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In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
When the Lord instituted at the Last Supper that mystery of our faith
which we call the Holy Liturgy or the Eucharist, He gathered round
Himself His Disciples, both those who were later to be faithful even
unto death, and also the one who was already prepared to betray his
Master. And He confronted him together with the others, with the
extraordinary love of God, because to be admitted to a man's table means
that he, our host, consider us to be his equals, his companions in the
old sense of this word, those who are untitled to break the bread with
him, to share with him the substance of life. Equals in the love of God,
equals of God through His love to us, - this is one of the aspects of
this extraordinary event which we call the Last Supper.
But we have given it also another name, we call it the Eucharist, from a
Greek word which means simultaneously "gift" and "thanksgiving". Indeed
we can see that communion to the Body and Blood of Christ is the
greatest gift which the Lord can grant us: companionship and equality,
becoming the co-workers of God. And through the incredible, unfathomable
action and power of the Spirit, because this bread is no longer bread
only and this wine is no longer only wine, but have truly become the
Body and the Blood of the Giver, we become incipiently and increasingly
partakers of the divine nature, Gods by adoption, Gods by participation,
so that together with the One Who is the Incarnate Son of God, we became
the total revelation of man as well as the total revelation of God's
presence, the total Christ of whom St Ignatius of Antioche spoke. And
beyond this, higher, deeper even than this, in this community of nature
and of life with the Only-Begotten Son of God in the words of St
Irenaeus of Lyon, we become truly with regard to God Himself the only
begotten son.
This is the gift, but where is the thanksgiving? What can we bring to
the Lord? Bread and wine, they belong to Him; our own lives? Are we not
His? He has called us out of naught, He has brought us into being, He
has endowed us with all that we are and all that we possess. What then
can we give which is really ours? St Maxim the Confessor says that God
can do all things, save one: He cannot compel the smallest of His
creatures to love Him, because love is supreme freedom. This is the only
gift which we can bring to God: the gift of a trusting heart.
But why is this mysterious Supper of the Eucharist called the
thanksgiving more than any other service, more than any action of ours?
What can be given to God? This is a question which the Psalmist was
asking himself centuries before Christ appeared and revealed the divine
love, and his answer was so unexpected and so true. He says "What reward
shall I give to the Lord for all His benefits?" and he replies "I shall
take the Cup of salvation, I will give thanks unto the Lord, I will sing
praise in the courts of the Temple of the Lord". The supreme act of
thanksgiving is not to give back, because one who receives and pays
back, repays the gift and in some sort of way, destroys the gift; both
indeed become equal, both have given, both have been at the giving end
of the chain, but this reciprocal giving has destroyed both joy up to a
point. If we wish, if we are capable of receiving, of receiving
whole-heartedly, then we are expressing truly our total trust, our
assurance that the love of the giver is perfect and it is in receiving
whole-heartedly in all simplicity that we bring joy to the one who has
given from all his heart.
This is true even in human relationship; we wish to repay a gift only to
make ourselves free from gratitude and from a certain enslavement in
which we are put when we receive from one who does not love us enough to
give whole-heartedly and whom we do not love enough to receive
whole-heartedly. And this is why the Eucharist is the supreme
thanksgiving of the Church and the supreme thanksgiving of our earth:
people who trust the love of God open-heartedly, without any thought of
repaying the gift, only rejoicing in the love it expresses, receive from
God not only what He can grant but also what He is, participation to His
life, to His nature, to His eternity, to His love divine. Only if we are
capable of receiving with perfect gratitude and perfect joy can our
participation in the Eucharist be true, only then does the Eucharist
become for us also the supreme act of gratitude. But gratitude is
difficult because it requires both a loving heart capable of rejoicing
when it receives and a perfect trust and faith in the love of the one
who gives, trust that this gift is not meant as an humiliation or as an
act of enslavement. And this is why we must grow from day to day into
the ability to love and to be loved, into the ability to be grateful and
to rejoice, and only then does become the Last Supper of the Lord the
perfect gift of God and the perfect response of the earth. Amen.
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