I.

EUCHARIST – COMMUNION AND TRANSFORMATION

Any Sacrament is a celebration and an act of community of believers. The fruit of all
the sacraments belong to all the faithful. All the sacraments are sacred links uniting the
faithful with one another and binding them to Jesus Christ. The name ‘communion’ can
be applied to all the sacraments, for they unite us to God. But this name is better suited
to the Eucharist than any other, because it is primarily the Eucharist that brings this
communion about. “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in
him”. It brings communion within the Church through the distribution of special graces
of Holy Spirit among the faithful of every rank. It brings communion with our brothers
and sisters in charity, for none of us lives for himself only, and none of us dies to
himself only. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all
rejoice together. It is in this solidarity with all men, living or dead, the communion of
Eucharist is celebrated (CCC 1331).

From its origin the Church has always celebrated the sacraments, particularly baptism
and Eucharist; and ever since then no one becomes Christian except by receiving these
sacraments. These two major sacraments give identity to the church. Christian identity
is linked to the confession of faith Christian make their own and as a consequence of the
basis of meaning to which they give their lives. This Christian identity entails a personal
commitment.1 If the daily life of Christians and Christian communities does not
correspond to sacraments then the authenticity of their professed “koinonia” is called
into question. The Emmaus story is striking parable of the journey towards ‘koinonia.’ It
tells the story of growing fellowship through an enlightening conversation and the
recognition in the sign – the breaking of the bread, Word and Sacrament. But Emmaus is
only a stage on the way to the restored full communion with the ‘eleven’ and their
companions in Jerusalem.2

1
Louis-Marie Chauvet, The Sacraments (Bangalore: Claeritian Publications, 2002), 19.
2
J.E. Vercruysse, “Sacraments in an Ecumenical Perspective.” in Current Issues in Sacramental
Theology, ed. J. Lamberts (Leuven: Abdij Kezersberg, 1994), 83.
Communion is the physical experience of God’s Love. In every Eucharist we intensify
our awareness of this love of God radiating in and from Christ so that we can live by
this love, immerse ourselves in it, and become sources of love for others. Communion
with God and with one another in the Spirit of God’s love is the basic of the celebration
of Eucharist. Our close relationship with our neighbours and our love for them is
meaningfully expressed in the Eucharistic celebration. Our concern for our neighbour,
kingdom of God is the reason why we seek the Lord’s presence in our daily life and
pray the ‘Our Father’. Communion does not mean only inter-personal relationship
though they are very important. But there is more to it. Communion means also
common responsibility, solidarity, dialogue, participation and appreciation and respect
for the every human person. The early Christian community tried to implement in its
own way this aspect of communion during their celebration of Eucharistic meal. Today
the basic Christian communities with new style of participation and exercise of
responsibility in the life and mission of the Church respond to exigencies of a
communional vision.

The current notion of Church as a community of worshippers of a Christ who remain

supremely neutral before the slave and master, the exploiter and the exploited, has no
meaning and perhaps it might lead to mere cultic activity. “Whoever does the will of
God is brother and sister and mother to me” (Mk 3: 34 – 35). What Jesus envisions here
is a community based not on any set of doctrines or rituals and laws, but solely on doing
the will of God which, for him, meant loving one’s neighbour in deed. Since its focus is
on the reign of God to come, one might call it a ‘basileic’ community’. A community
that is truly ex-centric, having its centre outside itself in the absolute future of
humankind. In religiously pluralistic societies like India such communities are
necessary mediation between the Jesus community and the reign of God to come. In
truth, the primary mission of the ecclesial community is to create basileic communities.
Sacramentality is not a magical prerogative but an ethical quality of the community of
believers. The same applies to the sacramentality of the ecclesial community. It is
sacramental – that is, it signifies and communicates the divine, only insofar as it, in
obedience to the divine, takes a stand against the forces opposed to the reign of God and
is committed to the total liberation of humans. Basileic communities too are sacramental
even more so than ecclesial communities because they alone constitute effective agents
of transformative action.3

Although Vatican II accepts sacraments as means of salvation, it strongly emphasizes

their function as signs of salvation and hence the common pattern of celebrating the
sacraments in the churches may be signs of salvation. In the Eucharist, Jesus builds up
the Church as a communion as He evoked the prayer, “As You, Father, are in me and I
in You, may they also be one in us” (Jn 17:21). The Acts presents the early Christian
communities as models of communion for churches in every age. The Eucharist is the
source and manifestation of ecclesial communion as well – a fraternal communion,
cultivated by spirituality of communion which fosters reciprocal openness, affection and
understanding. The celebration of Eucharist cannot but call for ecumenical union. The
problem of ecumenism is that of ecclesiological one and not of primarily sacramental
one. Hence the sacraments celebrated taking into consideration of one’s culture and
language could be on the path way to ‘koinonia’, than sacraments celebrated according
to the ecclesiastical boundaries. If all the Churches true to its meaning of celebrating the
Eucharist strive after creating ‘basileic’ communities then there are no hurdles toward
ecclesial communion.

Sacraments do not have only a ritual significance. Sacramental action eventually aims at
the transformation of a community. They refer to moral commitment for justice, peace
and call for greater attention for the whole creation. “The celebration of the Eucharist is
a prophetic action originating in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, sacramentalized through
the ministerial action of the church, and ordered to the building up of a community of
freedom, justice, peace and fellowship. Eucharistic celebration is therefore, a liberating
moment in the life of the church and a symbol of god’s kingdom in the world. It is an
assurance that the God who calls all persons to fellowship in Christ sanctifies human
life with its challenges, defeats and achievements.”4 Every Eucharistic celebration is a
prophetic call to live the Passover – passing through death to life- by transforming
ourselves and our society in view of the Kingdom of God which is God’s dream for

3
Sebastian Kappen, “Toward an Indian Theology of Liberation” in Leave the Temple: Indian Paths to
Human Liberation, ed. Felix Wilfred (New York: Orbis Books, 1992), 153.
4
Errol D’Lima, Sacraments in General (Bangalore: TPI, 2005), 127.
humanity. The Eucharist is a perennial energizer of Christian hope. The very purpose of
Eucharistic celebration is to enable us to have hope in alternative community in which
new human beings are born in Christ. The focus of the Eucharist is a new human being
and a loving community in a transformed society. Participation in the Eucharist is a
pledge to commit ourselves to the cause of integral human liberation.5

In the Eucharist, the risen Christ is present reassuring those who believe in him that they
will experience courage and strength in their Christian commitment and ultimate
fulfilment in their live. He gives the power to transform the earthly temporality to divine
kingdom of God.
Karl Rahner in his theological anthropology indicates that our potential for a dialogical
relationship with God is in fact what is most essentially human about us, and that such a
relationship with the transcendent, absolute mystery is implicit in all the activities of
daily life as the very condition of their possibility. It presupposes that we do not merely
relate to God as a distant and aloof horizon of mystery, but that in fact when we worship
we experience a God who draws near to us and transforms us. 6 The transformation that
is positive is not confined to individuals. A person lives in a community and hence god’s
communication is directed also to bringing about transformation in society. We can truly
recognize god’s communication to humankind in a transforming society when we
observe it becoming more humane, more especially when we see that it is concerned
with the suffering of those who are marginalized.7 The Eucharist is a call and a
challenge for the transformation of the world into a just, equal, loving sharing
community of sisters and brothers. It offers and demands not only new hearts and minds
but a new world, new heavens and new earth. Every form of oppression and disparity
which affects the human dignity must be challenged with struggle for everyone’s human
dignity and rights. This is very much acknowledged by the Lima documents. “The
Eucharist embraces all aspects of life. It is a representative act of thanksgiving and
offering on be-half of the whole world. The Eucharistic celebration demands
reconciliation and sharing among all those regarded as brothers and sisters in the one
5
Samuel Rayan, “The Eucharist Today” in The Eucharist and Life, ed. Kurien Kunnumpuram (Mumbai:
St. Paul’s, 2006), 224.
6
Michael Skelley, “The Liturgy of the World and the Liturgy of the Church: Karl Rahner’s Idea of
Worship” Journal of Worship 63, (1989): 119.
7
Errol D’Lima, Sacraments in General (Bangalore: TPI, 2005), 17.
family of God and is a constant challenge in the search for appropriate relationships in
social, economic and political life (Matt. 5:23f; I Cor. 10:16f; I Cor. 11:20—22; Gal.
3:28). All kinds of injustice, racism, separation and lack of freedom are radically
challenged when we share in the body and blood of Christ. Through the Eucharist the
all-renewing grace of God penetrates and re-stores human personality and dignity”
(Lima document No: 20).

The Christian involved in transformative action is better attuned than worshiping

Christian. Only Christians who harken to the divine’s call to march forward from
slavery to freedom can grasp the original character of the church as the community of
disciples, conscious like Jesus, of the mission to preach good news to the poor. Only
those who sought first the kingdom of God and its justice and were prepared to contest
the forces of injustice and oppression had a place in it.

Not only the sacrament of Eucharist but all the sacraments are celebrations in the
present which recall the past and which point to the future fulfilment. The sacramental
celebration reminds us that past and present will be taken up into a future of hope and
fulfilment as happened in the life of Jesus Christ. This future is the realization of the
reign of God in its fullness. Through the sacramental action, the Church will show itself
as an authentic symbol of the liberation that Jesus inaugurated in his own life.
Sacraments are moments when the church in its members commits itself again and
again to bringing them about the kingdom of God visibly among people.8

8
Errol D’Lima, Sacraments in General (Bangalore: TPI, 2005), 102-104.