The Most Holy Eucharist, “stands at the center of the Church’s life”,
1 since it truly “contains the Church’s entire spiritual wealth: Christ himself, our Passover and Living Bread.”
2 ‘The Church has received the Eucharist from Christ her Lord not as one gift—however precious—along so many others, but as the gift par excellence, for it is the gift of himself, of his person in his sacred humanity, as well as the gift of his saving work.’
3 That surpassing gift of the Eucharist is where the Church draws her life, the dynamic force of all her activity and her whole sense of purpose and direction. As the Second Vatican Council proclaimed, the Eucharistic sacrifice is “the source and summit of Christian life.”
4 The celebration of the Mass is the action of Christ and the People of God arrayed hierarchically. It is the center of the whole Christian Life for the Church both universal and local, as well as for each of the faithful individually. In it is found the high point both of the action by which God sanctifies the world in Christ and of the worship that the human race offers to the Father, adoring him through Christ, the Son of God, in the Holy Spirit. In it, moreover, during the course of the year, the mysteries of redemption are recalled so as in some way to be made present. Furthermore, the other sacred actions and all the activities of the Christian life are bound up with it, flow from it, and are ordered to it.
5 It is therefore of the greatest importance that the celebration of Holy Mass be so arranged that the sacred ministers and the faithful taking part in it, according to the proper state of each, may derive from it more abundantly those fruits for the sake of which Christ the Lord instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of his Body and Blood and entrusted it to the Church, his beloved Bride, as the memorial of his Passion and Resurrection.
6
1 Pope John Paul II, Encyclical,
Ecclesia de Eucharistia. 3
2 Second Vatican Council, Decree
Presbyterorum ordinis. 5.
3 Pope John Paul II, Encyclical,
Ecclesia de Eucharistia. 11
4 Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution
Lumen gentium. 11
5General Instruction of the Roman Missal, (US English edition 2011) 16,
Catechism of Catholic Church (CCC) 1322-1326
6General Instruction of the Roman Missal, (US English edition 2011) 17, Second Vatican Council, Constitution
Sacrosanctum Concilium 14, 19, 26, 28, 30, 47.
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