A Mystery to Be Lived

"It is about expressing in life what we have celebrated here.... A disciple of Jesus does not go to Church to just observe a precept, to feel alright with a God that does not ‘disturb’ too much.... This is the attitude of many Catholics, many. The disciple of Jesus goes to Church to meet with the Lord and find in His Grace, working in the Sacraments, the strength to think and act according to the Gospel."
-Pope Francis
 

Every liturgical celebration always concludes with the mission. What we live and celebrate leads us to go out towards others, to encounter the world that surrounds us, to encounter the joys and the needs of many who perhaps live without knowing the gift of God. The genuine liturgical life, especially the Eucharist, always impels us to charity, which is above all openness and attention to others. This attitude always begins and is founded in prayer, especially liturgical prayer. And this dimension also opens us up to dialogue, to encounter, to the ecumenical spirit, to acceptance.

-Pope Francis

“A true eucharist is never a passive, comforting moment with God, something which allows us to escape the cares and concerns of our everyday life. Eucharist is where all these cares and concerns come to a focus, and where we are asked to measure them against the standard lived by Jesus when he proclaimed for all to hear that the bread that he would give would provide life for the entire world. But it will do so only if, finding ourselves with a basket of bread, we have peered deeply enough into the heart of Christ to know what to do with it.”

-Archbishop Paul Bernier (1906-1964), Archbishop of Gaspé, Canada

LEX VIVENDI

Christianity's new worship includes and transfigures every aspect of life: "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor 10:31). Christians, in all their actions, are called to offer true worship to God. Here the intrinsically eucharistic nature of Christian life begins to take shape. The Eucharist, since it embraces the concrete, everyday existence of the believer, makes possible, day by day, the progressive transfiguration of all those called by grace to reflect the image of the Son of God (cf. Rom 8:29ff.). There is nothing authentically human – our thoughts and affections, our words and deeds – that does not find in the sacrament of the Eucharist the form it needs to be lived to the full. Here we can see the full human import of the radical newness brought by Christ in the Eucharist: the worship of God in our lives cannot be relegated to something private and individual, but tends by its nature to permeate every aspect of our existence. Worship pleasing to God thus becomes a new way of living our whole life, each particular moment of which is lifted up, since it is lived as part of a relationship with Christ and as an offering to God. The glory of God is the living man (cf. 1 Cor 10:31). And the life of man is the vision of God. (Sacramentum caritatis, 71)

USCCB: Liturgy and Life

USCCB: Eucharist and Social Mission

• Video: The Eucharist and the Church's Social Mission: Body of Christ, Broken for the World
• Bulletin Insert: "Eucharist, Body of Christ, Broken for the World"

LTP: God Appears in the Ordinary / Dios está en lo ordinario

LTP: Each Sacrament Connects to the Eucharist

Evangelization (Fr. Richard Watson)

Paulist Evangelization Ministries Webinar:
"The Mystery of the Eucharist and Evangelization"
[slides]

LTP: The New Evangelization in a Diverse Church: Culture Matters

LTP: The Mission of the Baptized

LTP: The Church and Other Faiths

LTP: The Church's Relationship with the World 

USCCB: Sacraments and Social Mission

USCCB: Seven Themes of Catholic Social Teaching

Select Bibliography

Laudato Si' (en español)

236. It is in the Eucharist that all that has been created finds its greatest exaltation. Grace, which tends to manifest itself tangibly, found unsurpassable expression when God himself became man and gave himself as food for his creatures. The Lord, in the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation, chose to reach our intimate depths through a fragment of matter. He comes not from above, but from within, he comes that we might find him in this world of ours. In the Eucharist, fullness is already achieved; it is the living centre of the universe, the overflowing core of love and of inexhaustible life. Joined to the incarnate Son, present in the Eucharist, the whole cosmos gives thanks to God. Indeed the Eucharist is itself an act of cosmic love: “Yes, cosmic! Because even when it is celebrated on the humble altar of a country church, the Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on the altar of the world”. The Eucharist joins heaven and earth; it embraces and penetrates all creation. The world which came forth from God’s hands returns to him in blessed and undivided adoration: in the bread of the Eucharist, “creation is projected towards divinization, towards the holy wedding feast, towards unification with the Creator himself”. Thus, the Eucharist is also a source of light and motivation for our concerns for the environment, directing us to be stewards of all creation.

237. On Sunday, our participation in the Eucharist has special importance. Sunday, like the Jewish Sabbath, is meant to be a day which heals our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others and with the world. Sunday is the day of the Resurrection, the “first day” of the new creation, whose first fruits are the Lord’s risen humanity, the pledge of the final transfiguration of all created reality. It also proclaims “man’s eternal rest in God”. In this way, Christian spirituality incorporates the value of relaxation and festivity. We tend to demean contemplative rest as something unproductive and unnecessary, but this is to do away with the very thing which is most important about work: its meaning. We are called to include in our work a dimension of receptivity and gratuity, which is quite different from mere inactivity. Rather, it is another way of working, which forms part of our very essence. It protects human action from becoming empty activism; it also prevents that unfettered greed and sense of isolation which make us seek personal gain to the detriment of all else. The law of weekly rest forbade work on the seventh day, “so that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your maidservant, and the stranger, may be refreshed” (Ex 23:12). Rest opens our eyes to the larger picture and gives us renewed sensitivity to the rights of others. And so the day of rest, centred on the Eucharist, sheds it light on the whole week, and motivates us to greater concern for nature and the poor.

See: Caring for Our Common Home: Eucharistic Solidarity

ICEL: Living a Eucharistic Life (Irwin)*
-Sources*
-Summary*

LTP: Resources (see under "Live the Liturgical Action")

LTP: Receiving the Eucharist, Opening Ourselves to Change / Recibir la Eucaristía nos abre al cambio

LTP: Liturgy Unites, Fortifies Disciples to Bring Justice to the World 

LTP: The Eucharist Changes the World: Effects on the Person

LTP: The Eucharist Changes the World: Effects on Society and Culture

LTP: Drawing the Parish to Partake in God's Mercy

Video: Liturgy, Prayer, Pastoral Care and Pandemics (ACU Centre for Liturgy)

Video: Ritual Bodies as ‘Reasonable Worship’: Putting Liturgy in Proper Ethical Perspective (ACU Centre for Liturgy)

Parish Program: Living the Eucharist (Paulist Evangelization Ministries)
Inspired by Pope Beneicts's Sacramentum caritatis, Living the Eucharist runs during Lent for three years and is designed to help revitalize parish life and mission through a more profound experience of Sunday Mass. Parishioners can take part in adult and teen faith-sharing groups, devotional and catechetical Lenten readings, and a prayer campaign. Also available in Spanish. 

*Excerpts from Become One Body, One Spirit in Christ © 2010, International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation. All rights reserved.