Eucharistic meditation

Matthew 26:26-29: And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.”

Whether he was feeding five thousand in the wilderness, or sharing a Passover meal with His disciples, Jesus’ meals were always Eucharistic, always occasions for thanksgiving. Our meal with Jesus is Eucharistic too. Jesus is again the host, and again week after week at this table, we join Jesus in thanksgiving to His Father. At this table, we are caught up by the Spirit in the eternal Eucharist of the Son.

It was an axiom of patristic and medieval theology that the Eucharist makes the church. This shared meal makes us the body of Christ. We are what we eat, and we who eat this one loaf are being constituted as one body. We are what we eat, and this Eucharistic meal makes the church a Eucharistic community. Week after week, we enact the reality that we are a people organized by thankfulness, our life together determined by the common gifts that we have received from our Father and the gifts that we share with one another.

But that “week after week” gives us pause. Why do we have to do this week after week? Why not just once for all, and then an end? Why all this rote repetition?

We do this week after week because we aren’t what we should be. The contrast between the discontented world and the grateful the church is not as clear as we would like it to be, nor as clear as we often pretend it is. We are not yet the Eucharistic people that we will become, and this meal is a weekly reminder both of the destination and the distance we have to travel before reaching it.

But the Lord does not give us this meal every week to rub our faces in our failures. This Eucharist is not merely a reminder of what we should be and aren’t; it’s a weekly pledge, a weekly vision, of what the Lord is determined to make us. This meal is a weekly reminder that God gave the body and blood of His Son and a weekly reiteration of His promise to fulfill all His intention for us. At this Eucharistic meal, He shows that He is determined to bring us to Jesus’ Eucharistic kingdom, the kingdom of joy and thanks, of light without shadow, the kingdom of contentment, where all will be well.