On the Mystery of the Eucharist - Christ our Pascha, Ukrainian Catholic Catechism
c. The Mystery of the Eucharist
431 The Mystery of the Eucharist (Holy Communion) is the third of the Mysteries of Christian initiation. In the Eucharist the newly baptized, who was born in Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit, receives the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ at the holy Eucharistic table. But unlike Baptism and Chrismation, which we receive only once, we receive the Mystery of the Eucharist throughout our lives, since it is through this Mystery that we grow in the grace received in Baptism and Chrismation—the grace to be sons and daughters of God. For this reason our Church offers Communion to the newly baptized.324
432 In the Mystery of Holy Communion, Christ gives us his very self, his Body and Blood, as nourishment for our growth in the new life. At the Mystical Supper (Last Supper) Christ offered himself for us so that we might be able to offer our lives for our neighbour, as he offered his life (see Jn 13:34). Receiving Communion in the Lord’s Body and Blood, we receive a pledge of life eternal: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day” (Jn 6:54). Partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, we already have eternal life, the fullness of which will be revealed in the glorious second coming of Christ. “For since he bestowed on us his own image and his own spirit and we did not guard them, he took himself a share in our poor and weak nature, in order that he might cleanse us and make us incorruptible, and establish us once more as partakers of his divinity.”325
433 The Holy Eucharist most fully manifests and creates our communion both with God and with others. All who have communion with Christ become “one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another” (Rom 12:5). In other words, we become one Church. “Because there is one [Eucharistic] bread, we who are many are one body [of Christ], for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:17). We profess this same truth in the Anaphora of Saint Basil the Great when we ask God to “unite all of us who share in this one bread and cup with one another into the communion of the one Holy Spirit.” Saint John of Damascus teaches: Participation is spoken of; for through it we partake of the divinity of Jesus. Communion, too, is spoken of, and it is an actual communion, because through it we have communion with Christ and share in his flesh and his divinity: [at same time] we have communion and are united with one another through it. For since we partake of one bread, we all become one body of Christ and one blood, and members one of another, being of one body with Christ.326
1) The Eucharist Is the Body and Blood of Christ
434 At the Mystical Supper (Last Supper), Jesus Christ reveals the unfathomable mystery of his Body: in the Incarnation he received a body from the Virgin Mary, and in the Eucharist he offers it to his disciples as nourishment, so that in the Church all humanity and all creation may become his Body. Saint John Chrysostom explains the gift of Christ at the Mystical Supper, re-phrasing, as it were, the words of Christ: “I have willed to become your brother. For your sake I shared in flesh and blood, and in turn I give to you the flesh and blood by which I became your kinsman.”327
435 The Divine Liturgy is the memorial, the continuance, of the Mystical Supper: “Accept me this day, O Son of God, as a partaker of your Mystical Supper.”328 Just as Christ offered the apostles Communion in his Body and Blood at the Mystical Supper, so at the Liturgy he offers us Communion: “When, therefore, you see the priest delivering [the supper] unto you, account not that it is the priest that does so, but that it is Christ’s hand that is stretched out.”329 The Communion of the Apostles icon, as also the icon of the Mystical Supper, depicts that which takes place at the Liturgy: Christ is offering the Communion of his Body and Blood to his apostles, who represent all the faithful. At the Liturgy, before Communion the priest prays: “Deign to give to us with your mighty hand your most pure Body and precious Blood, and through us to all the people.”
436 At the Liturgy, Christ offers us, as he did the apostles, a communion not of simple bread and wine but of his true Body and Blood. “The bread and the wine [of the Eucharist] are not merely figures of the body and blood of Christ (God forbid!) but the deified body itself of the Lord.”330 The Church solemnly confesses and teaches that at the Liturgy we receive the true Body of Christ—a guarantee of the fact that the Church is the Body of Christ. In order then that we may become this not by love only, but in very deed, let us be blended into that flesh. This is effected by the food which He has freely given us, desiring to show the love which He has for us. On this account He has mixed up Himself with us; He has kneaded up His body with ours, that we might be a certain One Thing, like a body joined to a head. For this belongs to them who love strongly.331
437 The fact that we receive the actual Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist is the pledge of hope in the resurrection of our bodies: How can [the Gnostic heretics] say that the flesh, which is nourished with the Body of the Lord and with his Blood, goes to corruption, and does not partake of [eternal] life? Let them, therefore, either alter their opinion, or cease from offering the [Gifts] just mentioned. But our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn establishes our opinion … Our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity.332
2) The Heavenly and the Earthly 438
As two natures—the divine and the human—are united in Christ, so also in the Eucharist “the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly.”333 John of Damascus explains the union of the earthly and the heavenly in the Eucharist by the example of fiery coal: [Burning] coal is not plain wood but wood united with fire; in like manner also the bread of the Communion is not plain bread but bread united with divinity. But a body which is united with divinity is not one nature, but has one nature belonging to the body and another belonging to the divinity that is united to it, so that the compound is not one nature but two.334 Christ offers his Body and Blood in a way accessible to human beings: “Since it is man’s custom to eat [bread] and to drink water and wine he [Christ] connected his divinity with these and made them his Body and Blood in order that we may rise to what is supernatural through what is familiar and natural.”335
3) Consecration of the Gifts 439
Christ institutes the Eucharist, making bread and wine to be his Body and Blood, in order to transfigure—by the Holy Spirit—those who communicate. They become “of one body and blood with Him.”336 Saint John Chrysostom comments on the following words of the apostle Paul: “Because there is one bread [of which we partake], we who are many are one body” (1 Cor 10:17). He juxtaposes the consecration of the Gifts with the transformation of those who communicate in them: “For what is the bread?—the Body of Christ. And what do they become who partake of it? The Body of Christ: not many bodies, but one body.”337
440 The teaching of the Holy Fathers of the Church concerning the Eucharist is rooted in the Incarnation of the Son of God: If God the Word of his own will became man, and the pure and undefiled blood of the holy and ever-virginal one made his flesh without the aid of seed, can he not then make the bread his Body and the wine and water his Blood? … But if you enquire how this happens, it is enough for you to learn that it was through the Holy Spirit, just as the Lord took on himself flesh that subsisted in him and was born of the holy Mother of God through the Spirit. And we know nothing further, save that the Word of God is true and energizes and is omnipotent, but the manner of this cannot be searched out.338
441 While not investigating the manner of the consecration of the Eucharistic Gifts, the Holy Fathers emphasize how the earthly and the heavenly are united in these Gifts, as in Christ are united his divine and human nature. Due to this union, when we partake of the Body and Blood of Christ, we truly become one Body with him.
4) The Eucharistic Offering 442
In the Eucharist, Christ offers us participation in his life, a life both divine and human (i.e., theandric). He does this out of merciful love, not because of our merits. The highest expression of this love is Christ’s sacrifice in blood on Golgotha, the memorial of which is the bloodless sacrifice—the Eucharist. “You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish” (1 Pt 1:18-19).
443 Christ offers himself to us so that we in turn would offer ourselves to him. Christ offers himself as Gift: “Take, eat … Drink of it, all of you ….” To these words we respond, offering the gifts and ourselves: “We offer to you, yours of your own ….” We do this because of all that he has done for us. At the Divine Liturgy we perform the memorial of Christ’s offering of himself as gift, in order to respond with our gift-offering. Christ’s offering is eternal and ever-present, while we need to ever renew and deepen our gift-offering.
444 At the Divine Liturgy we pray: “Enable us to offer you gifts and spiritual sacrifices … so that our sacrifice may be acceptable to you.”339 Saint Paul speaks of this sacrifice when he teaches us: “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual [rational] worship” (Rom 12:1; see 1 Pt 2:5). Our sacrifice consists in this total offering. In the Anaphora of the Divine Liturgy, we declare this verbally; in Communion we fulfil it by consuming the Gifts; and after the Liturgy we actualize it in our daily lives.
5) Holy Communion
445 Holy Communion crowns the participation of the Christian in the Divine Liturgy. Our Lord said: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (Jn 6:53). The Holy Fathers emphasized the need to receive Communion at the Liturgy: “Tell me, suppose anyone were invited to a feast, and were to wash his hands, and sit down, and be all ready at the table, and after all refuse to partake; is he not insulting the man who invited him? Were it not better for such a one never to have come at all?”340 For the Christian, the fulfilment of the commandment “Observe the Lord’s day, to keep it holy” (see Ex 20:8 and Dt 5:12) means to take part in the Divine Liturgy on Sundays and holy days. The Church encourages Christians to receive Communion as frequently as possible for the sake of their spiritual growth. But the apostle Paul teaches: “Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup” (1 Cor 11:28). In preparation for Communion, the faithful examine their conscience and observe the Eucharistic fast.
446 Christians partake of the Most Holy Eucharist “for the forgiveness of his or her sins and life everlasting.” “Let us … partake of the divine coal, in order that the fire of the longing that is in us, with the additional heat derived from the coal may utterly consume our sins and illumine our hearts, and that we may be inflamed and deified by the participation in the divine fire.”341 The condition for receiving Holy Communion worthily is a clean conscience, repentance for sins before God, and reconciliation with our neighbour: “[On] every Lord’s day gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure. But let no one that is at variance with his fellow come together with you, until they be reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be profaned.”342
325 John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 4, 13: PG 94, 1137.
326 John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 4, 13: PG 94, 1153.
327 John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homily, 46, 3: PG 59, 261.
328 Liturgicon, The Divine Liturgy of our Holy Father John Chrysostom, Prayer Before Holy Communion.
329 John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, 50, 3: PG 58, 507.
330 John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 4, 13: PG 94, 1148.
331 John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John, 46, 3 PG 59, 260.
332 Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, IV, 18, 5: PG 7, 1027.
333 Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, IV, 18, 5: PG 7, 1027.
334 John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 4, 13: PG 94, 1149.
335 John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 4, 13: PG 94, 1144.
336 Cyril of Jerusalem, The Mystagogical Lectures, 4, 3: PG 33, 1099.
337 John Chrysostom, Homilies on 1 Corinthians, 24, 4: PG 61, 205.
338 John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 4, 13: PG 94, 1145.
339 Liturgicon, The Divine Liturgy of our Holy Father John Chrysostom, Prayer of the Litany for the Gifts.
340 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Ephesians, 3, 5: PG 62, 29.
341 John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 4, 13: PG 94, 1149.
342 Didache or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, 14.
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