Gn 14:18-20 | Ps 110 | 1 Cor 11:23-26 | Lk 9:11b-17
Today, the Church gathers throughout the whole world to celebrate the great mystery of the Eucharist. Of course, one could say that the Church does this every time the Mass is celebrated, but on this Sunday, we are asked to pause and take special notice of the great gift that has been left to us by Christ. Such is the magnitude of this gift that the Second Vatican Council wrote, “Taking part in the Eucharistic sacrifice…is the fount and apex of the whole Christian life” (LM 11). How can we hope to even understand such a profound mystery? There are so many ways to speak of the Eucharist but let us simply consider the gifts we offer for the Eucharist: the bread and wine.
Why should it be that bread and wine were chosen to be the means of our receiving the Body and Blood of Christ? Many throughout the centuries have asked this question of the Church. Whether it’s by ordinary believers or by our great doctors of the faith, it’s a question that has remained. One answer has been handed down to us from a relatively obscure bishop, Gaudentius of Brescia. He’s been overshadowed by his contemporaries like Ss. Augustine, Ambrose, and John Chrysostom. Still, he has excellent insight into why Jesus has given himself to us in the form of bread and wine.
Gaudentius wrote that bread was appropriate because of how it’s made. Many grains of wheat are gathered together, mixed with water, and baked with fire. In this process, he sees the Church, the Body of Christ, represented. We, the people of God, are like the grain, gathered in one place to hear God’s word and to worship. We become God’s people through the waters of baptism and are then confirmed in the fire of the Holy Spirit. We are, in a sense, like the bread offered for the Eucharist. We, like the bread, are lifted up, sanctified, and transformed through the celebration of the Mass.
Considering now the gift of the wine, Gaudentius observed how grapes come from vineyards. In the Bible, the vineyard is a symbol for God’s people. In order to transform the grapes into wine, the grapes need to be pressed and left to ferment. Gaudentius points to the Cross as the necessary winepress. As a sign of the Paschal Mystery, it shows us how we need to give of ourselves by breaking out of our thick skins of selfishness and indifference. Thus crushed, we can then be fermented like wine and become something greater than what we were before.
These observations from a bishop who lived 1,612 years ago, point to a reality that many Catholics can overlook: the Eucharist makes the Church, and the Church makes the Eucharist. It can be easy for us to imagine that the Eucharist is merely an outcome of our worshiping correctly. If the priest prays specific prayers and the assembly responds correctly, presto: the Eucharist “happens.” (And it does.)
However, we are invited to broaden our imaginations to see the mystical reality that whenever the people of God gather, they form the Body of Christ, and the Body of Christ is most itself at the celebration of the Eucharist. It becomes what it aspires to be. It is completely Church.
Might we bear this in mind as we move from our celebration of the Liturgy of the Word to that of the Eucharist. We who are gathered together in Christ’s name, broken open by his Gospel, washed in the waters of baptism, and set aflame by the gifts of the Holy Spirit: are here to be lifted up with the gifts we bring to the altar, the whole of our selves: body, mind, and spirit: our joys and sorrows, gratitude and sufferings, great worry and anxiety – all of it transformed, so that you and I become what we receive (who we receive) commissioned to go out and be Christ for this broken world.