’s insistent repetition that for the Church, the Memory of Jesus Christ is not only a remembrance, but a Real Presence, the gift par excellence, because it is the gift of Himself, His person, His saving work. “The Church constantly draws her life from the redeeming sacrifice; she approaches it not only through faith-filled remembrance, but also through a real contact, since this sacrifice is made present ever anew, sacramentally perpetuated, in every community which offers it at the hands of the consecrated minister.”
If this is the case, we should not be surprised at the long, detailed list of references to a correct celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice contained in the encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia: from the need for Confession before receiving Holy Communion to the invitation to avoid “banalizing” the Mass and the ban on using the Eucharist as an instrument for communion because “it presupposes that communion already exists, a communion which it seeks to consolidate and bring to perfection.” John Paul II’s words on the Eucharist continually measure the distance between the “amazement” aroused by the Christian Memory and the “forgetfulness” of the flock, both sheep and shepherds. This distance contracts, at the end of the encyclical, in front of “the first tabernacle in history,” the womb of the Virgin of Nazareth.

Our Lady’s “fiat” like the believer’s Amen
“At the Annunciation,” he writes, “Mary conceived the Son of God in the physical reality of His body and blood, thus anticipating within herself what to some degree happens sacramentally in every believer who receives, under the signs of bread and wine, the Lord’s Body and Blood. As a result, there is a profound analogy between the fiat which Mary said in reply to the angel, and the Amen which every believer says when receiving the Body of the Lord… The Body given up for us and made present under sacramental signs was the same body which she had conceived in her womb! For Mary, receiving the Eucharist must have somehow meant welcoming once more into her womb that heart which had beat in unison with hers and reliving what she had experienced at the foot of the Cross.”
Here, at the end of the encyclical, in the image of a woman capable of saying “Yes” to the angel’s announcement, all the Pope’s explanations of the Eucharist take on the flavor of a promise for every man and lead us to believe and hope that the encounter with the Mystery of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ may be capable of transforming the life of each and every one, and of the whole world.