In Holy Communion the faithful receive the spiritual strength needed to offer their lives to the Father in union with the sacrifice of Christ

At the General Audience of Wednesday, 8 April, the Holy Father continued his weekly catechesis on the mystery of the Church. In the 28th talk of the series he spoke about the Holy Eucharist in the life of the priestly community which the Church is. Here is the Pope's address, which he gave in Italian.

1. According to the Second Vatican Council the truth of the Church as a priestly community is realized through the sacraments; it comes to fulfilment in the Eucharist. Indeed, we read in Lumen gentium that the faithful "taking part in the Eucharistic sacrifice, the source and summit of the Christian life, ...offer the divine victim to God and themselves along with it" (Lumen gentium, n. 11).

The Eucharist is the source of the Christian life because whoever shares in it receives the motivation and strength to live as a true Christian. Christ's sacrifice on the cross imparts to the believer the dynamism of his generous love; the Eucharistic banquet nourishes the faithful with the Body and Blood of the divine Lamb sacrificed for us and it gives them the strength to "follow in his footsteps" (cf. 1 Pt 2:21).

The Eucharist is the summit of the whole Christian life because the faithful bring to it all their prayers and good works, their joys and sufferings. These modest offerings are united to the perfect sacrifice of Christ and are thus completely sanctified and lifted up to God in an act of perfect worship which brings the faithful into the divine intimacy (cf. Jn 6:56-57). Therefore, as St Thomas Aquinas writes, the Eucharist is "the culmination of the spiritual life and the goal of all the sacraments" (Summa Theol., III, q. 66, a. 6).

2. The Angelic Doctor also notes that the "effect of this sacrament is the unity of the mystical body (the Church), without which there can be no salvation. Therefore it is necessary to receive the Eucharist, at least by desire (in voto), in order to be saved" (III, q. 73, a. 1, arg. 2). In these words there is an echo of everything Jesus himself said about the necessity of the Eucharist for the Christian life: "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day" (Jn 6:53-54)

According to these words of Jesus, the Eucharist is a pledge of the resurrection to come, but it is already a source of eternal life in time. Jesus does not say "will have eternal life", but "has eternal life". Through the food of the Eucharist Christ's eternal life penetrates and flows within human life.

3. The Eucharist requires the participation of the Church's members. According to the Council, "both in the offering and in Holy Communion, each in his own way, though not of course indiscrimately, has his own part to play in the liturgical [Eucharistic] action" (Lumen gentium, n. 11).

Participation is common to the entire "priestly people", who have been allowed to unite themselves to the offering and the communion. But this participation differs according to the condition of the Church's members, in accord with the sacramental institution. There is a specific role for the priestly ministry; however it does not eliminate, but rather promotes the role of the common priesthood. It is a specific role willed by Christ when he charged his Apostles with celebrating the Eucharist in his memory, by instituting for this function the sacrament of Holy Orders, conferred on Bishops and priests (and on deacons as ministers of the altar).

4. The purpose of the priestly ministry is to gather the people of God "so that all who belong to this people, sanctified as they are by the Holy Spirit, may offer themselves as 'a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God' (Rom 12:1)" (Presbyterorum ordinis, n. 2).

If, as I have mentioned in the preceding catecheses, the common priesthood is meant to offer spiritual sacrifices, the faithful can make this offering because they are "sanctified by the Holy Spirit". The Holy Spirit, who animated Christ's sacrifice on the cross (cf. Heb 9:14), will give life to the offering of the faithful.

5. According to the Council, because of the priestly ministry spiritual sacrifices can achieve their goal. "Through the ministry of priests the spiritual sacrifice of the faithful is completed in union with the sacrifice of Christ the only mediator, which in the Eucharist is offered through the priests' hands in the name of the whole Church in an unbloody and sacramental manner until the Lord himself comes" (Presbyterorum ordinis, n. 2).

In virtue of Baptism and Confirmation, as we stated in the preceding catecheses, the Christian is qualified to participate "as if ex officio" in divine worship, which has its centre and culmination in the sacrifice of Christ made present in the Eucharist. But the Eucharistic offering entails the involvement of an ordained minister: the offering is fulfilled in the act of consecration carried out by the priest in Christ's name.

In this way the priestly ministry contributes to the full expression of the universal priesthood. As the Council states, citing St Augustine, the ministry of priests tends to this, that "the whole redeemed city, that is, the whole assembly and community of the saints should be offered as a universal sacrifice to God through the High Priest who offered himself in his passion for us that we might be the body of so great a head (De civitate Dei, 10, 6: PL 41, 284)" (Presbyterorum ordinis, n. 2).

6. After the sacrifice has taken place, the Eucharistic communion which follows is meant to provide the faithful with the spiritual force necessary for the fun development of the "priesthood", and especially for offering ad the sacrifices of their everyday life. We read in the Decree Presbyterorum ordinis: "Priests teach the faithful to offer the divine victim to God the Father in the sacrifice of the Mass and with the victim to make an offering of their whole life" (n. 5).

It can be said that according to Jesus' intention in formulating the new commandment of love at the Last Supper, Eucharistic communion enables those who receive it to put it into practice: "Love one another as I have loved you" (Jn 13:34; 15:12).

7. Participating in the Eucharistic banquet testifies to their unity, as the Council points out in writing that the faithful, "strengthened by the Body of Christ in the Eucharistic communion, manifest in a concrete way that unity of the people of God which this holy sacrament aptly signifies and admirably realizes" (Lumen gentium,n. 11).

This is the truth which the Church's faith inherited from St Paul, who wrote: "The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we ad partake of the one loaf" (1 Cor 10:16-17). For this reason St Thomas saw the Eucharist as the sacrament of the "mystical body's" unity (III, q. 72, a. 3). We conclude this ecclesiological-Eucharistic catechesis by emphasizing that, if Eucharistic communion is the efficacious sign of unity, it then gives the faithful a continually new impulse to mutual love and reconciliation, and the sacramental strength necessary for preserving good understanding in family and ecclesial relationships.