There is no surer pledge or dearer sign of this great hope in the new heavens and new earth "in which righteousness dwells," 245 than the Eucharist. Every time this mystery is celebrated, "the work of our redemption is carried on" and we "break the one Bread that provides the medicine of immortality, the antidote for death, and the food that makes us live for ever in Jesus Christ." 246

The unity of the Mystical Body: the Eucharist makes the Church. Those who receive the Eucharist are united more closely to Christ. Through it Christ unites them to all the Faithful in one body - the Church. Communion renews, strengthens, and deepens this incorporation into the Church, already achieved by Baptism. In Baptism we have been called to form but one body. 230 The Eucharist fulfills this call: "The cup of Blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the Blood of Christ? the Bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread:" 231

What material food produces in our bodily life, Holy Communion wonderfully achieves in our spiritual life. Communion with the flesh of the risen Christ, a flesh "given life and giving life through the Holy Spirit," 226 preserves, increases, and renews the life of grace received at Baptism. This growth in Christian life needs the nourishment of Eucharistic Communion, the Bread for our pilgrimage until the moment of death, when it will be given to us as viaticum.

Since Christ is sacramentally present under each of the species, Communion under the species of Bread alone makes it possible to receive all the fruit of Eucharistic grace. For pastoral reasons this manner of receiving communion has been legitimately established as the most common form in the Latin rite. But "the sign of communion is more complete when given under both kinds, since in that form the sign of the Eucharistic meal appears more clearly." 222 This is the usual form of receiving communion in the Eastern rites.

To respond to this invitation we must prepare ourselves for so great and so holy a moment. St. Paul urges us to examine our conscience: "Whoever, therefore, eats the Bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and Blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself." 216 Anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to Communion.

"Heal the sick!" 120 The Church has received this charge from the Lord and strives to carry it out by taking care of the sick as well as by accompanying them with her prayer of intercession. She believes in the life-giving Presence of Christ, the physician of souls and bodies. This presence is particularly active through the sacraments, and in an altogether special way through the Eucharist, the Bread that gives eternal life and that St. Paul suggests is connected with bodily health. 121

"Daily" (epiousios) occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. Taken in a temporal sense, this word is a pedagogical repetition of "this day," 128 to confirm us in trust "without reservation." Taken in the qualitative sense, it signifies what is necessary for life, and more broadly every good thing sufficient for subsistence. 129 Taken literally (epi-ousios: "super-essential"), it refers directly to the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ, the "medicine of immortality," without which we have no life within us. 130 Finally in this connection, its heavenly meaning is evident: "this day" is the Day of the Lord, the day of the feast of the kingdom, anticipated in the Eucharist that is already the foretaste of the kingdom to come. For this reason it is fitting for the Eucharistic liturgy to be celebrated each day.

This petition, with the responsibility it involves, also applies to another hunger from which men are perishing: "Man does not live by Bread alone, but . . . by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God," 123 that is, by the Word he speaks and the Spirit he breathes forth. Christians must make every effort "to proclaim the good news to the poor." There is a famine on earth, "not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord." 124 For this reason the specifically Christian sense of this fourth petition concerns the Bread of Life: the Word of God accepted in Faith, the Body of Christ received in the Eucharist. 125

"Our" Bread is the "one" loaf for the "many." In the Beatitudes "poverty" is the virtue of sharing: it calls us to communicate and share both material and spiritual goods, not by coercion but out of love, so that the abundance of some may remedy the needs of others. 120

But the Presence of those who hunger because they lack Bread opens up another profound meaning of this petition. the drama of hunger in the world calls Christians who pray sincerely to exercise responsibility toward their brethren, both in their personal behavior and in their solidarity with the human family. This petition of the Lord's Prayer cannot be isolated from the parables of the poor man Lazarus and of the Last Judgment. 118

"Our Bread": the Father who gives us life cannot not but give us the nourishment life requires - all appropriate goods and Blessings, both material and spiritual. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus insists on the filial trust that cooperates with our Father's providence. 115 He is not inviting us to idleness, 116 but wants to relieve us from nagging worry and preoccupation. Such is the filial surrender of the children of God:

The baptized cannot pray to "our" Father without bringing before him all those for whom he gave his beloved Son. God's love has no bounds, neither should our prayer. 52 Praying "our" Father opens to us the dimensions of his love revealed in Christ: praying with and for all who do not yet know him, so that Christ may "gather into one the children of God." 53 God's care for all men and for the whole of creation has inspired all the great practitioners of prayer; it should extend our prayer to the full Breadth of love whenever we dare to say "our" Father.

In the first community of Jerusalem, believers "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of Bread, and the prayers." 95 This sequence is characteristic of the Church's prayer: founded on the apostolic Faith; authenticated by charity; nourished in the Eucharist.

For the People of God, the Temple was to be the place of their education in prayer: pilgrimages, feasts and Sacrifices, the evening offering, the incense, and the Bread of the Presence (“shewbread") - all these signs of the holiness and glory of God Most High and Most Near were appeals to and ways of prayer. But ritualism often encouraged an excessively external worship. the people needed education in Faith and conversion of heart; this was the mission of the prophets, both before and after the Exile.

Worship of the Eucharist. In the liturgy of the Mass we express our Faith in the real Presence of Christ under the species of Bread and wine by, among other ways, genuflecting or bowing deeply as a sign of adoration of the Lord. "The Catholic Church has always offered and still offers to the sacrament of the Eucharist the cult of adoration, not only during Mass, but also outside of it, reserving the consecrated hosts with the utmost care, exposing them to the solemn veneration of the Faithful, and carrying them in procession." 206

The Eucharistic Presence of Christ begins at the moment of the consecration and endures as long as the Eucharistic species subsist. Christ is present whole and entire in each of the species and whole and entire in each of their parts, in such a way that the breaking of the Bread does not divide Christ. 205

In the Old Covenant Bread and wine were offered in Sacrifice among the first fruits of the earth as a sign of grateful acknowledgment to the Creator. But they also received a new significance in the context of the Exodus: the unleavened bread that Israel eats every year at Passover commemorates the haste of the departure that liberated them from Egypt; the remembrance of the manna in the desert will always recall to Israel that it lives by the bread of the Word of God; 154 their daily bread is the fruit of the promised land, the pledge of God's Faithfulness to his promises. The "cup of Blessing" 155 at the end of the Jewish Passover meal adds to the festive joy of wine an eschatological dimension: the messianic expectation of the rebuilding of Jerusalem. When Jesus instituted the Eucharist, he gave a new and definitive meaning to the blessing of the bread and the cup.

At the heart of the Eucharistic celebration are the Bread and wine that, by the words of Christ and the invocation of the Holy Spirit, become Christ's Body and Blood. Faithful to the Lord's command the Church continues to do, in his memory and until his glorious return, what he did on the eve of his Passion: "He took bread...." "He took the cup filled with wine...." the signs of bread and wine become, in a way surpassing understanding, the Body and Blood of Christ; they continue also to signify the goodness of creation. Thus in the Offertory we give thanks to the Creator for bread and wine, 152 fruit of the "work of human hands," but above all as "fruit of the earth" and "of the vine" - Gifts of the Creator. the Church sees in the gesture of the king-priest Melchizedek, who "brought out bread and wine," a prefiguring of her own offering. 153

Holy Communion, because by this sacrament we unite ourselves to Christ, who makes us sharers in his Body and Blood to form a single body. 149 We also call it: the holy things (ta hagia; sancta) 150 - the first meaning of the phrase "communion of saints" in the Apostles' Creed - the Bread of angels, bread from heaven, medicine of immortality, 151 viaticum....

The Lord's Supper, because of its connection with the supper which the Lord took with his disciples on the eve of his Passion and because it anticipates the wedding feast of the Lamb in the heavenly Jerusalem. 141 The Breaking of Bread, because Jesus used this rite, part of a Jewish meat when as master of the table he blessed and distributed the bread, 142 above all at the Last Supper. 143 It is by this action that his disciples will recognize him after his Resurrection, 144 and it is this expression that the first Christians will use to designate their Eucharistic assemblies; 145 by doing so they signified that all who eat the one broken bread, Christ, enter into Communion with him and form but one body in him. 146 The Eucharistic assembly (synaxis), because the Eucharist is celebrated amid the assembly of the Faithful, the visible expression of the Church. 147

Inasmuch as they are creatures, these perceptible realities can become means of expressing the action of God who sanctifies men, and the action of men who offer worship to God. the same is true of signs and symbols taken from the social life of man: washing and anointing, breaking Bread and sharing the cup can express the sanctifying Presence of God and man's gratitude toward his Creator.

It is on this harmony of the two Testaments that the Paschal catechesis of the Lord is built, 15 and then, that of the Apostles and the Fathers of the Church. This catechesis unveils what lay hidden under the letter of the Old Testament: the mystery of Christ. It is called "typological" because it reveals the newness of Christ on the basis of the "figures" (types) which announce him in the deeds, words, and symbols of the first covenant. By this re-reading in the Spirit of Truth, starting from Christ, the figures are unveiled. 16 Thus the flood and Noah's ark prefigured salvation by Baptism, 17 as did the cloud and the crossing of the Red Sea. Water from the rock was the figure of the spiritual Gifts of Christ, and manna in the desert prefigured the Eucharist, "the true Bread from heaven." 18

In the primitive community of Jerusalem, the disciples "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of the Bread and the prayers." 480 Communion in the Faith. the faith of the Faithful is the faith of the Church, received from the apostles. Faith is a treasure of life which is enriched by being shared.

For this reason, the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord's Body. She never ceases to present to the Faithful the Bread of life, taken from the one table of God's Word and Christ's Body. 66

The miracles of the multiplication of the loaves, when the Lord says the Blessing, breaks and distributes the loaves through his disciples to feed the multitude, prefigure the superabundance of this unique Bread of his Eucharist. 156 The sign of water turned into wine at Cana already announces the Hour of Jesus' glorification. It makes manifest the fulfillment of the wedding feast in the Father's kingdom, where the Faithful will drink the new wine that has become the Blood of Christ. 157

The three synoptic Gospels and St. Paul have handed on to us the account of the institution of the Eucharist; St. John, for his part, reports the words of Jesus in the synagogue of Capernaum that prepare for the institution of the Eucharist: Christ calls himself the Bread of life, come down from heaven. 163

It was above all on "the first day of the week," Sunday, the day of Jesus' resurrection, that the Christians met "to break Bread." 167 From that time on down to our own day the celebration of the Eucharist has been continued so that today we encounter it everywhere in the Church with the same fundamental structure. It remains the center of the Church's life.

The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic Faith by declaring: "Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of Bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his Blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation." 204

It is by the conversion of the Bread and wine into Christ's body and Blood that Christ becomes present in this sacrament. the Church Fathers strongly affirmed the Faith of the Church in the efficacy of the Word of Christ and of the action of the Holy Spirit to bring about this conversion. Thus St. John Chrysostom declares:

We carry out this command of the Lord by celebrating the memorial of his Sacrifice. In so doing, we offer to the Father what he has himself given us: the Gifts of his creation, Bread and wine which, by the power of the Holy Spirit and by the words of Christ, have become the body and Blood of Christ. Christ is thus really and mysteriously made present.

In the Communion, preceded by the Lord's prayer and the breaking of the Bread, the Faithful receive "the bread of heaven" and "the cup of salvation," the body and Blood of Christ who offered himself "for the life of the world": 179

In the epiclesis, the Church asks the Father to send his Holy Spirit (or the power of his Blessing 178 ) on the Bread and wine, so that by his power they may become the body and Blood of Jesus Christ and so that those who take part in the Eucharist may be one body and one spirit (some liturgical traditions put the epiclesis after the anamnesis). In the institution narrative, the power of the words and the action of Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit, make sacramentally present under the species of bread and wine Christ's body and blood, his Sacrifice offered on the cross once for all.

From the very beginning Christians have brought, along with the Bread and wine for the Eucharist, Gifts to share with those in need. This custom of the collection, ever appropriate, is inspired by the example of Christ who became poor to make us rich: 176

The presentation of the offerings (the Offertory). Then, sometimes in procession, the Bread and wine are brought to the altar; they will be offered by the priest in the name of Christ in the Eucharistic Sacrifice in which they will become his body and Blood. It is the very action of Christ at the Last Supper - "taking the bread and a cup." "The Church alone offers this pure oblation to the Creator, when she offers what comes forth from his creation with thanksgiving." 175 The presentation of the offerings at the altar takes up the gesture of Melchizedek and commits the Creator's Gifts into the hands of Christ who, in his sacrifice, brings to perfection all human attempts to offer sacrifices.

Is this not the same movement as the Paschal meal of the risen Jesus with his disciples? Walking with them he explained the Scriptures to them; sitting with them at table "he took Bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them." 172

The liturgy of the Eucharist unfolds according to a fundamental structure which has been preserved throughout the centuries down to our own day. It displays two great parts that form a fundamental unity: - the gathering, the liturgy of the Word, with readings, homily and general intercessions; - the liturgy of the Eucharist, with the presentation of the Bread and wine, the consecratory thanksgiving, and Communion. The liturgy of the Word and liturgy of the Eucharist together form "one single act of worship"; 170 The Eucharistic table set for us is the table both of the Word of God and of the Body of the Lord. 171

The apostles entrusted the "Sacred deposit" of the Faith (the depositum fidei), 45 contained in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, to the whole of the Church. "By adhering to [this heritage] the entire holy people, united to its pastors, remains always Faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of Bread and the prayers. So, in maintaining, practising and professing the faith that has been handed on, there should be a remarkable harmony between the bishops and the faithful." 46