Luiz Antonio de Brito, 11138T
Reflection 3
The Eucharist in the life of the Church
After dealing with some commentaries about the teachings of
Blessed Joseph Allamano on the Eucharist, now we move on a step forward: let us
see some aspects of the Eucharist in the daily life of the Church. In order to
bring this topic into discussion we will present Jesus in the Eucharist as
Bread and deal with three major characteristics of this Bread: the Bread sent
from heaven, the Bread for sinners, and the Bread that nourishes, gives life
and gives courage.
In order to make our analogy clearer it is better to explain
the reason why we use the term bread to refer to Jesus. The first and the most
important reason is that Jesus called himself the Bread of Life (Cf. Jn 6:35;48),
and the second reason is that of our understanding of bread as something always
available at our tables, even among the poorest, and as a sign of self giving.
The first approach of our reflection will be the Bread sent
from Heaven. In this section we will go back to the mystery of the Incarnation
that we have just celebrated this week (8th April) with the
Solemnity of the Annunciation (Cf. Lk 1:26-38). God sent Jesus to the world
with a mission: inaugurate His Kingdom (Cf. Lk 4:43). Jesus became man (Cf. Lk 2:7), was part of a
human family and did all that a human being is capable of, apart from sin. Jesus
loved the people and accompanied them in their afflictions, being aware of
their limits and efforts (Cf. Mt 15:32). Jesus came to satisfy the human hunger
(Cf. Mt 14:15-20), both physical and the one of justice and peace. In summary,
the life of Jesus was Bread sent from Heaven to be consumed by humanity.
Our second approach is Jesus as the Bread for sinners. The
Eucharist is neither the Bread for the holy ones nor for the just, instead it
is the Bread which has the power to justify us and to make us holy. There is no
human being worthy to receive it; that is why we call it the Bread for sinners.
All those who receive the Eucharist is because of the mercy of God; the
invitation to be partakers in the banquet of Jesus is universal and the
salvation through him as well (Cf. Mt 11:28-30). The actions of Jesus himself
show us that his priority was to be with sinners (Cf. Mt 9:10-13).
The participation of every Christian in the banquet of the
Eucharist is also participation in the life of the community; it is not by
chance that we give the name Communion to this sacrament, it can be analyzed
from the point of view of the unity of the community around one table; this is
the table that offers the Bread that nourishes, gives life and gives courage. The
Eucharist is intrinsically connected to the social life of the community. We
can just go back a little and borrow from the example of Jesus who took part in
the life of the people of his time in special way the life of those who were
considered the last ones. In fact the act of partaking in the Eucharist should nourish,
give life and give us courage to go in encounter of those who are forgotten.
It is not just enough to receive Jesus and remain in
contemplation like the disciples in the event of the Transfiguration (Cf. Mk
9:1-9); it is essential to make what we celebrated alive and present in our
lives and in the lives of those whom we encounter. This is a topic that we
shall deal with in the next coming reflections with a special focus on the
experience of the disciples during the Resurrection of Christ.
Reflection 4
Eucharist in the Paschal Mystery (part 1) - Institution of the
Eucharist
The Eucharist is the centre of the Christian life when we are
capable of living it and allowing this mystery to transform our life. It is not
enough to believe that the celebration of the Eucharist is a religious act; it
is required that we merge life and faith in a relationship that flows from this
celebrative moment; this would be the way in which the Eucharist becomes a help
for the faithful to “hold fast in their lives to what they have grasped by
their faith” (SC 10).
In the account of the Last Supper (Cf. Lk 22:14-20; 1Co
11:23-26) we can find the best summary of the life and death of Jesus as far as
his diaconal mission and his relationship with the kingdom of God are concern. In
the account of the last Supper there is
evidence of the radical trust of Jesus in the coming of the Kingdom of God as
he expresses it : “I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until
that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God” (Mk 14:25; 1Co 11:26).
The new banquet for the apostolic community
and the expression “do this
in remembrance of me” (Lk 22:19) are signs that this was no longer the
old Passover Meal, which served just as a departure point, but the Supper of
the new and everlasting Covenant (Cf. Mt 26:28). The Christian
tradition talks about the Eucharist as spiritual food and drink, which, similar
to the manna (Cf. Ex 16:13-31) and the water from the rock (Cf. Ex 17:6) in the
desert, gives us the enough strength for our continuous pilgrimage up the
Promised Land. In the same way the Eucharist in the New Testament with the
expressions “take, eat;
this is my body” (Mt 26:26) and “whoever
feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life” (Jn 6:54) gives
assurance of the essential strength given by the Eucharist to our continuous
expectation of the second coming of Jesus.
In the Eucharistic mystery Jesus is present first and foremost
as the one who presides it over and invites all to take part on it: “do this in remembrance of me” (Lk
22:19); and after the resurrection repeats a similar action in a manner that
shows the celebrative and communitarian dimension of his presence among us: “Come
and have breakfast” (Jn 21:12). The Eucharist implies an act of eating
with Jesus and besides that an act of communion: becoming one soul and one body
with Him. The sacrifice of Jesus has its roots on the self giving of him in
favor of humanity, which was witnessed by the disciples in the Last Supper and
had the culminate point on the cross. It is a self giving according to the will
of the Father (Cf. Mt 26:39). Through the act of self giving up to the point of
death Jesus does not only presents himself to the Father but also presents
humanity as a worthy elected race to remain in His bosom.
The Eucharist is therefore an anticipation of the
eschatological banquet which implies a total self giving in a status of
communion between God and humanity through Christ; that is why Christian do not
live their relationship with the Eucharist just at the moment of the
Celebration or Adoration, but throughout their lives giving significance to the
understanding that faith and life are united and demand a missionary activity.
Reflection 5
Eucharist in the Paschal Mystery (part 2) – The Risen Lord and Mission
This last reflection will catch up with all the other reflections
previously done: the first two focused on the teachings of Blessed Joseph
Allamano for his missionaries, the third one on the Eucharist in the life of
the Church, and the forth one on the Institution of the Eucharist. The uniting aspect on these four reflections
is the unity of faith, life and missionary activity; therefore, we shall deal
with them focusing on the experience of the disciples after meeting the Risen
Christ.
The Eucharist is a call and a memorial of the Paschal
missionary activity of Christ which has in it the announcement of the Easter
event (the resurrection of Christ) and an invitation for a continuous and
incessant announcement (Cf. Mt 28:10; 28:19-20). The task of the announcement
which was first taken by the disciples, later on in the history of the Church
became the task of the People of God (Cf. AG, 35). The fact that the Eucharist
constitutes a ritual action does not mean that it excludes a missionary
activity. On the contrary, the Eucharist is the privileged environment where we
concentrate and renew our commitment to the mission and it is where the
missionary mandate occurs. A demonstration of this reality is the event of the
encounter of Jesus with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus that henceforth
we shall deal with.
The encounter of the
Risen Lord with the two disciples (Cf. Lk 24:13-35) is the best example to
illustrate the whole journey we have been doing along of these reflections:
Jesus presents the way out to the two disciples while explaining all that is
concerning the recent past events through the Scriptures (Cf. Lk 24:25-27),
thereafter the disciples recover their trust and come to recognize Christ in
the breaking of the bread (Cf. Lk 24:30-31), and finally they feel in the
responsibility of sharing what they have just witnessed, going back to
Jerusalem and telling others how all happened (Cf. Lk 24: 33-35).
The Eucharist, as other sacraments, has a structure: Word,
sign, commissioning and action. This structure reveals to us the way in which
we should participate in the Eucharist following the example of the two
disciples: they listened to the Word of God that reminded them of the events to
come (Cf. Lk 24:25-27), they saw the breaking of the bread (Cf. Lk 24:30-31),
they felt the commissioning of going back, and they finally took part in the
missionary action (Cf. Lk 24: 33-35).
The Eucharistic celebration as a community gathering revives
the experience of the disciples in the Last Supper: there is an intimacy among
those present and later on there is a separation where we cannot see each other
but our mind and hearts should remain united; the difference between the
separation of the disciples – where they went astray for fear of the Jews – and
our separation – where we get encouraged and nourished – the latter is part of
our commissioning of going out and telling others what we had seen (Cf. Jn
20:18; Acts 4:20); it is our way of being witness of the presence of Christ –
the Risen one who is present in the Eucharist -
in our life to the world; this is our missionary task.
De Brito, Luiz Antonio, IMC - 11138T
REFLECTION 2
The
unavailability of the Eucharist and our attitude towards this challenge
according to Blessed Joseph Allamano
In our last
reflection on the theme of the Eucharist, according to Blessed Allamano’s
teaching, we presented three acts that are required to take part in
the Eucharistic meal, namely an act of faith, an act of humility, and an act of
love and desire. There was also a comparison between the works of the Eucharist
in our souls with the work of the daily food in our bodies and from there we
came to some challenging questions when the pastoral set up does not allow the
person to attend Mass regularly: how to sustain, develop, and protect
the soul of somebody who does “not eat the necessary food”? Does the Eucharist
need to be received regularly, like normal food, in order to maintain our soul
healthy or an “occasional meal” is sufficient?
These are the two major questions that we will focus in this our second
reflection.
Allamano says
little as far as the pastoral challenge of not having the Eucharist daily
available is concern because his instructions are mostly for priests and his
students in formation in the Seminaries. Due to this situation anybody can
assume that they had daily availability of the Eucharist. On the other hand,
even in the case they were having the Eucharist every day, some people were not
taking part on the communion; at this point we come to our topic of concern:
how to sustain, develop, and protect the soul of somebody who does “not eat the
necessary food”? Is an “occasional meal” sufficient to maintain our soul
healthy?
Joseph
Allamano quotes Saint Teresa while says that one well made Holy Communion is
enough to sanctify a soul (Cf. SL 549) but at the same time advices that
sometimes, even taking part in the Holy
Communion, we remain fault people not because of the lack of effect of
the sacrament but because of our imperfect actions. While instructing his
seminarians, Allamano says that the disposition that we should have while going
to receive the Eucharist should not be the same as if we were going to
breakfast (Cf. SL 550) or just because we are concerned about others will think
of us if we don’t receive the Holy Communion. He says that sometimes we can
abstain ourselves from receiving the Eucharist as an act of humility, however
love should be greater than our humility (Cf. SL 550). In the same spectrum
Allamano adds that the act of going to receive the Holy Communion should not be
based on human reasons but on our desire for God and his graces.
Now in the
case of not having the Eucharist available neither to be received nor to be
adored, the attitude proposed by Allamano is the one of constant desire of
being in the presence of Jesus. He says that, in some cases, it is not
necessary for us to be there physically present; the most important thing is to
desire it and to act as if we were having it (Cf. SL 557). From this point
Allamano presents to us (see SL 550) the attitudes that are necessary in order
to be in the presence of Jesus even when we are not physically present; they
are right intention, good will, love and devotion. In fact these are the
predispositions that we should have while making a physical Communion but they
are at the same time very much applicable in case we do not have the
possibility of doing so.
As we could
see, the teachings of Blessed Joseph Allamano are still very much updated to
the situation of some of the rural areas setups today where the availability of
the Eucharist is still limited; our challenge now is, if it not possible to
make the Eucharist available, how to create an awareness in the Christian
community that they can come to a deep understanding of the Eucharist even when
they are not receiving it.
Luiz Antonio De Brito 11138T
***
Practical
implications to those who take part in the Eucharist
Eucharist is a very broad topic which has many
perspectives to be dealt with; in the first of my reflections on this topic I
would like to focus on a theme that has a lot to do with my personal experience
based on the teachings of Blessed Joseph Allamano: practical implications to
those who take part in the Eucharist.
It is so simple and sometimes automatic that we say “I am
going for Mass” or, for some Christians, “I am going to assist Mass”; but
leaving aside the issue of the correct
sentence to express our participation in the Eucharist we should focus on one
more important and challenging sphere: the practical implications of
participating in the Eucharist. What are the requirements to take part on it?
Is there anything that follows our being in Mass or is it an action that ends
with the “Go in peace, the Mass is ended”? To talk about the practical
implications of participating in the Eucharist I would use two examples of
participation in the Celebration of the Eucharist enlightened by the teachings
of Bd. Allamano.
The importance of the Eucharist to the life of Christians
and even more to the life of religious is well manifested in the innumerous
writings of Allamano; he talks of a previous preparation for the Mass, the
celebration of it, and a continuous thanksgiving until the next celebration. To
help his missionaries on this exercise he proposed to divide the day into three
parts and the celebration of the Mass would take part at midday in order to
have the whole morning to prepare and the whole afternoon to give thanks apart
from a continuous sense of being in the presence of Jesus in the Blessed
Sacrament. His teachings were so emphasized that he called his missionaries to
be Sacramentines, that is, to have great devotion to the Holy Eucharist.
According to Allamano, in the book entitled The Spiritual
Life (Cf. SL 553), three acts are required to take part in the Eucharistic
meal, namely an act of faith, an act of humility, and an act of love and
desire. I use this teaching of Allamano to contrast to the life of a “normal
Catholic person”: she goes for Mass every Sunday and it is practically possible
that she has a strong connection to the living of this sacrament. Now let us
have a glance at somebody who has the opportunity to attend Mass once in three
months or even once in a year deal to factors that do not depend on her to
change. In this last case this person does not even remember how to respond to
the different parts of the Mass neither she will remember the importance of
this sacrament to her life. On the same matter, Allamano quotes St. Tomas
saying that the effect of the Eucharist (body and blood of Christ) in the life
of our soul is equal to what is produced in the life of our body by the normal
food and drink: it sustains, develops, protects and gives delight (Cf. SL 554).
We have a big challenge in the last mentioned case: how
to sustain, develop, and protect the soul of somebody who does “not eat the
necessary food”? It can be a pastoral issue and it can be also an issue of
grace. The last one comes in scene when we meditate on the merely aspect of
quantity; does the soul works like the body: we need to eat everyday in order
to maintain our body healthy or an occasional meal to the soul with the grace
of God would be enough to “keep us strong and kicking”? On the same line appears the questioning of
the need for attending daily Mass; is it really necessary? These are some of
the questions that I would like to talk about on my next reflection.
