The readings provide us with three words which serve as the basis of our reflexion on the Eucharist.
The first word is “memorial” or as Moses uses the imperative command: “Remember!” The Book of Deuteronomy is a retelling of the most important event in the history of Israel, their deliverance from slavery in Egypt and their journey in the wilderness. The Passover meal was a ritual meal that celebrated the memory of this deliverance from Egypt. But when the Jews celebrate this meal, they bring God’s action into the present by asking for deliverance from whatever is harming their communities right now. By doing this they are not just remembering an event of thousands of years ago. Deliverance is a present experience; it is happening now.
Why is this important? It is the background needed to understand the Eucharist which was instituted by the Lord at the Last Supper. When the Lord celebrated the Last Supper with His disciples, they were following the ritual of the Passover meal, at least in part. But our Lord changed the whole dynamic by the words He used, shifting the focus from the Passover lamb to the bread and wine which He now describes as His own Body and Blood. There is no mention of the ritual lamb in any accounts of the Last Supper because Jesus is THE Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. No other sacrificial animal or gift is needed. Then he added the sentence that would change forever what the Paschal meal was all about for his followers. He said, ‘Do this in memory of me.’ “Remember!”
No longer would we Christians celebrate the meal in memory of the escape from slavery in Egypt. We would celebrate this meal in memory of Jesus who freed us from the slavery of sin by His death on the cross. That is why we explain the Holy Mass as a re-presentation of the One unique sin atoning, life redeeming sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Re-presentation here does not mean symbolising something or someone standing in place of Jesus’s death on the cross. The key word is “present”. Every Mass makes present that sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. At every Mass, we are standing at Calvary, witnessing His crucifixion, agony and death. This is what we remember. That is why in the Collect of today’s Mass the priest describes the great Sacrament of the Eucharist as “a Memorial of your (Jesus’) passion.”
Remembering this should lead us to revere and worship Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is not just a ritual symbolic meal. It is Jesus who presides at the altar. It is Jesus who dies on the cross giving us His Body and Blood. Without such reverence, we risk condemning ourselves as St Paul warns us that “for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself” (1 Cor 11:27). Such reverential remembering prepares us for the next word in our Eucharistic vocabulary: “communion.”
Communion is a very popular word these days, perhaps seen as interchangeable or synonymous with Synodality or conciliarism or unity. This is a nice idea but that is not the primary meaning of the Greek word “koinonia” which is translated as “communion” as we had heard in the second reading: “the blessing-cup that we bless is a communion with the blood of Christ, and the bread that we break is a communion with the body of Christ.” Communion is generally understood in a horizontal sense. A better translation of the word is “participation” which implies sharing something in common. What do we Christians share in common? St Paul in the second reading provides the answer - the Body and Blood of Christ. The concept of communion is above all anchored in the holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, the reason why we still today speak of the act of consuming the Eucharist as communion. So, the community does not make the Eucharist communion but it is Jesus in the Eucharist which makes our ecclesial community. The Eucharist makes the Church, as St John Paul II taught. Through communion, there is a participation, a communion, a commingling with the life of Christ. It is truly the one Lord, whom we receive in the Eucharist, or better, the Lord who receives us and assumes us into Himself. When we consume bodily nourishment, it is assimilated by the body, becoming itself a part of ourselves. But in the Eucharist, it is not we who assimilate it, but it assimilates us to itself, so that we become in a certain way "conformed to Christ", as Paul says.
Communion with Christ necessarily means communion with the members of His mystical Body. This is beautifully expressed in our Holy Father’s motto which is attributed to St Augustine: “In the One, we are One.” We all are assimilated into Christ and so by means of communion with Christ, united among ourselves. To communicate with Christ is essentially also to communicate with one another. We are no longer each alone, each separate from the other; we are now each part of the other; each of those who receive communion is "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23).
Finally, understanding the Eucharist as both memorial and communion leads us to this question: “what is it” (the meaning of the word “manna”). What is it that we are asked to make a memorial of? What is it that we are asked to communicate and makes us enter into communion with Christ and His mystical Body, the Church? And the answer is given by our Lord Jesus in the gospel: “my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him.” And this is the third and last word in our Eucharistic vocabulary – “Real!” We affirm that the Eucharist is truly, really and substantially the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, soul and divinity. This is what we affirm when we assent to the words of the priest or extraordinary minister of holy communion, “the Body of Christ,” with the Hebrew word, “Amen.” At the core of our belief in the Eucharist is that He is really present. When we genuflect before the tabernacle, when we kneel at the words of the consecration, when we say Amen before receiving holy communion, we are ultimately declaring: “Lord Jesus, You are here!”
Today, as we contemplate the mystery of the Eucharist, let us be led to worship Our Lord who lived not just two thousand years ago but who is even now “truly and really” present here in our midst and who now offers His Body and Blood to us so that we may be one with Him and He with us. Not only does this sacred meal allow us to enter into sacred time and bring a past event into the present, it also incorporates the future because we are always looking forward to celebrate the fullness of this meal in the heavenly banquet. Sacred events collapse past, present and future into one mysterious and eternal NOW. And so we echo the words of Eucharistic Prayer IV as we pray:
“Therefore, O Lord, as we now celebrate the memorial of our redemption, we remember Christ’s Death, and his descent to the realm of the dead, we proclaim his Resurrection and his Ascension to your right hand, and as we await his coming in glory, we offer you his Body and Blood, the sacrifice acceptable to you which brings salvation to the whole world.”