CHANGING BREAD AND WINE

This portion of the liturgy is the Sacrifice or Consecration. It is founded on two principles:

  • Acceptance of God's will that we be healthy and in communion with him—spiritually, intellectually and physically
  • Actual and immediate response by God to prayer. This response includes the mysterious spiritual change of bread and wine into Body and Blood of Christ so that both physically and spiritually we are included in the Life-Giving Being of the Risen Christ.
"This is My Body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

Along with Baptism, Eucharist has been essential to every Christian community from the earliest times. Even today, Christians of the most varied heritage still maintain this sacrament precisely because it first came from the hand of Jesus in the Upper Room in Jerusalem "on the night in which he was betrayed."
Eucharistic theology is not a matter of human speculation, but is basic to the Bible itself. Writing within 30 years of the first Easter, Paul himself referred to a venerable tradition which he considered basic: "For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of Me." 1 Corinthians, 11:23


The Eucharist is grounded in the life of Jesus. It extends the ministry of Jesus through time and space. It links us in the here-and-now with the life ever-lasting. Because it is Christ's own special gift, it is almost impossible to make too high a claim for the mystery, meaning and benefit of this sacrament.
Detail from the
Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament
St. Peter's, Louvain, Belgium
1464-67
Next: Acknowledgement of Our Unworthiness