CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH SECOND EDITION PART TWO THE CELEBRATION OF THE CHRISTIAN MYSTERY SECTION TWO THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS OF THE CHURCH CHAPTER ONE THE SACRAMENTS OF CHRISTIAN INITIATION ARTICLE 3 THE SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST 1322 The holy Eucharist completes Christian initiation. Those who have been raised to the dignity of the royal priesthood by Baptism and configured more deeply to Christ by Confirmation participate with the whole community in the Lords own sacrifice by means of the Eucharist. 1323 At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of his Body and Blood. This he did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved Spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a Paschal banquet in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us.135 I. THE EUCHARIST - SOURCE AND SUMMIT OF ECCLESIAL LIFE 1324 The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life.136 The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch.137 1325 The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of Gods action sanctifying the world in Christ and of the worship men offer to Christ and through him to the Father in the Holy Spirit.138 1326 Finally, by the Eucharistic celebration we already unite ourselves with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate eternal life, when God will be all in all.139 1327 In brief, the Eucharist is the sum and summary of our faith: Our way of thinking is attuned to the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking.140 II. WHAT IS THIS SACRAMENT CALLED? 1328 The inexhaustible richness of this sacrament is expressed in the different names we give it. Each name evokes certain aspects of it. It is called: Eucharist, because it is an action of thanksgiving to God. The Greek words eucharistein141 and eulogein142 recall the Jewish blessings that proclaim - especially during a meal - Gods works: creation, redemption, and sanctification. 1329 The Lords Supper, because of its connection with the supper which the Lord took with his disciples on the eve of his Passion and because it anticipates the wedding feast of the Lamb in the heavenly Jerusalem.143 The Breaking of Bread, because Jesus used this rite, part of a Jewish meal, when as master of the table he blessed and distributed the bread,144 above all at the Last Supper.145 It is by this action that his disciples will recognize him after his Resurrection,146 and it is this expression that the first Christians will use to designate their Eucharistic assemblies;147 by doing so they signified that all who eat the one broken bread, Christ, enter into communion with him and form but one body in him.148 The Eucharistic assembly (synaxis), because the Eucharist is celebrated amid the assembly of the faithful, the visible expression of the Church.149 1330 The memorial of the Lords Passion and Resurrection. The Holy Sacrifice, because it makes present the one sacrifice of Christ the Savior and includes the Churchs offering. The terms holy sacrifice of the Mass, sacrifice of praise, spiritual sacrifice, pure and holy sacrifice are also used,150 since it completes and surpasses all the sacrifices of the Old Covenant. The Holy and Divine Liturgy, because the Churchs whole liturgy finds its center and most intense expression in the celebration of this sacrament; in the same sense we also call its celebration the Sacred Mysteries. We speak of the Most Blessed Sacrament because it is the Sacrament of sacraments. The Eucharistic species reserved in the tabernacle are designated by this same name. 1331 Holy Communion, because by this sacrament we unite ourselves to Christ, who makes us sharers in his Body and Blood to form a single body.151 We also call it: the holy things (ta hagia; sancta)152 - the first meaning of the phrase communion of saints in the Apostles Creed - the bread of angels, bread from heaven, medicine of immortality,153 viaticum. . . . 1332 Holy Mass (Missa), because the liturgy in which the mystery of salvation is accomplished concludes with the sending forth (missio) of the faithful, so that they may fulfill Gods will in their daily lives. III. THE EUCHARIST IN THE ECONOMY OF SALVATION The signs of bread and wine 1333 At the heart of the Eucharistic celebration are the bread and wine that, by the words of Christ and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, become Christs Body and Blood. Faithful to the Lords command the Church continues to do, in his memory and until his glorious return, what he did on the eve of his Passion: He took bread. . . . He took the cup filled with wine. . . . The signs of bread and wine become, in a way surpassing understanding, the Body and Blood of Christ; they continue also to signify the goodness of creation. Thus in the Offertory we give thanks to the Creator for bread and wine,154 fruit of the work of human hands, but above all as fruit of the earth and of the vine - gifts of the Creator. The Church sees in the gesture of the king-priest Melchizedek, who brought out bread and wine, a prefiguring of her own offering.155 1334 In the Old Covenant bread and wine were offered in sacrifice among the first fruits of the earth as a sign of grateful acknowledgment to the Creator. But they also received a new significance in the context of the Exodus: the unleavened bread that Israel eats every year at Passover commemorates the haste of the departure that liberated them from Egypt; the remembrance of the manna in the desert will always recall to Israel that it lives by the bread of the Word of God;156 their daily bread is the fruit of the promised land, the pledge of Gods faithfulness to his promises. The cup of blessing157 at the end of the Jewish Passover meal adds to the festive joy of wine an eschatological dimension: the messianic expectation of the rebuilding of Jerusalem. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist, he gave a new and definitive meaning to the blessing of the bread and the cup. 1335 The miracles of the multiplication of the loaves, when the Lord says the blessing, breaks and distributes the loaves through his disciples to feed the multitude, prefigure the superabundance of this unique bread of his Eucharist.158 The sign of water turned into wine at Cana already announces the Hour of Jesus glorification. It makes manifest the fulfillment of the wedding feast in the Fathers kingdom, where the faithful will drink the new wine that has become the Blood of Christ.159 1336 The first announcement of the Eucharist divided the disciples, just as the announcement of the Passion scandalized them: This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?160 The Eucharist and the Cross are stumbling blocks. It is the same mystery and it never ceases to be an occasion of division. Will you also go away?:161 the Lords question echoes through the ages, as a loving invitation to discover that only he has the words of eternal life162 and that to receive in faith the gift of his Eucharist is to receive the Lord himself. The institution of the Eucharist 1337 The Lord, having loved those who were his own, loved them to the end. Knowing that the hour had come to leave this world and return to the Father, in the course of a meal he washed their feet and gave them the commandment of love.163 In order to leave them a pledge of this love, in order never to depart from his own and to make them sharers in his Passover, he instituted the Eucharist as the memorial of his death and Resurrection, and commanded his apostles to celebrate it until his return; thereby he constituted them priests of the New Testament.164 1338 The three synoptic Gospels and St. Paul have handed on to us the account of the institution of the Eucharist; St. John, for his part, reports the words of Jesus in the synagogue of Capernaum that prepare for the institution of the Eucharist: Christ calls himself the bread of life, come down from heaven.165 1339 Jesus chose the time of Passover to fulfill what he had announced at Capernaum: giving his disciples his Body and his Blood:
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 14:41:00 +0000