"I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." — Luke 22:15
THE UPPER ROOM: THE SETTING OF EVERYTHING
It is Thursday evening. The Passover of the Jews is beginning at sunset. Across Jerusalem, in ten thousand upper rooms and courtyards, families and pilgrims are reclining at tables, lifting the first cup, beginning the ancient recitation: "We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, and the LORD our God brought us out of there with a mighty hand..." The Haggadah — the telling, the recounting — has been the same for fifteen centuries. Tonight it will be said for the last time in the form it has always taken. Tonight, in one room, it will become something it has never been before and will never cease to be again.
The room is in Jerusalem — tradition has identified it, since at least the fourth century, on the southwestern hill of the city, in the building now known as the Cenacle (from the Latin coenaculum, dining room). Pilgrims have venerated this site continuously since the early Church. The Franciscans have guarded it since 1333. The room above the traditional Tomb of David is, to this day, the place where Christians from every tradition come to stand in the silence of what happened here.
Jesus has sent Peter and John ahead with instructions of the same deliberate precision as the preparation for the Palm Sunday donkey: "Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, 'The Teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?' And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready." (Mark 14:13–15). The arrangements have been made. Everything is prepared. Nothing about this evening is improvised.
Twelve apostles recline with Him. The word used for the meal posture — anakeimenΕn, reclining — is the posture of free men at a feast, not slaves at a meal. The Passover is celebrated reclining precisely to embody the freedom of those no longer in bondage. They recline as free men — and they are about to receive the freedom that makes all other freedoms possible.
THE PASSOVER: WHAT THEY ARE CELEBRATING
No understanding of the Last Supper is possible without understanding the Passover in which it is embedded — because the Eucharist is not a replacement of the Passover. It is its fulfilment: the reality that the Passover always was, finally arrived and made present.
The Passover (Pesach) commemorated the night of the Exodus from Egypt — the night God passed over the houses of Israel marked with the blood of the lamb (Exodus 12:1–28), while the angel of death struck the firstborn of Egypt. It was the founding act of Israel as a nation: the night of liberation, the birth of the covenant people, the beginning of the journey to the Promised Land.
The Passover meal — the Seder — was not merely a commemoration in the modern sense of a memorial that recalls a past event. In the understanding of Israel, the Passover made the Exodus present — each participant was understood to be personally participating in the liberation of Egypt, not merely remembering those who had gone before. The past event becomes a present reality through the sacred ritual re-enactment. This is the theological framework within which Jesus institutes the Eucharist — a framework in which sacred action does not merely remember but makes present.
The Passover meal had a fixed structure: four cups of wine (representing the four expressions of redemption in Exodus 6:6–7), unleavened bread (matzah), bitter herbs (maror), the Passover lamb, the charoset (a paste of fruit and nuts representing the mortar of Egyptian slavery), and the recitation of the Haggadah between the cups. The meal was organised around memory, proclamation, and participation — this is the blood of the covenant, this is the bread of affliction, this night is different from all other nights.
It is within this structure — soaked in the language of blood and lamb and liberation and covenant — that Jesus takes bread and wine and says what He says.
THE FOUR ACCOUNTS: ONE EVENT, FOUR WITNESSES
The institution of the Eucharist is recorded in four places in the New Testament — three in the Gospels and one, earlier than all of them, in the letters of St. Paul.
1 Corinthians 11:23–26 — written approximately AD 54–55, making it the earliest written account of the Last Supper, predating all four Gospels. Paul explicitly identifies his account as received tradition — "I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you" — and uses the precise technical terms of rabbinic tradition for the handing on of authoritative teaching (paralambanΕ and paradidΕmi). The formula is already fixed, already liturgical, already the established practice of the early Church before a single Gospel has been written.
Matthew 26:26–29 — the most Jewish of the Gospel accounts, with the explicit command "Drink of it, all of you", the blood described as "poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins", and the eschatological reference to drinking new wine "in my Father's kingdom."
Mark 14:22–25 — the most terse and immediate, characteristic of Mark throughout. "He took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, 'Take; this is my body.'" No elaboration. The authority of the unadorned declaration.
Luke 22:14–20 — the most liturgically structured account, with the Passover context most fully preserved, the double cup (a cup before the bread, a cup after — corresponding to the Seder structure), and the command "Do this in remembrance of me" appearing explicitly after both the bread and the cup in some manuscript traditions.
These four accounts, read together, establish convergence on every essential element and divergence only in liturgical emphasis and contextual detail. The words of institution — This is my body; This is my blood of the covenant — are common to all four. No reasonable reading of these accounts can reduce them to metaphor without simultaneously dismantling the entire structure of early Christian worship, which was built on the conviction that something happened in that room that made the bread and wine the Body and Blood of the Lord.
THE WASHING OF THE FEET
Before the bread is broken and the cup is lifted, John records an act that the Synoptics do not: the washing of the disciples' feet.
"Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him." — John 13:3–5
John frames the act with supreme theological deliberateness: knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God — He washes feet. The one who possesses all authority, who knows His divine origin and His divine destination, stoops to perform the task of the lowest household slave. In the ancient world, foot-washing was so menial that Jewish law specified that a Hebrew slave should not be required to wash his master's feet — it was the work of a Gentile slave or a devoted wife or child. No rabbi's disciples washed his feet. The teacher did not wash the disciples' feet.
Jesus does precisely this — and then gives its interpretation: "Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you." (John 13:12–15)
The washing of the feet is the enacted theology of the entire evening: the one who is greatest becomes the servant of all (Luke 22:26–27 — "I am among you as the one who serves"). The authority of Jesus is not the authority of domination but the authority of self-giving — and the authority He confers on His apostles at this supper is to be exercised in the same spirit. The washing of the feet is the pre-commentary on the institution of the Eucharist: the Eucharist is the act of God stooping, of the Creator becoming food for the creature, of the Lord giving Himself into the hands of those who are about to betray and deny and abandon Him.
The Church re-enacts this act liturgically on Holy Thursday — the Mandatum (from the Latin of John 13:34: "a new commandment I give you") — when the priest washes the feet of twelve members of the congregation at the Mass of the Lord's Supper, and the ancient antiphon is sung: "Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est" — Where charity and love are, there God is.
THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE BETRAYER
John records that Jesus, at supper, was "troubled in spirit" (John 13:21) and declared that one of the Twelve would betray Him. The word troubled — etarachthΔ — is the same word John uses of Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:33) and in the Agony of Gethsemane. It is genuine interior disturbance — not performed anguish but real grief.
Peter signals to the Beloved Disciple, reclining next to Jesus, to ask who it is. Jesus answers: "It is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it." He dips the morsel and gives it to Judas Iscariot. The morsel — the psΕmion, a piece of bread dipped in the sauce — is the act of honour a host extends to a privileged guest. Jesus gives the morsel of honour to the one He knows will betray Him. The last gesture of love, extended even to the betrayer, before the darkness enters.
"After he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him." (John 13:27). Jesus says to him: "What you are going to do, do quickly." Judas goes out. "And it was night." (John 13:30)
The three words — and it was night — carry, in John's Gospel with its sustained meditation on light and darkness, the full weight of what is happening. The betrayer goes out into the night that is both literal and cosmic. The disciples do not understand; they think he has gone to buy provisions or to give something to the poor. But the reader of John's Gospel, who has been warned since the prologue that "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (John 1:5), understands: the night is real, the darkness is real, and the light is about to enter it.
THE WORDS OF INSTITUTION
"Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, 'Take, eat; this is my body.' And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, 'Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.'" — Matthew 26:26–28
The Bread
"He took bread." The bread is the matzah — the unleavened bread of the Passover Seder, the bread of affliction that Israel had eaten in haste on the night of the Exodus, the bread that carried fifteen centuries of redemptive memory. Jesus takes it into His hands.
"After blessing it, he broke it." The four verbs that the Church has always recognised as the Eucharistic action — took, blessed, broke, gave — the same four verbs of the feeding of the five thousand (Matthew 14:19), the same four verbs that will cause the disciples at Emmaus to recognise the risen Christ "in the breaking of the bread" (Luke 24:35). The action is the signature. Every Mass that has ever been celebrated from that night to this day has repeated these four actions.
"This is my body." In Greek: Touto estin to sΕma mou. In Aramaic, which Jesus almost certainly spoke: Den hu gufi. The copula is — estin — carries the entire theological weight of twenty centuries of debate. The Catholic tradition, following the unbroken interpretation of the Fathers and Councils, reads it as a statement of identity, not analogy. Jesus does not say "This represents my body" or "This signifies my body" or "This is a symbol of my body." He says "This is my body" — and the early Church, which had the Aramaic and the living memory of the Apostles' teaching, received it as a statement of substantial identity.
St. Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the Smyrnaeans approximately AD 107 — within living memory of the Apostles — describes those who deny the reality of the Eucharist: "They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in his goodness, raised up again." The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist was not a later theological development; it was the faith of the Church from the night of the first institution.
The Cup
"This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." — Matthew 26:28
The phrase "blood of the covenant" reaches back across fifteen centuries to the foundational covenant-making act of Sinai. When Moses received the Law and the people of Israel pledged their obedience — "All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient" (Exodus 24:7) — Moses took the blood of the sacrificial oxen and threw half of it on the altar and half of it on the people, saying: "Behold the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you." (Exodus 24:8)
The covenant between God and Israel was sealed in blood — not as a primitive or barbaric gesture but as the most profound statement available in the ancient world that this agreement is binding at the deepest level of existence, that the parties to it are bound to one another as one is bound by life itself. Blood is life (Leviticus 17:11). To share blood is to share life. The covenant sealed in blood is the covenant in which God and Israel share a life together.
Jesus takes the cup — the third cup of the Passover Seder, traditionally known as the Cup of Redemption — and declares it "my blood of the covenant." The old covenant, sealed with the blood of animals at Sinai, is superseded by the new covenant, sealed with His own blood — the blood of the Son of God, poured out not on the altar at Sinai but on the wood of the Cross. The Passover lamb whose blood marked the doorposts of Israel in Egypt is replaced by the Lamb of God whose blood marks the hearts of all who receive Him.
"Poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." The phrase "for many" — hyper pollΕn — echoes Isaiah 53:12: "he bore the sin of many." The Suffering Servant of Isaiah, whose portrait Jesus had clearly identified with His own mission, bore the sins of the many. The blood of the covenant is poured out — sacrificial language, the language of the altar — for this specific purpose: the forgiveness of sins. The Eucharist is not only a meal of fellowship and a memorial of the Last Supper. It is the sacramental presence of the sacrifice of the Cross — the one oblation by which sins are forgiven, made present in every age at every altar.
"Do This in Remembrance of Me"
Luke and Paul preserve the command that Matthew and Mark do not include: "Do this in remembrance of me." (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24–25)
The Greek word for remembrance — anamnΔsis — is not the ordinary Greek word for memory (mnΔmΔ). It is the technical term for the kind of memorial that makes the past event present — the same concept as the Jewish Passover memorial, which did not merely recall the Exodus but rendered it present and participatory for each new generation. The anamnesis of the Eucharist is not a nostalgic recollection of a meal that took place long ago. It is the sacramental making-present of the sacrifice of Christ — once offered on the Cross, perpetually offered on the altar — so that every generation of the Church participates in it as really as the Apostles participated in the first Supper.
"Do this" — the command is addressed to the Apostles, the first priests of the new covenant, and through them to their successors in every generation. The Mass is not an invention of the later Church, a devotional elaboration, a pious tradition grown up around a simple meal. It is the obedience of the Church to the direct command of the Lord on the night before He died: do this. Do what I have just done. Do it in remembrance — in anamnesis — of me. Do it, and in doing it, I will be present.
THE BREAD OF LIFE DISCOURSE: THE THEOLOGY PREPARED IN ADVANCE
The institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper does not arrive without preparation. One year earlier, after the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus had given the Bread of Life discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum (John 6:22–71) — the most extended and theologically explicit teaching on the Eucharist in the entire Gospel, delivered before the Supper itself as its advance explanation.
"I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." — John 6:51
When the crowds and even many of His disciples objected — "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" (John 6:52) — Jesus did not soften the claim, did not explain it as metaphor, did not say "You have misunderstood me; I meant this symbolically." He intensified it:
"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him." — John 6:53–56
The Greek verb shifts at this point — from phagein (to eat, in the ordinary sense) to trΕgein (to munch, to chew, to gnaw — an unmistakeably physical and literal verb). Jesus is not using the language of spiritual metaphor. He is using the language of physical eating, deliberately and provocatively, precisely because He means what He says.
Many disciples left Him at this point: "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" (John 6:60). Jesus let them go. He did not call them back with a reassurance that they had misunderstood. He turned to the Twelve and asked: "Do you want to go away as well?" (John 6:67). Peter's answer is the profession of the Church in every age: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." (John 6:68)
The Bread of Life discourse is the theology; the Last Supper is the act. John, who records the discourse in exquisite detail, does not record the words of institution at the Last Supper — because he has already given them their full explanation. His readers will understand what the broken bread and the shared cup mean, because they have already heard John 6.
THE PRIESTLY PRAYER: JOHN 17
After the institution of the Eucharist and the long farewell discourse (John 13–16), Jesus lifts His eyes to heaven and prays — in the hearing of His disciples, recorded by John in its entirety in what is known as the High Priestly Prayer (John 17). It is the longest recorded prayer of Jesus in the Gospel and the most intimate window into the relationship of the Son with the Father.
He prays for Himself — that the Father would glorify the Son so that the Son might glorify the Father (John 17:1–5). He prays for His disciples — that they would be kept in the Father's name, protected from the evil one, sanctified in truth (John 17:6–19). And He prays for all who will believe through their word — "that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us" (John 17:21).
The unity for which Jesus prays is not organisational or institutional unity alone — though it includes these. It is the unity of mutual indwelling, the perichoresis of the divine life extended to the human community: as you are in me and I in you, so they also in us. The Eucharist is the sacrament of this unity — the act by which the scattered members of the human family, divided by sin and selfishness, are gathered into the Body of Christ, made one through the one Body and the one Blood they share. "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread." (1 Corinthians 10:17)
The High Priestly Prayer is prayed in the Upper Room, over the remains of the first Eucharist. It is prayed also at every Mass — not in the words that John records, but in the reality those words describe: the Son interceding for those who are His, drawing them into the unity of the divine life, consecrating them in truth.
THE FATHERS AND THE COUNCILS: THE CHURCH'S UNDERSTANDING
The Catholic understanding of the Eucharist is not a medieval invention or a scholastic abstraction. It is the faith of the Church from the Apostles — developed, defined, and defended against successive errors across twenty centuries.
St. Justin Martyr (c. AD 155), writing to the Emperor Antoninus Pius in his First Apology, describes the Sunday Eucharist of the Roman church and states plainly: "We do not receive these things as common bread and common drink; but just as Jesus Christ our Saviour was made flesh by the word of God... so too we are taught that the food over which thanks have been given by the prayer of the word that is from him... is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh."
St. Irenaeus of Lyon (c. AD 180), in Against Heresies IV.18.5, argues against the Gnostics who despised material creation: "The bread which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist."
The Council of Trent (Session 13, 1551) defined with dogmatic precision the doctrine of Transubstantiation — the teaching that at the consecration, the entire substance of the bread is converted into the substance of the Body of Christ and the entire substance of the wine into the substance of His Blood, while the appearances (the species — colour, taste, weight, extension) of bread and wine remain. The term transubstantiation is a philosophical tool used to protect and express the theological reality — not to explain how the change occurs (which remains beyond human comprehension) but to insist that the change is real and total: what is on the altar after the consecration is not bread with Christ spiritually present alongside it. It is the Body of Christ, whole and entire, truly, really, and substantially present.
The Second Vatican Council, in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium, §47), affirmed the same faith in the language of the mid-twentieth century: "At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Saviour instituted the eucharistic sacrifice of his Body and Blood. This he did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved Spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection."
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§1374) states: "The mode of Christ's presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as 'the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend.' In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist 'the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.'"
THE NEW AND EVERLASTING COVENANT
"This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood." — Luke 22:20
The word covenant — diathΔkΔ in Greek, berith in Hebrew — is the central organising concept of the entire biblical revelation. God's relationship to humanity is covenantal: freely chosen, binding, accompanied by promise and obligation, sealed by sign and sacrifice.
The old covenant with Moses at Sinai had been the defining covenant of Israel's history — the covenant of the Law, the covenant that made Israel God's own people and set them apart from all nations. It had been sealed in the blood of animals. It had been renewed, broken, renewed again, broken again, across a thousand years of Israel's history. The prophets had promised a new covenant that would supersede it — Jeremiah 31:31–34: "Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah... I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts."
The new covenant, established in the blood of Jesus at the Last Supper and ratified on the Cross, is the fulfilment of Jeremiah's promise. It is written not on stone tablets but on human hearts — by the Holy Spirit given to those who receive the Body and Blood of the Lord. It is sealed not in the blood of animals but in the blood of the Son of God. It includes not one nation alone but all nations — "for many," "for the forgiveness of sins."
And it is everlasting — the phrase the Roman Canon uses at the consecration of the chalice: "the new and everlasting covenant." The Mosaic covenant was conditional and temporary, bound to the history of one nation in one age. The covenant sealed in the blood of Christ at the Last Supper is unconditional, universal, and permanent — the definitive, unrepeatable, irreversible commitment of God to humanity that cannot be broken because it is sealed in the Blood of the one who is both God and man, both the one who makes the covenant and the sacrifice by which it is sealed.
THE MASS: THE LAST SUPPER MADE PRESENT
"For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." — 1 Corinthians 11:26
The Last Supper is not an event that ended when the Apostles left the Upper Room. It is an event that continues — perpetually, in every celebration of the Mass, in every Catholic church in every country in every century.
The Mass is not a repetition of the sacrifice of the Cross — Christ does not die again. "The death he died he died to sin, once for all" (Romans 6:10); "He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily... He did this once for all when he offered up himself" (Hebrews 7:27). The sacrifice of Calvary was offered once, historically, definitively, and its effects are infinite and eternal. What the Mass does is make the one sacrifice sacramentally present — drawing the gathered faithful into the eternal moment of the offering, so that they participate in it not as spectators watching a past event but as those who stand at the foot of the Cross, who receive the Body broken for them and the Blood poured out for them, who are truly present to the once-for-all offering of the Son to the Father.
This is why the priest at Mass does not say "This was the body of Christ" or "This represents the body of Christ." He says, in the person of Christ (in persona Christi) — "This is my body." The words of institution are not a quotation. They are the words of Christ spoken again, through the mouth of His priest, with the same creative power they had in the Upper Room — because the priest speaks not in his own name but in the name and person of the one who said these words first, and who is present at every altar through the ministry of His Church.
Every Mass begins with the gathering of the faithful — as the disciples gathered in the Upper Room. Every Mass proceeds through the Liturgy of the Word — as the disciples heard the word of the Lord throughout the ministry that preceded the Supper. Every Mass reaches its centre in the Liturgy of the Eucharist: the preparation of the gifts (bread and wine brought to the altar), the Eucharistic Prayer (the great prayer of thanksgiving and consecration), the fraction (the breaking of the bread), and the communion (the distribution and reception of the Body and Blood of the Lord). Every Mass ends with the dismissal — "Go forth, the Mass is ended" or "Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord" — sending the faithful out from the Upper Room into the world, as the Apostles were sent, to be what they have received: the Body of Christ in the world.
The tabernacle in every Catholic church, where the consecrated Hosts are reserved after Mass, is the ongoing dwelling place of the real presence — the Shekinah of the new covenant, the fulfilment of everything the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy of Holies of the Temple foreshadowed. The red sanctuary lamp burning before the tabernacle is the signal, recognised by Catholics in every country and culture, that the Lord is present — that in this place, in this church, God is not merely remembered or invoked but truly, really, substantially here.
Blessed Carlo Acutis — the young Italian blessed who died of leukemia at the age of fifteen in 2006 and was beatified in 2020 — spent much of his short life documenting Eucharistic miracles from around the world and making them available online. He said: "The Eucharist is my highway to heaven." He asked to be buried in Assisi. He is venerated as the patron of the internet — but his deeper significance for the Church is as the witness of the young: that the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is not a doctrine for theologians but the living centre of a life lived in love.
THE FRUITS OF HOLY COMMUNION
The Church's theology of Holy Communion identifies specific graces given to those who receive the Body and Blood of the Lord worthily and with faith.
Union with Christ — "Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him" (John 6:56). The primary grace of Communion is not a feeling or an experience but an ontological reality: the communicant is drawn into the mutual indwelling of the Son and the Father, as the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son. The soul that receives Communion is not merely aware of Christ; it is in Christ, and Christ is in it.
The forgiveness of venial sins — the Eucharist, received worthily, cleanses the soul of the accumulated weight of daily venial failings, restoring and deepening the life of grace. It does not forgive mortal sin — that requires the Sacrament of Confession — but it repairs and strengthens what venial sin has weakened.
Preservation from mortal sin — regular, devout Communion, nourishing the soul with the Body of Christ, strengthens the will against serious sin, deepens the habitus of virtue, and makes the soul more resistant to the temptations that lead to grave offence against God and neighbour.
The pledge of the resurrection — "Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day" (John 6:54). Holy Communion is not only a grace for the present life; it is the seed of the resurrection body, the beginning of the transformation that will be completed at the general resurrection when "this perishable body must put on the imperishable" (1 Corinthians 15:53). The Body of the Risen Christ, received sacramentally, is the pledge and beginning of the communicant's own resurrection.
The unity of the Church — "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1 Corinthians 10:17). Holy Communion does not only unite the individual soul to Christ; it unites all who communicate to one another in the one Body. The divisions of class, nationality, language, and culture that fracture the human community are overcome — not yet fully, not yet visibly, but really — in the Eucharist. The same Body received by a millionaire in a cathedral in Rome is the same Body received by a fisherman in a bamboo chapel in the Philippines. The Eucharist is the sacrament of the unity of the human family under God.
A CLOSING PRAYER
Lord Jesus Christ, who on the night before You suffered took bread into Your hands — the same hands that had touched the leper, stilled the storm, raised Lazarus from the dead — and said: this is my body, given for you.
I receive what I cannot understand. I believe what surpasses my comprehension. I come to this table not because I am worthy but because You said: come. Not because I deserve the gift but because the gift is given.
Make me what I receive. Let the Body of Christ transform the body of this sinner until I become, by grace, what You are by nature: the love of God made flesh, given for the life of the world.
Amen.
"Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." — John 6:54
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