BREAK THE BREAD
No Gospel has emphasized as much as John the Eucharistic character of the «multiplication of the loaves». His account clearly evokes the Eucharistic celebration of the first communities. For the first believers, the Eucharist wasn’t just a remembering of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It was at the same time an «anticipated living of the fraternity of the reign».
For many years now we have insisted so much on the sacrificial dimension of the Eucharist, that we can forget other aspects of the Supper of the Lord. Maybe today we would need to remember more forcefully that this supper is a sign of the communion and fraternity that we must take care of among ourselves and that will reach its true fulness in the consummation of the reign. The Eucharist would have to be for believers a constant invitation to go about sharing what we have with those in need, though it seem little, though it’s only «five loaves and two fishes».
The Eucharist obliges us to ask ourselves what relationships exist between those who celebrate it (since being «a sign of fraternal communion», it becomes a farce when all of us who participate in it live satisfied in our welfare) and those who are in need; those who take advantage of others, and the marginalized, without which the celebration seems to seriously question no one.
Sometimes we get worried whether the presider has pronounced the prescribed words in the ritual. We cause problems with whether you should receive communion on the tongue or in the hand. And meanwhile, in all of this, we don’t seem to be worried very much that the celebration of a Eucharist isn’t the sign of true fraternity or doesn’t push to seek that.
And yet there’s something that seems clear in the tradition of the Church: «When fraternity is lacking, the Eucharist is in the way» (Luis Gonzalez-Carvajal). When there’s not justice, when we don’t live in solidarity, when we aren’t working to change things, when there’s not seen an effort to share in the problems of those who suffer, the Eucharistic celebration remains empty of meaning.
This doesn’t mean to say that only when we have among us a true fraternity would we be able to celebrate the Eucharist. We don’t have to wait until the last injustice disappears to be able to celebrate it. But neither could we keep celebrating it without it pushing us to commit ourselves for a more just world.
The bread of the Eucharist nourishes us for love and not for selfishness. It pushes us to go about creating greater communication and solidarity, and not a world in which we have nothing to do with each other.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
