Jesus and the Eucharist

[lakotak]

I feel a little strange asking this question. I probably should know, but I don’t think I have ever really heard it explained. I may at some point have to answer this question, and I just want to know what to say.

How could Jesus institute the Eucharist before He died, while he was still alive? What is Church teaching on this?

 

[123Strontium]

That’s a good question!

 

[Apolojez]

I feel a little strange asking this question. I probably should know, but I don’t think I have ever really heard it explained. I may at some point have to answer this question, and I just want to know what to say.

How could Jesus institute the Eucharist before He died, while he was still alive? What is Church teaching on this?

I do know of what St. Augustine has said, that Our Lord held himself in his own hands and commenced the sacrifice of the New Covenant Passover as He was transforming the old.

I guess it would be like asking how God did this or that. I’m sure the Church regards it as a mystery.

I did find this from the Catholic Encyclopedia…

“the actual manner in which the absence of the bread and the presence of the Body of Christ is effected, is not read into the words of Institution but strictly and exegetically deduced from them”.

Meaning that we can learn what Jesus is literally doing yet we can’t deduce how he does it.

 

[malambo]

Why to ask such a question? God gives when he wants, the way he wants and at the time he wants. Instead of questioning him, let us open our arms and extend our hands to receive with thanksgiving and humility his great gift of love.
According to John, in his Last Supper, Jesus showed how he loved his own to the end (Jn 13:1). He gave himself totally and fully. The Eucharist is the manifestation of that love. And his death on the cross was his supreme gift of love.
We cannot separate the Eucharist from his passion and death on the cross. “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lords death until He comes.” (1 Co 11:26). **In the Last Supper, Jesus gives the meaning of his impending death. **His body is given for us, and his blood is the blood of the covenant, shed for the forgiveness of sins (1 Co 11:24-25; Mt 26:28). He presents his death on the cross as the sacrifice of the New Covenant, a sacrifice o reconciliation for the remission of sins. That’s why we are commanded to do it in his remembrance, so that we may have a share in this sacrifice.
After the resurrection, several times, Jesus made his presence felt during the community reunion and during a meal (remember specially the meal with the two disciples traveling to Emmaus). In the Eucharist, we celebrate the resurrection, but that celebration only becomes full of meaning and joy after approaching the cross and feeling the pain and loneliness of the tomb. In the Eucharist, we are together with Jesus at the Cross, on which he died for us, so that we may rise with him.

 

[Nige90]

For what my (name removed by moderator)ut is worth:

Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was not just to redeem those to come, but all who had already passed into the land of the dead. The saving power of the cross transcends all time, from beginning to end, and so it is for this reason that He could offer Himself in the Eucharist then at the Last Supper, in the same way that He does at every Mass to this day.

In the Eucharist we find Christ as the Bread of Life. He is the living bread that gives us all new life. Life gives life.

 

[R_C]

How could Jesus institute the Eucharist before He died, while he was still alive?

“Still alive”? If the Son who is God could dwell in the body of Christ, nothing stops Him from also dwelling in the consecrated Eucharist. He could institute it while still alive, and in fact even today we know that Christ is equally alive in heaven, without this hindering His Real Presence on every consecrated host in the world.

 

[MarcoPolo]

Pope Francis, in a 2008 catechesis on the Eucharist as Cardinal Bergoglio, stated the following:*By preemptively giving Himself at the Last Supper, the Lord transforms the moment and place in which covenants are broken (the moment of the treason by Judas) in the kairos –- of holy time and space – where this new Covenant is sealed forever.*So while there may not be a “dogma” on the matter, it is my experience that the Church has indicated that Christ, bending the order of time, so to speak, held his actual sacrifice in the Eucharist at the Last Supper.

 

[snarflemike]

How could Jesus institute the Eucharist before He died, while he was still alive? What is Church teaching on this?

I don’t understand the question. Whether before the crucifixion or after the resurrection or after the ascenscion, Jesus makes himself really present in multiple places (the Eucharist and the looks-like-a-man Jesus, or multiple Eucharists throughout the world).

As I say, I don’t understand the question. Can you give more detail?

 

[lakotak]

Pope Francis, in a 2008 catechesis on the Eucharist as Cardinal Bergoglio, stated the following:By preemptively giving Himself at the Last Supper, the Lord transforms the moment and place in which covenants are broken (the moment of the treason by Judas) in the kairos –- of holy time and space – where this new Covenant is sealed forever.So while there may not be a “dogma” on the matter, it is my experience that the Church has indicated that Christ, bending the order of time, so to speak, held his actual sacrifice in the Eucharist at the Last Supper.

Yes, I was wondering about. I was thinking that He was transcending our time in order to accomplish this.

I just could not place this at the time I had the question.