The Eucharist: the highest form of Communal Prayer

Touching is a deeply intimate act. Physically touching someone implies a certain objective: “I want to get closer to you.” Touching transmits a kind of warmth from one person to another. The touch of one person to another suggests a certain level of trust and confidence in the other. It also implies a vulnerability in those who are touching.

What does a person achieve with a tight hug? Why such exaggeration? It seems to be a primordial act of trying to become one person with the other. Would it not be sufficient to say to a person while standing at a distance, “I love you?” That is not enough. It is as if persons who are embracing each other are trying to take the person physically into themselves but the fact that they are corporeal makes this union impossible.

Is not every expression of intimacy and love between a husband and wife an attempt to achieve the most perfect communion possible? Otherwise, all those “strange” behaviors would be nonsensical.

The love between spouses utilizes many and varied expressions of communion. Communion is the expression of an attitude, a mindset, “I want to be one with you because I love you.” Is it any wonder that in the realm of the mystical, marital language is often employed?

We humans attempt every possible means to achieve communion, being one in mind, spirit and body, but this is impossible because we are limited by our physical nature.

Now comes Christ. Christ wishes to restore us to full communion with the Father, the one from whom we came. When the human race was created, it was created in the image and likeness of God. Already from the beginning, we had communion with the Creator despite the fact that we had a physical nature. Our physical nature did not hinder God’s ability to live in communion with us.

What is Christ’s ultimate objective? To reunite us to the Father. We had breached that communion, that being in each other. Our communion in and with Christ is the “way” that we achieve reconciliation and communion with the Father in the Holy Spirit. This is the essence and the power of Baptism. We are incorporated into Christ, literally. We are made a part of his body, his mystical body so as to achieve communion with the Father.

Communion also implies something very particular. It implies communication. That means that those who are in communion are also exchanging life and love. It is a constant loving and giving and sharing and living in and with the other. This is prayer.

Prayer is loving discourse, loving intercourse, with God. Prayer and Communion are synonymous. But why the Eucharist. Because we are physical beings and not spiritual only. In heaven, we don’t only achieve spiritual union with God; the body is also taken up into this communion.

When the Lord Jesus, gives us the Eucharist he is making an eternal reality, a future reality, present now. All of us can be spiritually united to the Godhead. The body, as well, is intended to participate in this communion. Christ himself is the means of that communion and without him that communion is impossible.

We are made one not just with God, but with all the members of the mystical body of Christ. When we receive the Eucharist, we are in spousal union with God. The Eucharist becomes the highest form of Communal Prayer because being one with God is the most intimate, most powerful, most complete communication of love between us and the Triune God.

Communion as a oneness of persons and Communion as a Sacrament differ in only one way; when it is achieved sacramentally, it is in fact and not in attitude or mind alone. The fundamental binding power of this communion is love and love always seeks the other. Charity by definition is never self-seeking but looks to the good of the other.

Thus, perfect Communion, living the Eucharistic mystery perfectly bears a natural fruit that is not coerced but born freely and that is love of the other. The other is always seen as beloved of God and; therefore, the one who achieves perfect love of God cannot but adopt the love that God possesses and that is a love of all his creatures without qualification. Greater charity than this we cannot achieve than to love as God loves.

See column in Spanish here.