Eucharist and mission
Cardinal Jozef Tomko coined a phrase at the International Eucharistic Congress in Mexico that should endure in our minds during the Year of the Eucharist: “Ask who the Eucharist is, not what the Eucharist is.”
This is a timely reminder that the Eucharist is not an abstraction, but our encounter with the living Christ. The Eucharist is a fortifying gift that places upon communicants a responsibility not just to call themselves Christians but to live as Christians.
It is with this in mind that Pope John Paul called the international Year of the Eucharist. It is no accident that the Year of the Eucharist, a time for us to reflect on our relationship with the body of Christ, should have begun in the mission month of October.
Catholics are accustomed to think of mission month, and in particular the annual World Mission Sunday–this year on October 24 – in terms of missionaries leaving their native countries to evangelise non-believers in remote places. Of course, this dimension remains valid, and it is for the missionary activities of the Church that we will pray and contribute in our second collections on Mission Sunday.
This year’s mission focus, however, is specifically on the Eucharist–and, by extension, on the laity.
In his annual message for Mission Sunday, Pope John Paul wrote: “At the end of every Mass, when the celebrant takes leave of the assembly with the words Ite Missa est – Go, the Mass has ended – all should feel they are sent as “missionaries of the Eucharist” to carry to every environment the great gift received.
The pope is calling on those who are privileged to encounter Christ in the Eucharist to become a new type of missionary.
Whereas in the past, missionaries usually were priests and religious brothers and sisters bringing the Good News to those who had not heard it, the new style missionaries need not be consecrated, nor emigrate to distant locations to evangelise those who may have heard but not accepted or rejected it.
The new mission field is the urban environment, the workplace, the family, the social braai. It requires no formal catechism. We evangelise by example: the way we conduct our Christian lives. In doing so, we are fortified by the Eucharist.
Of course, there are exemplary Christians who are precluded from receiving the Eucharist because the Church regards their marriage, regardless of how faithful and loving, as sinful. Some receive Communion from sympathising priests. Many of those who do not, find a way of building a relationship with the Eucharist in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament.
In his message to this month’s International Eucharistic Congress, Pope John Paul said: “There is…no authentic celebration or adoration of the Eucharist that does not lead to mission.”
On Mission Sunday, we give thanks and support to those dedicated priests and religious–so many of them still active in Southern Africa–who left home to evangelise.
At the same time, all Catholics have now been called on to use their relationship with Christ in the Eucharist to become missionaries themselves, much like our spiritual ancestors in the early Church.
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- To See Our Good News - March 23, 2022