This is the second article in a series on Eucharistic Life. In this series, I explore elements of Eucharistic living. You can read the first essay here.
Then he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you” (Lk 22:19–20).
In the first article of the series, I explored the plain fact that the Eucharist invites, really demands, faith. The Eucharist is a Sacrament of faith. Indeed, the Eucharist is a “‘mystery of faith’ par excellence,” to use the words of Pope Benedict XVI. These words exclaimed by the priest immediately after the consecration—“the mystery of faith!”—proclaim the mystery being celebrated and express wonder before the substantial change of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. “The Church's faith is essentially a eucharistic faith,” Benedict XVI says, “and it is especially nourished at the table of the Eucharist.”1 Consequently, a Eucharistic life is a life of faith in God—that what he says is true.
Eucharistic faith does not mean assenting to abstract propositions or a moral code. It is not a static reality. Instead, this kind of faith describes an encounter with the person of Christ and belief in his word—that what he says about the Bread of Life is true. This faith sets the whole of life in a new direction, a Eucharistic direction.2
The transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ stands at the heart of the mystery of faith. But this transformation is not limited to the bread and wine. It is meant to change all those who receive the precious Body and Blood of Christ; indeed, it is meant to change all of reality. Turning to Benedict XVI again, we see him employ a powerful image to illustrate this transformation:
The substantial conversion of bread and wine into his body and blood introduces within creation the principle of a radical change, a sort of “nuclear fission,” to use an image familiar to us today, which penetrates to the heart of all being, a change meant to set off a process which transforms reality.3
When I receive Christ’s gift of himself in the Eucharist, he introduces within my very being a kind of “nuclear reaction” that has the capacity to change the whole of my life. When I receive the Eucharist, something miraculous, something mystical happens, because Eucharistic food does not function like ordinary foodstuffs. In the normal course of nutrition, we eat, and our bodies draw the necessary nutrients from the food we have eaten. The food becomes part of us, conforming to our being. But the Eucharist is mystical food. The Eucharist is the superfood. When we receive and consume the Eucharist, we are transformed by the Eucharist. When we eat the supersubstantial bread of the Eucharist, we become what we eat. Driving the point home, Benedict XVI draws from St. Augustine, who stresses the mysterious nature of this food by imagining the Lord saying to him:
“I am the food of grown men; grow, and you shall feed upon me; nor shall you change me, like the food of your flesh, into yourself, but you shall be changed into me.” It is not the eucharistic food that is changed into us, but rather we who are mysteriously transformed by it.4
In a recent article republished on the Revival blog, Dr. James Pauley echoes Benedict XVI when he says: “Receiving the Eucharist, then, is meant to change us. Entering into communion with Jesus himself is meant to make us increasingly like him—to see how he sees, to think how he thinks, and to love how he loves.” Communion with Jesus is meant to make us give as he gives. All of this is reminiscent of St. Paul’s lightning bolt passage in Gal 2:20: “Yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me.” Eucharistic life is Christ living in me. It’s also Christ giving through me.
The bread and wine are not only Christ's Body and Blood. They are his body given, his blood poured out. In the Eucharist, Jesus does not give something, or some part of himself. No. Under both species, bread and wine, he gives his whole self. He gives all, always. Pope Benedict XVI captures this truth in the opening line of his apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis: “The Holy Eucharist is the gift that Jesus Christ makes of himself, thus revealing to us God.”5 Elsewhere he says, “In the Eucharist Jesus does not give us a ‘thing,’ but himself; he offers his own body and pours out his own blood.”6 He gives himself, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, which is to say, he gives his whole person. Jesus gives himself really and truly—completely, wholly, and without reserve.
If I am what I eat, then, when it comes to receiving the Eucharist, I become gift. It is no longer I who gives, but Christ who gives through me. If, by receiving the Blessed Sacrament, I become what I eat, then my life is not only conformed more and more perfectly to Christ’s, but it is transformed into a life given over to God and to others. By receiving Jesus’ gift of self, I am drawn into that movement of self-gift, and I am invited to offer myself in concert with his gift. I participate in his act of giving. Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World famously said, “only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light.”7 At the heart of this mystery you will find gift, and for this reason, “man… cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”8
Receiving the one who is gift, who gave everything, transforms my being and demands that I give everything in return. Not a piece. Not a fraction. Not a part of my life. But the whole of it. The words of Mother Teresa come to mind, here: “Why must we give ourselves fully to God? Because God has given himself to us. If God who owes nothing to us is ready to impart to us no less than himself shall we answer with just a fraction of ourselves?”9
The life of discipleship exists within this horizon of gift. Cardinal Tagle addressed this truth in his homily at the closing Mass of the 10th National Eucharistic Congress: “The gift we have received, we should give as a gift.”10 The gift we have received converts us into gift. Eucharistic life is one marked by self-gift.
Scripture proclaims the vision here. I’ll conclude by taking a brief look at Luke’s Gospel and one thread that carries into his “sequel” to that Gospel, Acts of the Apostles. In Luke 1, we read about the Annunciation. Though not explicitly stated in the Gospel, most Christian artwork of the Annunciation depicts Mary in a posture of prayer and often with Scripture in hand. When Mary utters her fiat, her “yes” to God, the Holy Spirit overshadows her and the Word becomes flesh there, in her womb, in Nazareth. The scene ends abruptly and picks up with the Mother of God hastening to the hill country to make a gift of herself, to serve her cousin Elizabeth in the remaining months of Elizabeth’s pregnancy. What happens? Mary greets Elizabeth, and the moment the sound of Mary’s voice reaches Elizabeth’s ear, the baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy. John the Baptist jumps for joy because the Incarnate Word now lives and speaks and gives through Mary.
Now, fast-forward to Acts 1. The apostles are huddled in the Upper Room with Mary, awaiting the Holy Spirit. They are praying, and as they are praying, the Holy Spirit comes with a force that sounds like wind. The Spirit “overshadows” them with tongues as of fire. Almost immediately after this event, Acts 3 depicts Peter and John hastening to the Temple for the three o’clock hour of prayer, when a man crippled from birth calls to them, begging. Peter says to the beggar, “I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, [rise and] walk” (Acts 3:6). Peter speaks, and his word now carries forth the Word. He gives, and it is Jesus giving through him. And in pre-born John the Baptist style, the crippled man leaps up and walks and jumps and praises God.
This lesson illustrates that what happens to Mary through the Holy Spirit happens to the early Church. And it happens to us each time we, through the Holy Spirit, are drawn into Eucharistic communion. The Word made flesh enters our flesh, transforming us into gift—if we are so disposed.
1. Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, §6.
2. See Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, §1.
3. Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, §11.
4. Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, §70.
5. Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, §1. Emphasis added.
6. Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, §7.
7. Gaudium et spes, §22.
8. Gaudium et spes, §24.
9. Mother Teresa, Total Surrender, 36.
10. Cardinal Luis Tagle, “Homily at the Closing Mass of the 2024 National Eucharistic Congress,” July 21, 2024.
