The eCrozier

This is the third in a series of Ecroziers on the practices of the Christian Faith

Eucharistic Living

Our Catechism states (BCP p. 859): “The Holy Eucharist is the sacrament commanded by Christ for the continual remembrance of his life, death, and resurrection, until his coming again.” It is the “Church’s sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” and it “is the way by which the sacrifice of Christ is made present, and in which he unites us to his one offering of himself.” The Eucharist isn’t a nostalgic look back on Maundy Thursday, but rather it’s making present the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus. The Eucharist provides us with a sacramental center that brings us to the truth of our lives. The bread and the wine are common elements of life made holy by Jesus restoring us in God’s creation. In the Eucharist, God’s future breaks into the present and then that one past, unrepeatable sacrifice catches up with us. The Eucharist shapes our present, common life and this practice strongly points us to the future.

The Eucharistic life is a life in relationship with God in Christ consecrated to others. It is life in the pattern of Jesus, a life represented at the altar, and experienced by all Christians. It is a life of being taken by God, blessed with identity, purpose and destiny; broken in our daily life of repentance; and given in the power of a renewed life as we seek to be instruments of God’s love. As Evelyn Underhill writes: the fully Christian life is a Eucharistic life: that is, a natural life conformed to the pattern of Jesus, given in its wholeness to God, laid on His altar as a sacrifice of love, and consecrated, transformed by His inpouring life, to be used to give life and food to other souls.

We live the Eucharist in our lives by taking our experience of being blessed, loved, forgiven, and fed and living out such practices. We are called to this individually in our work, homes, and community and corporately as the Church. Living the Eucharist in our lives helps us develop a congruity between our worship of God on Sunday and our daily practices on weekdays. Without such congruity there is an obvious disconnect from the practice of worship and the practice of living. Eucharistic living helps remind us of our need for such congruity between worship and life. As Bishop Frank Weston preached: [We] cannot claim to worship Jesus in the tabernacle if [we] do not pity Jesus in the slum. It is madness to suppose that [we] can worship Jesus in the Sacrament and Jesus on the throne of glory, when [we] are sweating Him in the bodies and souls of His children.

Eucharistic living helps us connect the dots of our lives. As we experience God’s gifts of acceptance, love, forgiveness, and spiritual food, we take those gifts into the world and incarnate them in the people and circumstances of our lives. Such Eucharistic living calls us to wholeness. It helps defragment our lives: to accept others as God has accepted us; to love others as God has loved us; to forgive as we have been forgiven; and, to feed others as we have been fed.

+Scott