The Liberating Eucharist

Abstract

In his 1977 book The Eucharist and Human Liberation, Tissa Balasuriya reminds us that “the Eucharist has an extraordinary potential for being an agent of personal and global transformation. Every week about two hundred million persons meet all over the world in Christian communities”. Yet, while the worldwide eucharistic congregations every Sunday probably make up the largest global assembly for any shared purpose, the influence of the Eucharist on the creation of a more just, more loving and (in fine) more Christian world is almost minimal. The paradox, in Balasuriya’s words, “is that while the example of Jesus should make the eucharistic community a champion of social justice and a contestant of social evil, this happens very seldom” (op. cit. pp 85-6). Gustavo Gutiérrez has tried to emphasize this matter by directing a hard hit at the quality of the Eucharist as celebrated in some gatherings:“without a real commitment against exploitation and alienation and for a society of solidarity and justice, the eucharistic celebration is an empty action, lacking any genuine endorsement by those who participate in it”.But Gutiérrez oversimplifies here. The search to help resolve the paradox has to take into account not only attitudes of indifference but also the theological schizophrenia — the great divorce between faith and life, or religion and everything else — which underlies and has helped to form them. This has led, on the one hand, to the ‘idealist’ and ‘spiritualist’ attitudes which (as Gutiérrez maintains) avoid the sharp realities; and, on the other hand, to the huge loss of credibility sustained by the Church in the present century and hence by the Eucharist which lies, or should lie, at the heart of the Church’s work.