Take and Eat
I was travelling by train from Rome to Assisi. Opposite me sat an oldish man. He neatly placed his overcoat and his lunchbox on the rack above him. Half-way through the journey he took down his neatly packaged lunchbox and began to lift the cover. Out came a panino – the Italian for a bread roll – as most people know nowadays. He adroitly slit it in two with his pocket knife. Then he proceeded to lift various items out of the many compartments in the box and spread them over the lower part of the panino – squirmy, disgusting looking things which seemed like worms with various bits of pasta and vegetable covered in garlic. Replacing the top part over what he had placed on the lower part he pressed them together and – wait for it, he extended his hand in a gesture of invitation as he uttered ‘Padre’. Even if I were to get ill on the spot I had no other choice but to eat the panino and its contents. It would have been churlish to refuse such an utterly kind gesture. For me it was a moment of Eucharist. Here was I, a total stranger in his country, and yet he shared with me part of his own meal.

That kind gesture was not an isolated act. It was in continuity with his life formed as he was I’m sure in a Catholic family, assimilating a Christian outlook and Christian values at home, in school, in the parish. Italians are capable of extraordinary faith as I discovered during my all too short stay in Rome and in places beyond Rome.

Pure Heart
Donald Nicholl in his very popular work ‘Holiness’ tells of a similar incident as he was coming back from his morning run on the hills near Bethlehem. Four workmen walking in single file and close to him were on their way up to a quarry. The last one within split seconds plunged his hand into his lunch bag, took out a handful of raisins, pushed them into his hands with the words ‘you are sweating’. The word came unbidden to his mind ‘Eucharist’. A Muslim friend to whom he narrated this incident described it as ‘qualb naghy’ – pure heart.

Pope John Paul II
A good description of what the Eucharist is: is pure heart, total giving. In his Encyclical letter on the occasion of the Silver Jubilee of his being made Pope, the late John Paul II described the Eucharist as ‘Christ’s saving presence in the community of the faithful, its spiritual food. It is the most precious possession the Church can have in her journey through history. From this living bread the Church draws her nourishment.’

Over a lifetime
I am fifty-five years ordained a priest on July 16th of this year. I have celebrated the Eucharist in a whole variety of places at home and overseas. I have witnessed a multiple variety of Eucharists in urban and rural areas, across a number of countries, including mission areas. Memories come crowding into the mind. Eucharist with the drums of Africa, the steel bands of the West Indies, the backgrounds of choirs with great organ accompaniment, the great celebrations at the end of the legendary Folk Music weekends in Gort Muire, the captivating chant at the liturgy in the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in London and by contrast the lively school Mass at Glenstal Abbey Church on a Sunday morning directed by Paul Nash, O.S.B., Eucharist as part of a pilgrimage, of a parish mission, of a novena, of Carmelite gatherings, the famous twenty to six that was Terenure College, now no more because of traffic and the numerous departures into eternity both of friars and laity. A simple Eucharist with little or no music maybe, on the altar of a small country church. Even there the Eucharist is celebrated on the altar of the world, because the Eucharist is multi-dimensional.

It reaches backwards in time to the Passover of the Old Testament, which anticipates what is to come, to the Last Supper, to Calvary, to the Lord’s glorious resurrection. It reaches forward into the future to the future glory of which the Eucharist is the pledge. The Eucharist combines past, present and future with amazing richness. It seems to include everything, word and sacrament, communion with God and communion with each other and with the whole Church. Communion with the saints and with those who have gone before us. The Eucharist is the moment of total realisation. It demands penetration. It demands that we stand back from time to time and consider what we are doing at the altar. Considering what we are doing at the altar should lead to what John Paul II called ‘eucharistic amazement’: “The thought of this leads us to a profound amazement and gratitude. . . . This amazement should always fill the Church assembled for the celebration of the Eucharist.”