Over the course of 54 days this spring, I celebrated 32 confirmation Masses throughout the archdiocese, from San Juan Island to Stevenson. I estimate that I confirmed around 1,000 Catholics, and I am just one bishop! Meanwhile, Archbishop Etienne will ordain two new priests this year, and we have young people in the archdiocese preparing to attend the Eucharistic revival this summer in Indianapolis. With Partners in the Gospel, we are living in historic times as new parish families form and begin to prayerfully discern future opportunities. The Eucharist is at the heart of everything we are and do.

Archbishop Etienne speaks of the Eucharist in this way in his pastoral letter “The Work of Redemption”:

“The Eucharist is the living presence of Christ in our midst. That presence does not, must not leave us unchanged: Receiving the Body of Christ, we become the Body of Christ.”

As such, we can think of the Eucharist as both a noun and a verb. We can think of the Eucharist as a noun because Jesus Christ is given  to us — body, blood, soul and divinity — in the host we receive and from the chalice we drink. When Jesus says, “For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink” (John 6:55), we  take him for his word. We can also think of the Eucharist as a verb in that, as our source and summit of worship, we offer thanksgiving to God as the Body of Christ. This means becoming what we eat so to be Christlike to others, especially the poor and the marginalized.

I appreciate Jesuit theologian Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s  way of describing the Eucharist in his book “The Divine Milieu.” Here are some excerpts:

  • “When the priest says the words hoc est Corpus meum [this is my body], his words fall directly on to the bread and directly transforms it into the individual reality of Christ. But the great sacramental operation does not cease at that local and momentary event.”
  • “In fact … a single event has been developing in the world: the incarnation, realized, in each individual, through the Eucharist. All the communions of a lifetime are one communion. All the communions of all human beings now living are one communion. All the communions of all human beings, present, past, and future are one communion.”
  • “As our humanity assimilates the material world, and as the Host assimilates our humanity, the Eucharistic transformation goes beyond and completes the transubstantiation of the bread  on the altar. Step by step it irresistibly invades the universe. It is a fire that sweeps over the hearth; the stroke that vibrates through the bronze.”

Teilhard offers this prayer, edited  for space: “Grant, O God, that when  I draw near to the altar for communion, I will … discern the infinite perspectives hidden beneath the smallness and nearness of the Host in which you are concealed. I have already accustomed myself to seeing, beneath the stillness of that piece of bread, a devouring power, which, in the words of the greatest doctors of your Church, far from being consumed by me, [the Eucharist] consumes me.”

This article appeared in the June/July 2024 issue of Northwest Catholic magazine. Read the rest of the issue here.