Eucharistic astonishment

Prof. Livio Melina - Roma

The greatest danger we run is to render the Eucharist something devotional that does not question our lives and touch upon our existence. The issue does not therefore involve experiencing the Eucharist better as far as devotion is concerned, but ensuring that it is not simply an act of devotion, but rather an act of life and that affects one’s life.

When speaking of a spiritual retreat held together with other priests, Father Luigi Giussani once remembered that his fundamental exhortation had been: «First of all, be men!” Life’s entire new direction can arise from the Eucharist’s human impact on life. But how does this happen?

On another occasion Giussani said: When you are silent, after communion, do not exert yourself to think of many things or ask the Lord so many questions. Remain there, in the presence of Jesus, and tell him: «My God, who am I that you should be here, inside me?» And allow yourself to lunge into this amazement. It is the Eucharistic amazement that John Paul II speaks of.

In his homely for the Corpus Domini, Saint Thomas Aquinas quotes a passage from the Deuteronomy, in which Israel’s joy for the mystery of the Alliance is expressed: “For what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God, is to us whenever we call upon Him?” (Deut 4, 7). If Israel was amazed by the closeness of God in the Alliance, and in Moses’ Torah, all the more should Christians and priests be amazed by God’s unbelievable closeness, when in the Eucharist he lives in our churches, is in our hands and even within us!

The human impact, in which the priest’s life is affected, is the wonder of adoration, that tears the Eucharist away from habit and sentimental devotion: «My God, you are here!” In the Eucharist the is full and absolute identity between the sign and the Mystery.

In this way, the Eucharist’s entire transforming dynamism can spread through the passage opened by amazement, allowing freedom to welcome this gift. The Eucharist in fact does not transform life mechanically, but through the freedom resulting from the human impact. It is not we who assimilate what we eat – as Saint Augustine reminds us -, but it is He we receive who assimilates us unto Himself. It is He who takes us into Himself and incorporates us, sweeping us within the dynamics of giving.

“Do this in memory of me”: hence, allow yourselves to be eucharistically taken, because it I who transform your lives into continuous giving and thereby, in the Spirit, I achieve communion with you Father and your brothers.

In this way, the Eucharistic event is not simply an inspiring pretext for our philanthropic acts; it is the source of transformation of our existence. One needs to acknowledge this event in all circumstances; allow the logic of communion to take possession of and affect relationships and life’s many opportunities. Hence our freedom, acknowledging an event of love that precedes it and always does so, in the Eucharistic wonder, can in turn become love, the broken bread of the gift.