"The Church draws her life from the Eucharist. This truth does not simply express a daily experience of faith, but recapitulates the heart of the mystery of the Church. In a variety of ways she joyfully experiences the constant fulfillment of the promise: “Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28:20), but in the Holy Eucharist, through the changing of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord, she rejoices in this presence with unique intensity. Ever since Pentecost, when the Church, the People of the New Covenant, began her pilgrim journey towards her heavenly homeland, the Divine Sacrament has continued to mark the passing of her days, filling them with confident hope.

The Second Vatican Council rightly proclaimed that the Eucharistic sacrifice is “the source and summit of the Christian life”.  “For the most holy Eucharist contains the Church's entire spiritual wealth: Christ himself, our Passover and living bread. Through his own flesh, now made living and life-giving by the Holy Spirit, he offers life to men”.  Consequently the gaze of the Church is constantly turned to her Lord, present in the Sacrament of the Altar, in which she discovers the full manifestation of his boundless love. "

      ---  Ecclesia De Eucharistia Encyclical Letter of his holiness POPE JOHN PAUL II  

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that the Eucharist is the "Source and summit of the Christian life." (CCC 1324.)

But what does that mean?

 The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life only because it IS Jesus, truly present for us. This is a breath-taking miracle that occurs at every Mass. The Eucharist is the source of our faith in that it is from the Holy Sacrifice of the Eucharist that the richest graces of God flow out upon the Church and the world. It is the heart of the Church’s life and of the faith of each member. It is life giving, life changing and life saving.  It contains the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself. Jesus is there for us, flesh and blood, in the Eucharist. Although prayer and Bible study and helping those in need are great ways to draw closer to the Lord, there is nothing that brings us in direct contact with Him more than the Eucharist, in contact with the real body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus. The Eucharist is the summit of the Christian life in that it is the way that we, in union with Christ, give highest glory and praise to God. There is no greater moment in our spiritual life, no moment more profound, than we receive our Lord in the Holy Eucharist. When we receive Christ in the Eucharist, we have received EVERYTHING.

St. Pope John Paul II sums up the Eucharist in his encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia: 

"In the humble signs of bread and wine, changed into his body and blood, Christ walks beside us as our strength and our food for the journey, and he enables us to become, for everyone, witnesses of hope. If, in the presence of this mystery, reason experiences its limits, the heart, enlightened by the grace of the Holy Spirit, clearly sees the response that is demanded, and bows low in adoration and unbounded love.

Let us make our own the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an eminent theologian and an impassioned poet of Christ in the Eucharist, and turn in hope to the contemplation of that goal to which our hearts aspire in their thirst for joy and peace:

Bone pastor, panis vere,
Iesu, nostri miserere...

Come then, good Shepherd, bread divine,
Still show to us thy mercy sign;
Oh, feed us, still keep us thine;
So we may see thy glories shine
in fields of immortality.

O thou, the wisest, mightiest, best,
Our present food, our future rest,
Come, make us each thy chosen guest,
Co-heirs of thine, and comrades blest
With saints whose dwelling is with thee."

 

As we prepare for the Eucharistic Congress this year, let us remember that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, offering Himself to us.  The Eucharist is our source of spirituality, our source of grace, our source of Faith, Hope and Charity, and it is the summit in our life, the high-point of our days. In other words, our Christian living leads up to and culminates in our participation in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the summit of the spiritual life in the sense that other aspects of Christian living, including the other sacraments (CCC, no. 1324), are ordered to the Eucharist-to Christ's offering of Himself to the Father in the Spirit for us and to our participation in Christ's offering. The same profound sacramental link between the Sacrifice of the cross and the Eucharist that makes the Eucharist the source of Christian spirituality also makes it the summit or high point of Christian spirituality.