Eucharist Ministers Mass
September 2007
To understand the Eucharist from the right perspective we must look to the Last Supper. Today we call the Last Supper, ‘the Mass’. Another name for the Mass is the Eucharist or the Breaking of Bread.
Unfortunately, in our time, the Eucharist and the Mass have, in our minds, become two separate entities. The Mass without the Eucharist is meaningless. The Eucharist does not have separate existence or meaning outside the context of the Mass and the fact that it does is the result of the many years during which the Catholic Church has been a 'devotional church.'
The Last Supper began as the Jewish Passover meal. The Passover was the great national feast of Israel which celebrated its establishment as 'the people of God.'
So firstly, the Mass is our celebration as 'the People of God.' We come to Mass as 'a people.' We celebrate Mass as 'a people.' We leave the celebration of Mass energised and strengthened in our understanding and unity as 'the People of God. ' So when we bring the Eucharist to the housebound we are not just bringing them 'Holy Communion' as a thing, but confirming our unity with and concern for them as part of 'the People of God. '
During the Last Supper Jesus took bread, broke it into pieces and gave it to his disciples saying, ‘take and eat, this is my body which will be given up for you’. In the same way he poured wine for all of them, saying: ‘take and drink, this is the cup of my blood which will be shed for you. Do this in memory of me.’
This could be described as a final, defining, even desperate effort on Jesus' part to demonstrate and explain what being the 'People of God' means. In the same way as this bread and wine, which you eat and drink, becomes inseparably part of your body -become you -so also being the people of God make us one with God.
When considering the Mass and the Sacraments -when talking about things close to God -normal logic no longer holds true. So one can say that God sees me the day 1 am born, as I am today, and the day I die, all at this moment. So too the Mass -the Eucharist- is the great sign of my total unity with God, brings about that unity and makes it possible for me to live in union with God.
So when I bring the Eucharist to the sick I am not bringing Jesus to them in the sense that I am bringing them something they have not got. Rather I am bringing them participation in the Mass; confirming them in their full participation in the Mass as 'the People of God'; bringing to them the sign or Sacrament of their total oneness with God and at the same time bringing about this same oneness and helping them to realise and experience this oneness more fully.
Finally, a word about Eucharistic devotions: benediction, holy hours, forty hours adoration, perpetual adoration. There are actually religious orders whose principal function is always to have some of its members kneeling in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. This is fine just as long as those participating are aware of, and understand, the unbreakable link with the Mass; with the praise and thanksgiving of 'the People of God.'
The danger is that such Eucharistic devotions take on a separate existence of their own as distinct from the Mass and become an 'I and Jesus' thing which can be unhelpful for ones total spiritual development. This is why our bishops are of two minds concerning 'Eucharistic services' without the Mass. The value I see in the latter is that it can help to preserve this particular community in their identity and unity as 'the People of God.'