NTR-Feb02 A

the Sunday Eucharist confirms the idea that parishes come in all shapes and sizes. Rich, poor, black, white, the constitution of the contemporary parish community is as varied as the physical, cultural, and economic landscapes in which the Church resides. And yet we are called by our shared baptism to be one people, one body in Christ. The symbol of our unity, the celebration of our oneness in the Lord, is the Eucharist. So it is legitimate to ask, given the diversity among communities today, how do we identify ourselves as a eucharistic people and how does this resonate in a multi-cultural society? We know from scriptural accounts of the Last Supper that Jesus gave to his disciples a way to express how Christ had called them to live. This new way of being is captured by Paul when he writes, “[t]here is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ” (Gal 3:28). To be baptized into Christ is to receive a new identity which calls one to be human in a radical way, a way which follows Christ and the cross of Christ. Paul captures this eloquently: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:19-20). In Christ our relationship with one another is not set by family ties, or by ties of race or class. Instead, we are called to rise from the waters of baptism as new creation, expressing our lives in Christ through our actions as Church, as a communion of persons. Indeed, the Church finds its deepest expression of this radical way of being when it gathers to celebrate the Eucharist. Augustine expresses the formative power of the Eucharist when he states, “[t]herefore if you yourselves are the body of Christ and his members, then your own mystery lies on the altar . . . Be what you see, and receive what you are” (Sermon 272). The Eucharist is the focus for the Church’s self-identity. No less today than in Augustine’s time, the contemporary community is called to live out this commitment to Christ and to one another. The manner in which the Eucharist is celebrated expresses both the self-understanding of the community and also exercises an essential formative power in its ecclesial identity.