Fr. Thomas M. Pastorius
August 10, 2014
Spiritual Ponderings
The Many Dimensions of the Eucharist

This month’s Spiritual Ponderings is pondering the great mystery of the Sacrament of the Eucharist. As we do this we turn to Fr. Ronald Rolheiser’s book: Our One Great Act of Fidelity: Waiting for Christ in the Eucharist because in the second part of his book, Fr. Rolheiser looks at the Eucharist from 12 different perspectives. The quotes from his book will be in bold and my personal commentary will be in the regular font.

3: The Eucharist as the New Manna: God’s Daily Bread for Us.
In John’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that the Eucharist is the new manna, the new bread from heaven, the new way that God gives us daily sustenance. The Roman Catholic practice of daily Eucharist takes its root here. That is why, too, in Roman Catholic spirituality, unlike much of Protestantism, the Eucharist has not generally been called “the Lord’s Supper,” since it was understood not as an extraordinary ritual to commemorate the Last Supper, but as an ordinary, ideally daily, ritual to give us sustenance from God.

Our God is constantly providing not only for our physical well being but also our spiritual well-being and so He gives us the Eucharist as our Daily Bread. The Mass itself is a guide to how we should live out our daily life even when we are not at Mass. We are taught to live for God and others.

4: The Eucharist as a Meal as a Celebration of Our Health and Joy, and A Celebration of Our Pain and Sorrow.
We sometimes forget that Jesus was born in a barn not a church and that the God of the Incarnation is as much about kitchen tables as ecclesial altars. God is as much domestic as monastic. This important to keep in mind as we try to understand the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the body of Christ, a continuation of the Incarnation, and, like Jesus’ birth, is meant to bring the divine into concrete everyday life:

I think in a strange and beautiful way this quote from Scott Hahn summarizes this point:
Since marriage is a sacrament, family life is a kind of domestic liturgy, with its own responses, antiphons, and times of silence. There are lines we must never tire of repeating: “Thank you,” “I’m sorry,” “I love you,” “I forgive you,” “Tell me about your day,” “I’d be glad to do that,” and “How about a date?”
At Mass we know how to respond when the priest says, “Lift up your hearts” or “Lord, have mercy” or “Let us proclaim the mystery of faith.” In a similar way, we need to learn the responses of the domestic liturgy. When one of us says, “I am sorry,” the other replies, “I forgive you.” This liturgy, like any sacramental liturgy is not something mechanical or magical, but rather a habit-forming pattern of love. We don’t always feel the emotions when we say the words, at Mass or at home; but if we are sincere, God makes up for what we lack.

5: The Eucharist as a Sacrifice
Saint Augustine defined sacrifice by saying that is an act, any act, through which we enter into deeper communion with God and each other, and that the sacrifice opens us to deeper communion by changing and stretching the heart of the one offering it. When we add Augustine’s definition to that of the diction, we see that sacrifice works this way: To Make a sacrifice is to surrender something out of love, something that is ours and is painful to give away, and to let the pain of that surrender stretch and change our hearts in such a way that we are now more open to communion with God and others.

We see the love God has for us when we realize that He gave up His Son for us. We show God our love for Him by giving Him our first fruits (offertory at Mass) which becomes the bread and wine which becomes the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. When I put money in the collection basket, I am putting in my faith, hopes, and dreams. The money is only a symbol.