Eucharistic Understanding

Ronald Rolheiser has provided an excellent, thoughtful explanation of the Eucharist.  The following is some of what he said in his 2011 book Our One Great Act of Fidelity: Waiting for Christ in the Eucharist:

The Eucharist is “a call to move from worship to service, to take the nourishment, the embrace, the kiss, we have just received from God and the community and translate it immediately and directly into loving service of others.  To take the Eucharist seriously is to begin to wash the feet of others, especially the feet of the poor and those with whom we struggle most relationally.  The Eucharist is both an invitation that invites us and a grace that empowers us to service.  

And what it invites us to do is to replace distrust with hospitality, pride with humility, and self-interest with self-effacement so as to reverse the world’s order of things – wherein the rich get served by the poor and where the first priority is to keep one’s pride intact and one’s self-interest protected.  The Eucharist invites us to step down from pride, away from self-interest, to turn the mantle of privilege into the apron of service, so as to help reverse the world’s order of things wherein pride, status, and self-interest are forever the straws that stir the drink…

The Eucharist, among other things, calls us to justice, to dissolve the distinction between rich and poor, noble and peasant, aristocrat and servant, both around the Eucharist table itself and afterwards, outside of the church.  The Eucharist fulfills what Mary prophesized when she was pregnant with Jesus – namely that, in Jesus, the mighty would be brought down and the lowly would be raised up…

We don’t go to the Eucharist only to worship God by expressing our faith and devotion.  The Eucharist is not a private devotional prayer, but is rather a communal act of worship that, among other things, calls us to go forth and live out in the world what we celebrate inside of a church: the non-importance of social distinction, the special place that God gives to the tears and blood of the poor, and the nonnegotiable challenge from God to each of us to work at changing the conditions that cause tears and blood.  The Eucharist calls us to love tenderly, but just as strongly, it calls us to act in justice.” (end)

One wonders if the bishops meeting this month to discuss who qualifies to receive the Eucharist (see USCCB upcoming meeting agenda) will consider Rolheiser’s perspective.  As Archbishop of New York Timothy Nolan noted on the book’s jacket: “Father Rolheiser presents Eucharistic understanding to unite and heal us in the oneness of God’s love.  In these pages we find the aspirations of a committed Christian for the unity and peace that are the fruit of communion with the Lord.”  

Indeed.

Deacon David Pierce