Eucharist as the celebration of life

Eucharist is the celebration of life, both the life of Jesus and the life of ours. Anytime when the Eucharist is limited to a church altar and the species of bread and wine it does not communicate what it really contains. God is life and giver of life. Jesus offered his life in a life that was self emptying and life giving. Even in the unjust death he suffered he poured out love and life. That life and love unite all of us into his own body, and through him take us into the communion with the Father.

Atonement figuration in connection with the Old Testament does not sufficiently hold what Jesus has done for us. Reparation, ransom, redemption, retribution and so on somehow condition God and constrains the understanding of the life that Jesus gives us. Divine life in us needs to be understood in terms of dynamics of life itself. Truth of Christ is as the life giver, though our emphasis goes to him as sin bearer. He himself is the reason for our life and in the whole of creation and the grace at work in us, even before he became man. This life, communion, and that reality lived in our life as forgiveness, reconciliation, sacrifice, love and communion together make the Eucharist.

Since "Eucharist is the source and summit" of Christian life, our understanding of the church, priesthood, mission, family, devotion and every dimension of Christian life will be formulated based on how we understand the Eucharist. If it is simply a ritual performance at an altar, if it receives an image of a super-powered bread, accordingly it will reformulate others.

The divine life, the life of the Holy Spirit in us shapes us as individuals and communities into the image of Jesus. The beauty and richness of life (both divine and human) is the meal we serve for one another with the words, 'this is my body, this is my blood.' Unwilling to do that in sincerity of heart, we forget the life Jesus emptied for us, and what he meant in his words upon bread and wine, 'this is my body, this is my blood.'

If there is no communion with one another, there is no sincerity in the participation of the bread broken. So a sincere Eucharistic celebration demands justice ensured. Because denial of justice deprives the victims from the life promised to them. The pain of the sacrifice of Christ, calls us to share in the misery of those who suffer near and far. We cannot take the bread in our hand when Christ says, 'take this and eat/ drink' if we cannot be sensitive to the flesh (with grace and with gracelessness) of ourselves and others. In every Eucharist we need to ask ourselves, where am I taking myself in this celebration of the Eucharist? A customary eating and drinking with a favour seeking approach is not what we can do to the Eucharist. Life is to be responded with life.