The Eucharist is the center of our relationship with God the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. It unites us on earth as a community committed to Christ and to one another. As Christians, we are, above all else, a Eucharistic community. “The Eucharist makes the Church” because it is the center toward which all other sacraments are oriented and the source from which they derive their power. All the sacraments are ideally celebrated within the context of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is, par excellence, the sacred action by which God gives himself to us and through which we give glory to him through our brother and Lord, Jesus the Christ. It is a reciprocal flow, so that God’s gift to us in Christ is at the same time our response to him.
The Eucharist is both a sacrifice and a sacrament, since the one essentially involves the other. The victim (sacrifice), Christ, is the meal (sacrament). The Eucharist is a sacrifice that is identified with Calvary. Christ is our paschal lamb who sacrificed himself for us on the cross, so that by his Body and Blood we are nourished as the new people of God.
When we celebrate the Eucharist, we call effectively in our lives the presence of Christ’s Body and Blood, soul and divinity, which alone reconciles us to the Father. With it, we celebrate, at Christ’s command, the memory of what he did for us. We thank him for what he has done, and in joyful anticipation, we celebrate the Eucharist until he comes again in glory.
The Eucharist is also a sacrament. St. Paul compares the Church to the body of Christ, of which we are all members. The food for that body is the Eucharist, so Holy Communion makes us a community: The blessing cup that we bless, is a communion with the Blood of Christ, and the bread that we break is a communion with the Body of Christ. The fact that there is only one loaf means that, though there are many of us, we form a single body because we all have a share in this one loaf (see 1 Corinthians 10:16–17).
In the Eucharist we share with God and one another in a unique way. The Eucharist is for sanctification and mission. It unites us to God and sends us forth to proclaim to the world the saving power of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Eucharist, the third and final sacrament of initiation, is our pledge of future glory, and we approach the altar remembering the Lord’s promise: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (John 6:54–56). The Eucharist is a share not only in Christ’s death, but also in his resurrection.
The Sacrifice of the Mass: The Mass is the effective commemoration of what Christ did for us on the cross. By the power of his Spirit, he re-presents this sacrifice on our altars, so that honor, praise, adoration, and thanksgiving may be continually given to the Father. The Mass is filled with joy and hope, because in it we celebrate the Lord’s death and resurrection until he comes again. In one action it telescopes all time, past, present, and future.
