The theme for the 53rd International Eucharistic Congress in Ecuador last month was “Fraternity to heal the World”. The gathering promises showed fraternity in action, with an extraordinary assembly of peoples of every nation, age, language and ethnicity, all united in shared devotion to the Eucharist: to the body and blood of Christ which we receive in Holy Communion. It was a moving expression of the Mystical Body of which we are all a part.
The Eucharist that Christ shared with the apostles is the one that we now share with each other. And in the sacrament, we eat Christ’s flesh and drink His blood. This is a statement so familiar as to seem trite; a formula that the mind does not absorb because we have talked about it so glibly and so often. We must shock ourselves into realising the enormity of the Eucharist.
