6 facts about the Eucharist

From September 8 to 15, fifty delegations from 50 countries will meet in Quito (Ecuador) to attend the 53rd International Eucharistic Congress and reflect on Jesus the Eucharist.

Therefore, in order to contribute to the knowledge of this gift from God, we share six facts about what the Eucharist is:

1. What is the Eucharist?

The Eucharist is the sacrament in which the bread and wine consecrated by the priest become the Body and Blood of Christ, that is, it is the real presence of the Lord.

In that sense, the Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms that this sacrament is the memorial of Christ’s Passover, the actualization and sacramental offering of his only sacrifice.

2. How does it happen?

This miracle occurs with transubstantiation, which consists of the fact that, at the moment of consecration, the substance of the bread becomes the body of Christ and the substance of the wine becomes his blood.

Dominican priest Roberto Coggi has explained in a text that “of the bread and wine only the appearances or species remain (…), but not the substance, that is, the true reality converted into the body and blood of the Lord.”

3. How long does your presence last?

The Catholic Church teaches in numeral 1377 of the Catechism that “the Eucharistic presence of Christ begins at the moment of consecration and lasts as long as the Eucharistic species subsist. Christ is entirely present in each of the species and entirely present in each of its parts, so that the breaking of bread does not divide Christ.”

4. How should the Eucharist be received?

As Saint Paul indicates, before receiving the Eucharist the faithful must undergo an examination of conscience, because “whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord”, that is, “whoever “He eats and drinks without discerning the Body, he eats and drinks his own punishment.”

Likewise, the Catechism points out that the person who is “aware of being in grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before approaching communion.”

For its part, canon 919 The Code of Canon Law recalls that the faithful must observe the fast prescribed by the Church “of abstaining from taking any food and drink at least one hour before Holy Communion, with the exception only of water and medicines.”

The same canon clarifies that elderly or sick people, and those who care for them, “can receive the Most Holy Eucharist even if they have taken something in the immediately preceding hour.”

5. The danger of excommunication

Excommunication is the most serious penalty for a baptized person, since it indicates that he is prevented from receiving Communion. In that sense, canon 1382 warns that “whoever throws consecrated species on the ground, or takes them or retains them for a sacrilegious purpose, incurs latae sententiae excommunication”, that is, automatic, the lifting of which is reserved only to the Apostolic See

6. Eucharistic miracles

Finally, it should be noted that in the two thousand years that the Church has been on pilgrimage on earth, there have been numerous occasions on which God has intervened to confirm faith in the real presence of Christ in the consecrated host.

These prodigious interventions are known as Eucharistic miracles and, as Father Coggi explained, they “seek to confirm this faith that is based on the words of Jesus, what seems like bread is not bread and what seems like wine is not wine.”

“In Eucharistic miracles,” he points out, “flesh and blood are effectively seen, or one without the other depending on the miracle.”