Reflections on the Eucharist - Nicholas Nkonge - 11111

The Lord ’s Day apostolic letter dies domini of the holy father John Paul II

The Eucharistic Assembly; Heart of Sunday. Chapters 31-54.

Nkonge Mwiti Nicholas  11111T

Sunday is the celebration of the living presence of the risen lord in the midst of his own people. In the Gospel of Mathew this has a theological importance because it illustrates his view of resurrection. It is the lord who lives in the church and the living community that experiences the power of the risen lord; this brings unity visible when Christians gather together testifying to the world that they are people redeemed in breaking of bread and the prayer of anaphora

Eucharist feeds and forms the church. Through taking, eating bread and drinking the cup, Christians are united to Christ because Eucharist is his body and blood. Therefore the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist is at the heart of the church life.

The Sunday Eucharist is not different from Eucharistic celebrated other days, but by its very nature the Eucharist is Epiphany of the church. This is expressed when community gathers in prayer with the pastor and are all sharing in the same liturgical celebration especially when it is in the same Eucharist.

The Sunday Eucharist expresses inherent ecclesiastical dimension, it becomes the paradigm for other Eucharistic celebrations held normally in other churches and chapels. Therefore Eucharistic celebration should be coordinated with the celebration in the parish church in order to foster the sense of the church community which is expressed by a community celebrating on Sunday.

The expectation of Christ coming is inscribed in the very mystery of the church and is evidenced in every Eucharistic celebration through which the church gathers her children into Eucharistic assembly and teaching them through word for divine bridegroom. Therefore Sunday is not only the day of faith but is also the day of Christian hope.

Coming together for Eucharistic celebrations shows to the world the meaning the celebration makes. Example is joys and hopes, sorrows and anxieties of people today. At every Eucharistic celebration the risen lord is encountered in Sunday assembly. The table of the world offers understanding of history of salvation especially the paschal mystery.

Sharing in the Eucharist is the heart of Sunday, but the duty to keep Sunday holy cannot be reduced to this. The Lords day is lived well if it is marked from the beginning to end by grateful and active remembrance of God’s saving work. Sunday mass thus produces rich fruits for all Christians as the Lord’s Day and the Church day.

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General instruction of the Roman Misssal. 

Nkonge Mwiti Nicholas   11111T

The importance and dignity of the Eucharistic celebration

The celebration of the mass is the action of Christ and the people of God. Eucharist is the centre of Christian life both universal and local as well as for individual Christian who actively participates in Eucharistic banquet. In it, there is high point where we find both the action by which God sanctifies the world in Christ and of the worship that all human races offer to the father adoring him through Christ the son of God in the Holy Spirit.

Through Eucharist celebration, the mysteries of redemption are called. In this way Eucharist is made present and other sacred actions of Christian life are bound up with flow from it and are ordered. The greatest important is that the celebration of the mass, that is the lords supper, those who take part may derive the meaning of which Christ Instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of his body and blood entrusted it to the church his beloved bride as amnesis.

The Eucharistic celebration for it to bear meaning, it should be planned in a way that it leads to a conscious active participation of the faithful body and mind, a participation burning with zeal and love which is desired by the church and by the very nature of celebration. Sometimes the faithful don’t actively participate in the banquet which shows ecclesial nature of celebration they forget that Eucharist is above all a mystery which belongs to the mystery of our redemption; it is the banquet in which a pledge of future glory is given. The Eucharistic celebration always remains its efficacy and dignity because it is the action of Christ and the church in which the minister fulfils his office.

However the celebration of the Eucharist like the entire liturgy should be carried out through perceptible signs that nourish, strengthens and express faith. Therefore it should foster active and full participation and more properly respond to the spiritual needs of the faithful.

The Eucharistic prayer, that is the prayer of thanks giving and sanctification, we are invited to lift up our hearts to the lord as a sign of offering ourselves in prayer and thanksgiving and sanctification. The Eucharistic prayer demands that all listen to it with reverence and in silence. Since the Eucharistic celebration is the Paschal banquet, it is desirable that in keeping with the lord’s command, his body and blood should be received as a spiritual food by the faithful who are properly disposed. This is in the sense of the fraction and other preparatory rites by which the faithful are led to communion.

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The Eucharist a mystery to be lived; sacramentum caritatis nkonge mwiti Nicholas 11111T

The centrality of Jesus is shown by the interconnections in the sign of loaves. Jesus assures us that whoever eats my body and drinks my cup will live forever. To receive Christ means to be assimilated with Christ we become shares in the divine life in an ever more adult and conscious way. St Paul speaks of a sacrificial obedient consistent with the gospel of grace and the immanent coming of Christ. In these words, the new worship appears as a total self offering made in communion with the whole church.

Eucharist as a sacrifice of Christ is also the sacrifice of the church and of all the faithful, therefore the destiny of the Christian who is called is to share a life with Christ glory implied in the transformation of our human reality as taken up by Christ. Christians by all their actions are called to offer true worship to God by Eucharistic nature of Christian life. The worship of God in all our lives cannot be regretted to something private and individual, but tends by the nature to permeate every aspect of our existence.Sunday is the day when Christians rediscover the Eucharistic form which our lives are meant to have. It enables us to live each day in accordance with what we celebrate as the Lord’s Day, which is demanded by our Christian conscience because to lose a sense of Sunday as the Lord ’s Day is symptomatic of the loss of an authentic sense of Christian freedom. Sunday thus appears as the primordial holy day when all believers become heralds and guardians of life and a new way of experiencing time, relationships, work life and death.

The importance of Sunday brings us back to the intrinsic relationship between Jesus victory over evil and death. Each Christian rediscovers the communal dimension of his life as one who has been redeemed. By taking part in liturgy and receiving the body of Christ intensifies and deepens our belonging to the one who died for us. Eucharist mystery helps us to understand the profound meaning of the communion sanctorum, and once the communion with God which is the communion with the father, son and Holy Spirit is destroyed, the root source of our communion with one another is destroyed.

The Eucharist as a mystery meets each of us as we are and makes our concrete existence the place where we experience dairy and radical newness of Christian life. The Eucharistic sacrifice nourishes and increases within us all that we have received at baptism. In discovering the beauty of Eucharistic form of Christian life, we are also led to reflect on the moral energy it provides for sustaining the authentic freedom of the children of God. By sharing in the sacrifices of the cross, a Christian partakes Christ self giving love and is equipped and committed to live this same charity in all his thoughts and deeds.The Eucharist is thus the source and summit not only of the church life but also of her mission. An authentically Eucharistic church is a missionary church, we become witness when through our action words and way of being another makes himself present. Followers of Christ are not guaranteed material well being what they have sought first is the kingdom of God first and entrusted Gods loving care. Each celebration of the Eucharist makes sacramentary present the gift that the crucified lord made of his life for us and for the crucified lord, made of his life for usand for the whole world.In Eucharist Jesus makes us witness of Gods compassion towards all our brothers and sisters. These can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God an encounter which has become a communion of will.

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Celebrating the Eucharist by Rinaldo Ronzani

Nkonge Mwiti Nicholas 11111T

The celebration of the Eucharist occupies a very important place in it, and it is around the table of the word and the table of the bread and wine that we gather every Sunday as a community in order to celebrate the paschal mystery, encounter the God of history, be strengthened by the spirit and sent into the world to continue the ministry of the lord. Liturgy is not a set of ceremonies, rites and prayers, but rather a celebration of our encounter with the father in the risen lord through the Holy Spirit. And this being a very important encounter and experience, calls for thorough preparation, full and active participation as well as a certain follow-up to achieve full effectiveness.

The Sunday celebration of the Eucharist is the summit towards which the activity of the church is directed; at the same time it is the fount from all which the church’s power flows Sunday celebration divorced from a certain pastoral approach becomes a ceremony emptied of its potential and power. The aim to be kept in mind all the time is that the assembly is called to take active part in the celebration and as a result to grow as community of believers who continue in today’s world the ministry of the lord.

In fact the celebration is to be planned in such a way that it brings about in the faithful a participation in body and spirit that is conscious active, full, and motivated by faith, hope and charity. Special attention is to be given to the training and preparation of people who carry out certain ministries. The emphasis here is on the preacher, since his role is of paramount importance and he can actually make the celebration alive or become a lifeless ritual.

In the past we got to the idea that Christ was present only or at least mainly in the consecrated bread and wine. Vatican  II challenges us to see that Christ is present in our midst in several ways, in fact there are four modes of Christ presence in the celebration of Eucharist, he is present in the community of baptized and confirmed men and women who are gathered in his name, he is also present  in the one of us who presides over the assembly on the basis mandated to this service to the community, he is present in his word, word which is proclaimed in the assembly, he is present in consecrated bread and wine which we share as our food.

Christ is the host who invites his followers to his table, he is present among them when they gather together, he presides over them, addresses them and gives himself to them as a food and drink. The Eucharistic prayer is a prayer of praise, thanks giving, offering and petation.it is the memorial of all Gods saving action in history especially in Christ. Therefore the actions and gestures of the presider should not be seen as a re-enactment of Christ’s words and gestures at the last supper.

John Paul, Encyclical letter Ecclesia de Eucharisitia - on the Eucharistic life of the church

Nkonge mwiti nicholas       11111T

The church is called to maintain and promote communion with triune God and communion among the faithful because the church posseses the word and the sacrament especially the eucharist by which she constantly lives and grows and by which the church expresses her very nature.

Eucharist culminates all the sacraments in perfecting all communions with father by identification with his only begotten son through the working of the holy spirit because we attain God and God joins himself to us in the most perfect union. The profound relationship between the invisible and visible elements of ecclesial communion is constitutive of the church as the sacrament of salvation in the context of celebration of the Eucharist and true participation in it. Eucharist makes present the redeeming sacrifice of the cross perpetuating it sacramentally.It naturally gives rise to a continuous need for conversion and personal response. Ecclesial communions are fully incorporated into the society of the church who by possessing the spirit of Christ accepts her whole means of salvation established within her.

The Eucharist as sacramental manifestation of communion in the church demands to be celebrated in the context where the outward bonds of communion are also intact. It requires that the bonds of communion in the sacrament to be real.eucharistic sacrifice when offered in a particular community is never a celebration of that community alone, but community in receiving the Eucharist receives the entire gift of salvation that is the image and true presence of the one holy catholic and apostolic union and fosters communion because we are body of Christ and individually members of it.

If we are his body and members of him then we find set on the lords table. Eucharist emphasizes its effectiveness for building communion which is proclaimed and natured precisely through sharing in the Eucharist, therefore the safeguarding and promotion of ecclesial communion is a task of each member of the faithful who finds in the Eucharist as the sacrament of the church unity as ecclesial communion.

In the relationship of the Eucharist to ecumenical activity we should always be giving thanks to the blessed trinity, our longing for the goal of unity prompts us to turn to the Eucharist which is the supreme sacrament of the unity of the people of God. in celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice the church  prays that God will grant his children the fullness of the holy spirit in Christ. It is not possible to celebrate together the same Eucharistic liturgy until those bonds are fully re-established.