LITURGY LESSONS: LITURGY
OF THE EUCHARIST
(Given: Eleventh
Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today
we begin our series of Liturgy Lessons on the Eucharist. Recall that our Mass has two major parts:
Liturgy of the Word and Liturgy of the Eucharist.
The
word Eucharist
(Greek for ‘thanksgiving’) is the
sacramental celebration of the Paschal Mystery,
that
is Christ’s dying and rising for humankind, in a context of praise and thanks
for all that God has done and continues to do.
We call upon the Holy Spirit that we, the assembly, might become the
Body of Christ, the people of God.
As
we begin, an interesting point of departure is that Catholics celebrated the
Eucharist before there was a New Testament, before there were Gospels.[1] It
is an important point for two reasons:
First, it simply demonstrates that
what we will celebrate today was celebrated by the very earliest of the
Christian communities. What we do today has been celebrated for almost two
thousand years.
Second, it explains why the
narrations of the Last Supper, which appear in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark,
and Luke, and in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, have differences. What
they are reflecting is really the experience of different celebrations by
different Christian communities. Celebrations of the Eucharist have never been
identical. They have reflected the
beliefs and living experiences of each community. So must our Eucharist reflect the beliefs and
experiences of our
What
is similar in all accounts is that a religious meal was celebrated by Christ
and his disciples on the night before his death. And during this meal Christ gave a new and
transforming meaning to the bread (“This is my body”) and to the wine (“This is
my blood”). The body of Christ offered
in consecrated bread and wine is not something, but someone. That someone is the risen Christ.
The
Liturgy of the Eucharist begins with a very simple act, the preparation of the
altar. Watch today as the deacon or servers spread the corporal, a white cloth
on which the bread and wine will sit. Then they bring the chalice and a purificator
to the altar. The purificator is a white cloth used to cleanse, to purify, the
vessels that are used during
All
is then ready for the presentation of gifts, which we will talk about next
week. Remember, the first gift that we bring to this celebration is the gift of
ourselves. Let us pray now that we are the best of gifts.