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EUCHARIST, AN INTERIOR MIRACLE
A NEW INTERPRETATION OF THE EUCHARIST
The institution of the Eucharist constitutes the greatest divine mystery, ever transmitted to humanity, inaugurating a new Easter, in which Jesus Christ became the "lamb" of the celebration, offering his life in remission of the sins of all humanity. During the Passover Supper and on the eve of his death, Jesus instituted an admirable way of remaining between us, in which the bread and wine are transformed into his presence. The narrative of this celebration, during the Last Supper, it is identical in the three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke), but diverging in the evangelist Luke who adds an important sentence (do this in memory of Me) which can make all the difference.
Then he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me. After supper, he did the same with the cup, saying: This cup is the new Aliance in my blood, which will be shed for you. (Lc.22,19-20)
The Gospel of St. John he ignores this episode, but refers the Eucharistic mystery, long before the Last Supper, in the extraordinary speech on the “Bread of Life” (Jn.6,25-59), proclaimed by Christ in the Capernaum Synagogue, after the miracle of the multiplication of bread and fish, where it is affirmed as a food of eternal life: “I am the living bread that came down from Heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world ... If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you; who eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have eternal life and I will resurrect him on the last day, because my flesh is a real food and my blood a real drink… Who really eats my meat and drinks the my blood lives in Me and I in it… ” (Jo.6,51-56). However, the meaning of these words (eating his flesh and drinking his blood) is so profound and difficult to understand that it scandalized the Jews present, even leading some disciples to consider those words so unbearable that they decided to abandon him: "After heard him, many of his disciples said: What unbearable words! Who can understand this? But Jesus, knowing in his heart that his disciples were murmuring about this, said to them: Does this scandalize you? And if you see the Son of Man go up to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh doesn't serve for nothing: the words I gave to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe... Since then, many of his disciples go away and no longer walked with Him . (Jn.6, 60-70)
Also in the early centuries of Catholic Church, there was great difficulty in explaining this mystery, not being produced any official text about the Lord's Supper. According to biblical expert William A. Webster (The Church of Rome at the Bar of History, 2001), approaching this controversy, the great Fathers of the Old Church, in their writings, reveal great divergence in their interpretation. Some of them, like Ignatius of Antioch (35/98), Justin (100/165), have a literal view of the Last Supper, maintaining that the elements are transformed into the body and blood of Christ. On the contrary, others affirm that the elements of bread and wine are symbols of the body and blood of Christ and that their presence is of a spiritual nature. So thought Tertullian (220), one of the greatest Christians of antiquity who, referring to the speech of the Bread of Life of St. John (Jo.6), says that Jesus spoke in spiritual terms when he referred to "eating his flesh" and "drinking his blood", not wishing it to be understood literally, but meaning to appropriate it by understanding and faith. In the same way, Clemente de Alexandria (216), Orígenes (254), Eusébio de Caesarea (340) and Saint Augustine (430) thought, considering that who take communion does not receive the physical life but the spiritual life of Christ. Nevertheless, in the Catholic Church, the literal interpretation ended up triumphing, transformed in official doctrine of the transubstantiation, by the IV Lateran Council (1215) and by the Council of Trent (1545), according to which, in the act of the Consecration, the substances of bread and wine become the substance of the body and blood of Christ. Thus, the Eucharistic miracle takes place at the moment of consecration, achieved by the celebrant, without any participation of the assembly, which is limited to communing the “Body” of Christ present in consecrated hosts and in which it remains after the celebration, preserved and venerated in the tabernacle of the churches. However, this interpretation continues to divide Christians, between those who believe in the real presence of Christ (Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans) and those who consider the Eucharist to be a memorial of Christ's death and redemption (Protestant churches). The Catholic Church considers that the Eucharist is also a repetition of the Sacrifice of the Cross, opposing to those who interpret the historical death of Jesus on the Cross as complete expiation and accomplished once for all.
Now, it is possible to overcome this insoluble controversy, affirming a third way of interpreting the Eucharistic mystery, refuting its purely literal vision, but without denying the miracle of the real Christ presence. For this, it is important to understand the Eucharist as a whole, including two sequential moments, starting with the blessing of bread and wine, by the celebrant (institutional representative), but only being consummated by the act of communion, a sequence based on the three synoptic gospels and evidenced in Christ's procedure at Last Supper: "He took a bread and, after pronouncing the blessing, broke it and gave it to the disciples saying: Take, this is my body. Then he took the cup, he gave thanks and gave it to him. They all drank from him. And he said to them, "This is my blood of the alliance, which will be shed for everyone" (Mc.14, 22-24). In this sense, the consecration-communion dyad, present at Last Supper, would immediately require that, in the current celebration, the act of consecration should be immediately followed by the act of communion and not sent to the end of it... But, beyond the affirmation of the Eucharist as a whole, this new interpretation proposal of the eucharistic miracle involves the participation of the christian assembly, more centered in act of faith of who take communion than in the formula of consecration, being theologically richest and valuing the common priesthood of the baptized. This vision is based on the account of the Last Supper, in an exclusive detail of the evangelist Luke, where Jesus establishes a final requirement, necessary for the Eucharistic miracle to happen, expressed in the phrase "do this in memory of Me": "He then took the bread and after giving thanks, he broke it and distributed it to them, saying, "This is my body, which will be delivered by you; do this in memory of Me" (Lc.22,19). The meaning of the imperative sentence -"do this in memory of me"- becomes more perceptible and explicit, if we replace it with an equivalent proposition of a conditional type -"this will only be accomplished (done) if you remember Me"-, or of a temporal type -“when you do this, you must remember Me”. Now, if remembering someone means making his presence conscious, then Christ's demand to be remembered personally in the act of communion (conscious remembering), must be understood as a necessary condition for the Eucharist miracle to take place within human consciousness. In this sense, the individual communion must be understood as the most important moment of this mystery, initiated with the blessing of the Bread by the Priest (Institutional representative) but only consummated by the act of faith, interior and conscious of the one who communes, being the mind being human the hidden place where the Eucharistic miracle takes place, thus transformed into the (unique and spiritual) tabernacle of Christ in this world. So, more than a celebration of the priest, the Eucharist is a concelebration of the whole assembly reunited around Christ; more than a "saying" a formula by the celebrant, the Eucharist is a "doing" (take and eat) prescribed by Jesus at Last Supper, involving all members of the assembly (Christ not affirmed "say this", but “do this”); more than a single miracle performed by the power of the priest (he presides and makes the celebration legitimate), the Eucharist is a miracle of faith realized by Christ, within the conscience of all those who communes him and recognize his divine presence. In conclusion, the personal relationship, interior and conscious, between Christ and the one who communes, implicit in the "you must remember Me", is a determining condition for accomplishment of this admirable Eucharistic miracle, so that in his absence (routine and light communion), it is possible someone to take communion and the miracle does not happen.
A similar interpretation of the Eucharist seems to be afirmed by St. Paul, in his version of the Last Supper (1Cor.11,23), modeled on the account of the evangelist Lucas, reaffirming, twice, the expression"do this in memory of me"and seeming to value the act of communion more than the consecration, when referring to the imperative need of who takes communion "to distinguish the body of the Lord":- "I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: the Lord Jesus on the night he was delivered, took bread and having given thanks, he broke it and said: “This is my body, which is for you; do this in memory of me ”. In the same way, after supper, he took the cup and said: This cup is the new alliance in my blood; do this whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me... So anyone who eats the bread or drinks the Lord's cup unworthily will be accused of the Lord's body and blood... because who eats and drinks, without distinguishing the body of the Lord, eat and drink your own condemnation"(1Cor.11,24-29). Now, as the term "distinguish" means "to discern intellectually" or "to become aware of something", then St. Paul also seems to affirm the need for a personal and interior relationship (conscious remembrance), between who communes and Jesus Christ, for that the miracle of the divine presence is accomplished, even saying that whoever communes "without distinguishing the body of the Lord", communicates "unworthily". While admitting the possibility of another reading of this text, our argument seems to be just and well founded.
So, it is urgent a new Eucharist vision, in which the Eucharistic miracle, initiated in blessing of bread, only is consummated at the moment of conscious communion, valuing the common priesthood of the baptized, making them concelebrating and dignifying the human interiority. But, this vision raises the problem of the real Christ presence in the consacrated hosts kept in the tabernacle of the churches, an inadequate practice to the nature of this sacrament, because the Eucharist is a miracle of interior faith that only happens in the act of a conscious communion, performed in context of its liturgical celebration. In consequence, the living temple of God in this world is each of the Christians who receive Him, being absurd that Christ be alive in remaining hosts of the Eucharistic celebration and imprisoned in a material tabernacle. If God is Spirit, he can only be received, guarded or worshiped in spirit (Jo.4,23-24) and the only place in this world where this can happen is in the human conscience, a spiritual tabernacle, in whose silence everyone can find and praise Him. So, the feast of the "Corpus Christi" and its procession, instituted by Pope Urban IV, in sequence of the presumed miracle of Bolsena (1264), where the celebrant of the Mass would have seen blood flowing from the consecrated Host, should be reviewed, because distorts the profound significance of this mystery. The Church must overcome this historical mistake, implementing a "eucharistic revolution", of copernician type, that profoundly alters this practice but magnifies it much more. So I believe and so I adore Jesus Christ!
On other hand, if this new vision of Eucharist's sacrament dignifies the common priesthood of the baptized, the access to communion must also demand some human and christian maturity, placing it in adolescence or in youth and extending Baptism to higher age, in order to be received consciously. It will also be necessary change the structure of this celebration, giving greater centrality to the Eucharistic table (semicircle assembly), endowing it with greater participatory dynamics, enriching it with oral participation of the assembly, open to the testimony of the participants, to music and youth culture, placing the main moments of prayer to God for after Communion, which should be the central moment of the celebration ...- Finally, it is necessary to transform the penitential moment, already existing in the Eucharist, as true sacrament of Forgiveness, therefore, if sin is part of human life, the Eucharist, as a celebration of divine life, must also be a place of reconciliation with God, extinguishing the discredited auricular confession, only instituted at the Lateran Council (1215), which, according to the dominican theologian Bento Domingues, much has contributed to the devaluation of the Eucharist: “If the door is Baptism, the most important sacrament is the Eucharist, which is also the great sacrament of confession of sins, of the mercy and forgiveness from God ... Certain practices of confession were not only great crimes from the Christian point of view, they were also a constant and infamous devaluation of the Eucharist as the sacrament of forgiveness ”. (Public, 01/13/2008). In our opinion, auricular confession must be abolished for violating individual freedom and the right to personal intimacy, to which only God should access; it may well be replaced by the public confession existing in the current Eucharist, after being valued and restructured!
CONCLUSION- The new interpretation of the Eucharist, developed here, does not intend to remove legitimacy to the official doctrine of the Church, but to affirm a possible alternative doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the main mystery of Christian spirituality. Even meaning a break with the traditional practice, the Church should not be afraid to accept a change founded on the Gospel that reinforces the Christian spirituality, values the status of the People of God and can contribute to the unity of the Christians! Jesus Christ is alive among us and will renew his Church! I hope so!..
JOSÉ LEMOS PINTO -Ovar, 04/04/2020
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