The pledge of future glory. The eschatological dimension of the Eucharist: A systematic exploration (original) (raw)

The Eucharist: Looking Backwards and Forwards

Christianity is a religion of memory. We look to the future — indeed to beyond the future — and so we live today in such a way as to build that future, but we do so while recalling our past. Our past is significant because it identifies us, affirms that we are a community in a covenant with God, and provides us with a key to that is significant in that relationship. It is with this perspective we should approach Eucharistic praxis and theology

Rethinking the Eucharist: Towards a Unity of Word and Deed

The Ecumenical Review, 1993

Recent thinking on the eucharist has attempted to recover the use of "sign" or "symbol" to describe the sacraments. Such usage is derived from a more anthropological understanding, rooted in human experience, which regards signs as "means of selfexpression, of personal communication: the body is the fundamental sign; language is the most supple sign". From this perspective, some theologians-P.R. de Jong, for examplehave claimed that the eucharist is a "symbolic reality", neither real nor symbol, but both. Other Roman Catholic and Reformed theologians have in fact replaced the traditional Roman Catholic understanding of transubstantiation with transsignification, indicating a change not in substance but in meaning or purpose. While these approaches open new horizons I would like to offer to this ongoing conversation a slightly different perspective. In contrast to developing the reality of signs or symbols, I want to reclaim a particular use of "real" to describe the eucharist, a use that has been largely overshadowed by the more primary focus on "real" as that which is opposed to sign or symbol. To this end, I will first reconsider an earlier eucharist controversy in which the question "real or symbol" was central. I will then examine more closely the philosophical underpinnings which shape that particular understanding of "real". Finally, I will consider an alternative conception of "real", one that is not opposed to symbol or sign but one that I take to be more germane to Hebraic thinking, and thus an important component of Christian identity.

As Painted in a Picture: The Aesthetics of Eucharistic Promise

The distinctly physical gift of the Eucharist to outstretched hands brings an embodied, graphic dimension to a faith which by its very nature is committed to the priority of language. This paper explores the relation between the non-verbal, material practices employed in a Eucharistic celebration on the one hand and its language on the other, with special attention to the way this relation is presented in the sacramental theology of John Calvin. Proper appreciation of the non-verbal need not in any way diminish a proper stress on the priority of the Word. For John Calvin, the immense significance of the physical medium of the Sacrament is not seen as lessening the role and significance of words, even as he claims the Sacrament brings the clearest promise of God in Christ, indeed, one “as painted in a picture from life.” But Calvin’s choice of words in this last statement is not accidental. The non-verbal arts offer a fruitful means of helping us consider the practice of the Eucharist as an “aesthetic,” a gift to the senses, over and above the word. The Eucharistic celebration, both as a regular and repeated act and as a visual "picture from life," is a verbal and non-verbal gift that disrupts idolatries and stirs the imagination, while directing, redirecting, and indeed, reforming the will by the Spirit, beyond the known toward the unknown. In this respect, the Eucharist itself, as a gift wedded with verbal and non-verbal aesthetics, visual and physical dimensions, also presents certain implications for interdisciplinary conversations between theology and the arts, particularly where there is a desire for the arts to move us “beyond words,” a call deserving careful navigation. The celebration of the Eucharist will be shown as a gifted medium whereby the Spirit enables a realization of meaning and moves participants with its sense-bearing, truth-bearing potential.

A Reflection on Reality, Healing, and Life in the Eucharist

Sacrificium eucharisticum, totius vitae christianae fontem et culmen." In Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Vatican Council II called "the Eucharistic sacrifice, the source and summit of Christian life," 1 "the fount and apex of the whole Christian life." 2 I have been especially reflecting upon and contemplating the Eucharist since last year when Pope John Paul II announced the Year of the Eucharist. One could spend a lifetime reflecting upon the Eucharist in all its splendor and mystery and still not fully comprehend it. Three themes in particular have come to my mind: 1) the Eucharist is real, it is really the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ 3 ; 2) the Eucharist is healing and health, it heals our sins and our ills and feeds our body and our soul; and 3) the Eucharist is life, it transforms us and brings us eternal life. Reality, healing, and life flow from this "source and summit of Christian life."

THE EUCHARIST: CUP OF SACRIFICE, BANQUET OF THE KINGDOM

Two aspects of the Eucharist-as Cup of Sacrifice and as Banquet of the Kingdom-are discussed here not from a purely theological and academic standpoint but from the perspective of Eucharistic spirituality. Concern for Eucharistic spirituality means that we want to celebrate the Eucharist the way we should, which connotes realizing on the levels of life, relationships, and social responsibility the meaning and vision that Christ himself had for and through this most sublime Sacrament. What we hear, say, and do in our Eucharistic celebrations should influence our thinking, speaking, and behaving beyond the confines of the celebrative time and space. The Eucharist must become the source of Christian discipleship to which we are called, following Jesus in his love that culminated in his sacrifice on the Cross.