Eucharistic Corner

   Eucharist is sacrament of the Church’s unity “O sacrament of devotion! O sign of unity! O bond of charity!”. St Augustine’s exclamation in his  commentary on the Gospel of John (In Joannis Evangelium, 26, 13) captures the theme and sums up the words that Paul addressed to the Corinthians and we have just heard: “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:17).

The Eucharist is the sacrament and source of the Church’s unity. This has been stressed since the beginnings of the Christian tradition and is based on the sign of the bread and wine. This is how it is stated in the Didache, a writing composed at the dawn of Christianity: “Just as this broken bread was first scattered on the mountains and, after being harvested, became one reality, so may your Church be gathered from the ends of the earth into your kingdom” (9, 1).[…]

   This Eucharistic symbolism of the Church’s unity returns frequently in the Fathers and Scholastic theologians. “The Council of Trent summarized the doctrine, teaching that our Savior left the Eucharist to his Church ‘as a symbol of her unity and of the charity with which he wanted all Christians to be closely united with one another’; and for this reason it is ‘a symbol of that one body of which he is the head’” (Paul VI, Mysterium fidei 40; cf. Council of Trent, Decr. de SS. Eucharistia, introd. and ch. 2). The Catechism of the Catholic Church sums it up very effectively: “Those who receive the Eucharist are united more closely to Christ. Through it Christ unites them to all the faithful in one body – the Church” (CCC, 1396). […]

   Because this type of “vertical” communion-koinonia makes us one with the divine mystery, it produces at the same time a communion-koinonia we could call “horizontal”, or ecclesial, fraternal, capable of uniting all who partake of the same table in a bond of love.” (St. John Paul II, General Audience Wednesday 8 November 2000)