Receiving the Eucharist

1.   

            I was introduced to this quote from a sermon by St. Augustine a couple of years ago by someone I had the pleasure of working with in the RCIA at St. Michael's Church in Wheaton. It brings reception of the Eucharist into focus.

      What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the Body of Christ and the chalice the Blood of Christ. ... How is the bread His Body? And the chalice, or what is in the chalice, how is it His Blood? Those elements, brethren, are called Sacraments, because in them one thing is seen, but another is understood. What is seen is the corporeal species, but what is understood is the spiritual fruit. ... `You, however, are the Body of Christ and His members.' If, therefore, you are the Body of Christ and His members, your mystery is presented at the table of the Lord, you receive your mystery. To that which you are, you answer: `Amen'; and by answering, you subscribe to it. For you hear: `The Body of Christ!' and you answer: `Amen!' Be a member of Christ's Body, so that your `Amen' may be the truth.                                                                                 St.Augustine, Sermon 272

     "Be a member of Christ's Body." A recent reading amplified the meaning of that phrase. 

      

      When we do not intend to become the Eucharist for others, when we do not intend to become daily bread for another person, when we have no intention of giving ourselves totally and breaking our bodies and pouring out our blood for the salvation of this world, then the Eucharist is reduced to a mere sentimental, empty action. The bread of life becomes the appetizer for empathy.

Indeed, if we do not intend to become what we receive, we would do well to absent ourselves from communion." from Living the Lord's Prayer by Albert Haase, O.F.M.

I personally found this way of expressing the meaning of the Eucharist quite intimidating.