Holy Thursday 2020

Today we celebrate Christ’s farewell-gift to his Church - the Eucharist.  It is a perfect occasion to ask ourselves, “What do we do when we celebrate the Eucharist?”  We say ‘yes’ once again to our Baptism when we first became members of the Body of Christ, at which time St. Augustine even says, “We became Christ”--not the head but the members; but, the head and the members form one body:  the ‘whole Christ,’ his famous phrase, Totus Christus.  He goes on to explain that when we offer and receive the Eucharist, we become all the more that which we already are, the Body of Christ!   So, when we come to Mass we are already the Body of Christ, but by saying ‘amen’ to what we are, and by offering our own lives along with the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, we leave the church “more Christ” than we were when we arrived!  So, not only have the bread and the wine been transformed, we have been transformed! Indeed, our ‘change’ is the very reason, the purpose, of the ‘change’ in the elements of the bread and the wine.

A second helpful point for understanding the meaning of today’s feast-day of Holy Thursday could be garnered from asking the question:  When we gather for the Eucharist “who offers what?” (This question has two aspects: the ‘who’ and the ‘what’.) Different periods of church history have given various answers to this important question.  I believe the best answer was given by St. Augustine in his The City of God (Book X):  The totus Christus offers the totus Christus: That is, not the priest offering Christ, not just Christians offering themselves, but the whole Christ (head and members) offering the whole Christ (head and members). No wonder so many of the early Christian writers pleaded for the Christians to recognize their dignity.  We are members of Christ’s Body, we are at Eucharist, both priest (the one who offers) and victim (that which is offered)!

What does all this mean for the average parish?  It means that the Eucharist is the time when the local community gathers together in faith to hear the Word of God and to offer itself with Christ to the Father, in the Holy Spirit; the time when the parish both expresses what it is, and becomes all the more that which it already is---namely, the Body of Christ.