Eucharist Day-Retreat

* There is a downloadable PDF format of the meditations at the bottom of this post.

Meditation One: 

“What is Eucharist”

We’re here today to love our Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist a little bit more. While there’s a lot that could be said about Eucharistic theology, piety, and technique--and we will say a few such things--the goal of today is to share a day, as the people of God, communing with our Lord in the manner He ordained to commune with us. If we simply give ourselves to God in prayer together throughout the liturgies of this little day, our retreat will have fulfilled its purpose. 

Ultimately, loves nudges us to know the beloved. And so we’ll begin this morning with a brief consideration as to the heart of the Eucharist. But before we do, we must consider what liturgy is. As Fr. Alexander Schmemann notes, we mistakenly think that liturgy is some subset of what the church does in addition to its charity and evangelism. But liturgy is better described as what the Church is. At the heart of the meaning of Church is that beautiful Greek word, ekklesia, or communion, and liturgy is this very act of communing--a fruitful work we undertake together as a Body that makes us something we could not be elsewhere or elsewise. Just as liturgy is not a subset of what the Church does but is a way of speaking to what the Church is, so Eucharist is not a liturgy we “do”, but is the soul of the Liturgy that is the soul of the Church.

Eucharist means the giving of thanks, but even this definition will not help us unless we re-imagine thanksgiving as more than a forced expression of social etiquette, the thing we’re supposed to say to someone who gives us something. To reimagine this, we have to see our relationship to everyone and everything in a new way. Let’s start by acknowledging that when we think of gift-giving, we have a hard time seeing it outside of a question of rights. Fr. Stephen Freeman notes that we have a tendency to think about our relationships in terms of what we owe to each other, which balloons into a complex of rules governing what, how much, and what must be given in return. 

I think if we consider our gift-giving, we may find to our surprise how rarely we give outside of a sense of “Well that’s just what we have to do because it’s (x) occasion like a birthday or anniversary.” But that is not how God acts as Giver. The startling revelation of the Gospel is that the giver of the gift is a true giver; He gives not out of a sense of need or obligation, but out of a sense of delight. It is not out of lack but rather out of fullness that the gift of creation is given. To this givenness our proper response is gratitude and the free giving of thanks. This is not the stuff of polite obligation to thank someone for services rendered. To stand eucharistically as the people who give thanks is to manifest the truest thing about the humanity that God is redeeming.

Eucharist is a path from Eden to the Kingdom of God. Eucharist is the life of the grateful reception and humble offering of the gift of all things back to God and the bestowal of His blessing to all that is offered. Again, as Schmemann notes, the true heart of the Fall was in the fact that the fruit of the forbidden tree could not be received with thanksgiving and blessing -- because it was not a gift it was the one action that could not be performed Eucharistically. The Fall was humanity’s creation of an anti-eucharistic world, a world governed not by gift and thanksgiving but by obligation and restitution. And all around this tiny world is the Kingdom of God, the world of Eucharist.

It is into the hell of this anti-eucharist that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. As both the fullness of God the Giver, and the fullness of humanity the recipient, Christ, is where perfect Eucharist is always eternally observed. In the Passion of Christ on Calvary, we see the perfect offering of humanity with thanksgiving to God for all things.  He perfects the communion of humanity with God and opens the gates once more to the Eucharistic kingdom which is life in the eucharistic Christ, where the fullness of life and peace and blessing and joy of God is known, what we call the Resurrection.

The Church as the Body of Christ, is where Christ’s Eucharist is to be found among the dying world of “thanklessness”. . It is where we participate in the divinely-ordained work of communion that we become what we could not be elsewise or elsewhere. It is where Calvary, the place of the perfect Eucharist of the God-Man to God, is made uniquely present. And as we come to it, we become the place where the Eucharist of the Kingdom and of Christ the King is found. The action of Eucharist we make together in the Liturgy is the action of being conformed to Christ. Eucharist destroys anti-eucharist just as light dispels shadow. It is here that we begin to dwell in the Kingdom and it is here that the Kingdom and the King dwell in us.

What we come know in the Eucharist is the invitation to be converted to the life and liturgy of the eternal Eucharist of Christ, which is our conversion from the deathly world of anti-eucharist into the everlasting Kingdom made eternal by the life of God Himself in all things. Our liturgies today are facets of that eternal Liturgy. Let us by all means then direct our hearts and minds and bodies to pray, adore, and commune in love with Christ and with each other. In so doing we will be converted to the true pattern that is the foundation of all things. And so we are not here to deduce, to rationalize, to debate. We are here to kneel where the Eucharist of Christ has been made manifest. The Life of the world is here; let us worship Him together.

Meditation Two: 

“Deeper Devotion in Holy Communion”

The Liturgy of Holy Communion is where the Spirit makes present the Eucharist of Jesus to the Father and leads us into it. It is a divine place, a sacred place. It is to step into the Kingdom of God and leave behind the world of anti-eucharist, or ingratitude. The shape of the Liturgy is the pattern of Christ’s work of perfect Eucharist, and the Spirit leads us to conform our thoughts, words, and deeds to His such that in participating we are offering Christ’s Eucharist with Him. This is the work of the Kingdom of God.

This an action of the communion, the fellowship of God’s people. We each surrender to the common words and actions as the means by which we surrender to Christ. We are thus conformed to Him. As Fr. Schmemann notes, “He ordained the Eucharist as the means by which we put ourselves into His possession, and, in return, enter into possession of him.” Again, he notes “The individual benefits because he loses himself in that which Christ has ordained to be the corporate worship of all. Eucharistic worship is not a matter of personal edification but of self-forgetfulness. You go to Mass not to get but to give, for you can in this instance “get” only by “giving.” This echoes the words of St. Augustine when he says: “The price of love is thyself.”

As we proceed through the Liturgy, we might note parts and the particular actions to which we are called to give ourselves to the Lord who makes Himself present in them. There are four main movements to the Liturgy which we might describe using the language of Christ’s actions: He took, He blessed, He broke, He gave.

When Christ took the Bread and took the Cup, He took the elements made ready by a collaboration of the fruits of Nature and the fruits of human labor. As bread and wine do not grow from the ground, but signal a partnership of humanity and the world, so these elements in the Liturgy represent a gathering of the natural world and the creativity and artistry that shapes and guides it. Christ, as the one in whom, through whom, and by whom all things hold together, does this with perfect completion in the oblation or offering He makes of Himself. We do this through making an offering of representative elements of our lives: bread and wine, but also a tithe of our produce. We offer also our prayers which embody the gratitude and brokenness we bring with our oblation of ourselves into Christ’s oblation of Himself. But as is often said of the Mass, “the gift should bring the giver with it.” As we participate in this offertory, we should see it as an opportunity to offer ourselves entirely to God, both in our glory and in our pain.

When Christ blessed the Bread and the Cup, he consecrated it to God with thanksgiving. This is the great lifting up of the elements to become the place of Eucharist. In His Passion, Christ was lifted up as a sacrifice to God, and lifted up in the glory of Resurrection and Ascension. The lifting up of the elements makes the power of the Passion and the Resurrection present to us because it makes us present to them. This is the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It is the place where Christ is--we kneel before the Lamb of God and the King of Creation. As Christ consecrates the life of the world in Himself as a perfect Eucharist on the Cross, it at once casts into shadow the world of anti-eucharist and condemns it to continue as such forever. Only where Christ is will Eucharist be, and only where Eucharist is will the Kingdom be open. As we enter into this work of Christ, let us receive the consecration of our lives with open minds and hearts and invite the transformation of our lives as they are made the members of Christ’s Body.

When Christ broke the bread, He parted its life from any other purpose than to be what He would make it. It was to be His Body, that was the meaning of its life because the author of life had said so. But the breaking of the Bread also manifested the truth that it was through the Passion that the Resurrection must come. Eucharist cannot be divided from sacrifice and brokenness, but Eucharist means that these are not the end. As we participate in the fraction of the Bread, we join the brokenness of the world and our experience of it to the Passion of Christ that it might receive the blessing of His Resurrection power. In this way, we participate as co-redeemers with Christ. For as Christ lifted up draws all people to Himself, so as we lift up the fruits of our lives and this world it acts to draw the rest of our lives with it. 

When Christ gave His Body and Blood, He gave back to humanity the life of Eden long-lost and the life of the Kingdom come and the Kingdom to yet to come. Having been restored as those who stand in Christ to offer the oblation of the world in the giving of thanks, we receive the peace and life and blessing of God. We are thus transformed in the presence of Christ’s glory in the Spirit, and as we turn away again that glory goes with us. The giving and receiving with thanksgiving is the place where the blessing of eternal life lives. Having stood at the foot of the Cross and stood at the empty Tomb, having been covered in the Blood and Water from His Side and having received His blessing, we become like Him, His life becomes our life. The Kingdom and its King come among us. He took, He blessed, He broke, He gave. This is Eucharist. This is the work of the Lord. Let us go now and do likewise.

Meditation Three: 

“Life Shaped by Eucharist”

As we begin to think of how the experience of Eucharist forms us as we return to the world, we might start with another thought by Fr. Schmemann: “We know that as Christians and insofar as we are Christians we are, first of all, witnesses of that end: end of all natural joy; end of all satisfaction of man with the world and with himself; end, indeed, of life itself as a reasonable and reasonably organized “pursuit of happiness.” Here we find an unmistakable parting of ways between two manners of living, a fork in the road into paths between which Christ in the Eucharist leads us to choose. Will we continue, by grace in that holy fellowship of all faithful people which is the mystical Body of Christ, in the life of the world that is and is to come, or will we return to the isolate and isolating life of enclosure within ourselves, the life of death in the world that is and will have been?

Will we choose Eucharist or anti-eucharist? The first way is the way Christ Himself teaches us as we approach Him, adore Him, partake of Him, and commune with Him. It is the way of self-donation, of grateful reception, of unification with the Trinity, and of the eternal shalom of the Kingdom--all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. The second way is the way of self-reservation, of egotism, of looking out with envy on a world of light and life through the keyhole of dark rooms. 

The way of Eucharist teaches us to cherish the creation enough to look along with it as it proclaims something beyond and beneath and above itself. The way of anti-Eucharist teaches us to respond to the creation by retreating deeper within ourselves, to conscript the world into a drama of vain imaginations--the city of Babel and Pandemonium under construction within and around us. The way of Eucharist is the fertility and virility of new creation, of eternal life invading death. The way of anti-eucharist is sterility, a world of phantasmic and hellish projections of a self that grows thinner and grainier the more it is flung forward.

Let us leave behind the lesser way, for the eyes that behold the Christ of Eucharist will be eyes trained us to look for Jesus. To be led truly through the stuff of God’s world is to be ushered toward the God who made it. There is no proper notion of Christian ascent that does not love in some way the fact of feet on the ground. And why not start back up where the Fall caused us to drop off? Since we fell through eating, why not be redeemed through eating? So let’s start here in the manner which he taught us and delivered to us through His apostles. Those who seek Him here will find Him here. And yet, it does not stop here. To love and receive Christ in the Eucharist is to go forth transformed by His power to be Eucharist in the world. 

The mission of the Church is to testify to the truth of Christ as He has been revealed. Having seen and heard, having tasted and touched, we go forth to bear witness of these things to those who do not know. Love reorders life, and the manner of our life cannot remain the same if we believe that God is here among us. We will come to see him in the eyes of those who bear His likeness. Eucharist returns us with renewal to our families and friends. Eucharist sends us forth to the stranger and to the poor and needy with eyes to see them as those for whom Christ died and rose again. Eucharist makes us even to see into the eyes of our enemies and to find Christ there working for their redemption.

We have come here to love Christ in the Eucharist a little bit more. To love Him here is to begin to know now the life of the world to come, which is His own life. To love Him in that life is to begin now to live in the Kingdom of God, the world of Eucharist that, as the dying world passes away, will be revealed from glory to glory as we behold at the last the Lord of the Feast Himself and dwell with Him forever. Hear His words: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 

As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.”

Adoration Meditation

The service of adoration of our Lord’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament gives us the opportunity to worship Him as He extends His risen and glorified life in heaven to be present with us, His people on earth. This is practiced in liturgies like this one today, but also in a particular service of sitting with Christ in the vigil between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Because we believe that Christ is really present in the Sacrament, we regard this time as “being with” Christ in the way He saw fit to make Himself present among us. We adorn the space with beauty--even adorning the sound of the space with bells and the smell of the place with incense, as a way of welcoming our Lord and giving Him an honored place among us. To adore Him in this service is to give Him freely of our time and to surrender our agendas by being still and quiet in a contented silence. It is a space of affectionate friendship as well as allowing the rest of the world to fall away along with the hustle and bustle that attends it such that we might, like Mary of Bethany attend to the most important things. As best as we are able, let’s let go of the question of “what are we doing here” and move instead with the liturgy as it directs us through a time with Christ that is both reverential and also companionable.