This Sunday marks the 2nd in a series of 6 Sundays where the preaching will be based on the 14th encyclical of JP II: Ecclesia de Eucharistia. Last week, the homily’s main point covered the idea of the Eucharist as sacrifice. The implication that the Eucharist is a sacrifice is far reaching. As sacrifice, it serves to direct our attention to God and as such the Eucharist is primarily God-centred. Being God-centred, we will be on guard against reducing the Eucharist to just a fellowship meal because a Eucharist reduced to a fellowship meal would no longer be the worship of God but rather a worship of the community and a celebration of the community’s achievement. If that be the case, then the community’s needs will become the measure of the way we celebrate Mass. The implication is far reaching because the Eucharist, as long as it is not God-centred, it cannot be “other-centred”. The saints’ great love for the poor, the hungry and the orphans is testimony of a life which is centred first on God. It is only when we are God-centred will our genuine concern for the world increase. The Eucharist continually directs our attention to God.This Sunday, we explore two ideas. First, we take a look at the idea that the Eucharist builds the Church. Second, John Paul II speaks of Eucharistic adoration as constitutive of the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
Firstly, the Eucharist builds the Church simply because in its celebration, the unity of the faithful, who form one body in Christ, is both expressed and brought about. The Eucharist is both a means and a sign of unity. [1] And it all started with the Apostles. They who gathered with Jesus at the Last Supper were both the seeds of the new Israel and the beginning of the sacred hierarchy. There in the Upper Room, the sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary is sacramentally brought forward in time and the Apostles’ acceptance of Jesus’ invitation to eat and drink of his body and blood, allowed them to enter into sacramental communion with him.
Thus, from the time of the Apostles until the end of time, the Church is continually built up through sacramental communion with the Son of God. By virtue of our baptism, we are incorporated into Christ and that grafting into the Body of Christ is consolidated by our sharing in the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
In the Eucharist, we do not only receive Christ in communion; Christ also receives each of us. Our union with Christ opens us to become a sacrament for humanity, a sign and instrument of the salvation achieved by Christ. St Peter says in today’s 2nd Reading: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praise of God who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light”. Thus, the Church’s mission stands in continuity with the mission of Christ.
In this mission, the Holy Spirit, who is inseparably joined to the activity of the Son in the founding of the Church, is also present in the consolidation and continuation of her life. At the blessing over the bread and wine, God the Father also sends the Holy Spirit upon those who believe so that those who eat of the body and drink of the blood may be helped into the unity that is a reflexion of the one Body of Christ.
We can discern that the communion with the Blood and Body of the Risen Lord not only builds the vertical communion with the Risen Lord. It also builds the communion between all those communicating with the Lord. According to the then Cardinal Ratzinger, he said, “vertical communion builds horizontal communion, while horizontal communion becomes the epiphany of vertical communion. Communion with Christ in the sacrament necessarily becomes communion also with all those who receive him”. St Paul expresses the same idea in his letter to the Corinthians where he made reference to the unity of Christians using the analogy of bread in which the one loaf is made up of many grains of wheat. As such, our experience of disunity, which is a result of sin, can now be countered by the unifying power of the body of Christ. The Eucharist, precisely by building up the Church, also creates human community.
Secondly, the worship of the Eucharist outside of Mass is of inestimable value for the life of the Church. The celebration of the Eucharist is more than just attending Sunday Mass. Rather, Eucharistic adoration is simply the natural consequence of the Eucharistic celebration, which is itself the Church's supreme act of adoration…. The act of adoration outside Mass prolongs and intensifies all that takes place during the liturgical celebration itself. (Sacramentum caritatis#66, Post-Synodal Exhortation, 2005). Spending time before the Blessed Sacrament in adoration is to follow the example of the Beloved Disciple who lay close to His breast, feeling the presence of His infinite love (Jn 13:25).
These two points—the Eucharist builds the Church and Eucharistic adoration—may seem incongruent; that they have nothing to do with each other. But, the Church is beginning to realise that with advent of Vatican II’s liturgical reform, we had, in trying to catch up with the times, inadvertently neglected a necessary pre-requisite for the building up of the Christian community. We know that Mass is important. But, so too is spending time before the Blessed Sacrament.
It helps thus to situate the importance of adoration within the experience of conversion. How often have you despaired from your lack of conversion? People have stopped going for Confession. Why? They feel that nothing has changed in them and they keep falling back into the same sin. And it doesn’t take long to fall away from the practice of Mass attendance. People sometimes feel “unworthy” to come to Mass because they are unable to forgive or move on. Why go for Mass when I can’t love?
Such an attitude towards either conversion or Mass reveals a lack of understanding. It is as if we can make ourselves better. It is akin to wanting to pat ourselves before we come to God. It’s like saying to God, “Let me make myself a better person before I come to you”. This attitude reveals that our focus of conversion or our intention of going to Mass is actually not on God but on us and our ability. It is not because we are "good" that we can come before God but rather because God is good that we desire to spend time before Him. Eucharistic Prayer III bears this point: “Father, you are holy indeed and all creation rightly gives you praise. All life, all holiness comes from you through your Son, Jesus Christ and by the working of the Holy Spirit. (emphasis mine).
The implication that the Eucharist builds the Church is that the more we desire to become the Body of Christ, the more we should feed ourselves of the Body of Christ. In short, we eat more of Jesus so that we can become Jesus. Furthermore, the more we want to be the Body of Christ, the more we should spend time before Him. That is why we have adoration. In fact, our experience of failure at conversion may tell us one thing... we believe that we can wrought or work out our conversion. But, adoration perhaps tells us that it is God who shapes us. It calls for a deeper trust in God than in our capacity to change. If we do not love enough... it is not because we have not done enough but rather we have not prayed enough. We have not spent enough time with the Lord before the Blessed Sacrament. Thus, adoration before the Blessed Sacrament is supremely crucial to our desire for conversion; to the desire for building up the Church.
In conclusion, two things are important. The more we desire to be truly the Body of Christ, the more we want to be more like Jesus, the more we desire conversion... then the more should we commune with Jesus through Holy Communion and Adoration. It is the adoration of the Eucharist that keeps the Christian faithful in their love and service to others, as it promotes greater personal sanctity as well as that of the Christian communities.
We are all good at Mass attendance, we may all want to improve on spending time before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The Eucharist is not just a means to unity. If it were, then anyone present can receive Holy Communion. But, because it is also a sign of unity, then its unity is expressed by our assent to the teachings, worship and the governance of the Church. Thus, communion also expresses a union of creed, cult and code.
