This is part two of a three-part series of questions-and-answers on the Eucharist. The Catechism of the Catholic Church lists at least twenty images and titles for the Eucharist, which tells us that its rich symbolism is inexhaustible. Let us not limit it to just our favourite symbol, but expand our mind and faith to include others so as to capture more of its richness.
Q: In what way is the Eucharist a meal?
A: Again, it is important to understand what Jesus – and the Jewish tradition he came from – understands about meals. In the Gospels, every meal in which Jesus participated was a sacred and symbolic event. Meals are important.
Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners. He ate with the multitudes when it first looked like there would not be enough for everyone. He often ate with his disciples and in doing so shared his life with them. These meals that Jesus shared in his ministry were the prefigurement of the Eucharist we share every Sunday.
Meals are important because they satisfy hunger and thirst. But eating a meal is more than just meeting basic nutritional needs. What makes a meal different from merely eating is the identification of our hunger and thirst with that of all humans who have ever hungered and thirsted. In our eating, we are thankful that we do not stave, and we are thoughtful of those who do. We are also mindful of the many human hungers that cannot be satisfied by eating and drinking. Our meals can be prayers that we will hunger and thirst only for what is right and good.
Drinking wine, in particular, can be a prayer for justice. Symbolically, wine liberates us from the constraints of this world. It affords us a new vision. We are infused with a new spirit. Our cares seem lighter and our hearts more joyful.
Wine also signifies the blood that is shed by the oppressed. By pouring out wine at the meal and sharing it, we share in the lives of all those who have suffered for their faith and have shed their blood for their beliefs.
Eating bread can also be a prayer of solidarity with the oppressed. The process of getting bread is symbolic of the birthing, living, dying, and re-birthing that takes place in all our lives. It is symbolic of the crushing, pushing, burning, and brokenness that so many people suffer. A grain of wheat fights the elements for food, sun, and water. Having survived, it is cut down in its prime to bring profit to the harvester. It is stripped, crushed, and ground down. It is mixed, kneaded, and baked in an oven. It has become something new and nourishing, only to be broken apart again, chewed, and swallowed. Eating bread reminds us of all the life and death struggles of the lives that have worked to bring us our food.
The meal can also be an act of reconciliation. Meals always involve others. We share our food together as a sign of love and commitment. Even when we do not like those we eat with, we all try to get along for the sake of the “meal” and for the sake of the community. Meals are feasts and banquets. They are celebrations of the large and small events of our lives.
And meals are covenants. We seal our marriages with a meal. Successful contract negotiations often end in everyone going out to dinner together.
In addition, meals are memorials. In the meal we remember. We remember birthdays and anniversaries and the last Christmas grandpa ate at our table. We remember our salvation at Thanksgiving dinners and our liberation at Fourth of July picnics. [Substitute "Fourth of July" for "National Day".]
The Eucharist is a meal in all these senses. But it is perhaps the sense of meal as memorial that is most important. In the Eucharist, we remember Jesus. We do not merely recall what he did and the kind of person he was, although that is important. But the eucharistic meal we eat is a remembrance in the sense of “making present”. When we “remember” our struggle for independence during our Fourth of July [or National Day] celebrations, we make present again what our forebearers believed about living as free people. In remembering, those ideals become present in us. We become one with the revolution. And in remembering year after year, we help the next generation to “remember what it is like to be an American. [Or Singaporean.]
When we “remember” the paschal mystery – Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again – every week in the Eucharist, we participate in the reality of Jesus. Jesus’ presence becomes “real” for us. And in celebrating the memorial every week, Jesus becomes real for the next generation – and for the whole world.
- taken from “Modern Liturgy Answers – the 101 Most-Asked Questions about Liturgy” by Nick Wagner, Pauline Publications
Related article:
- In what way is the Eucharist a sacrifice?
Filed under: Eucharist
