They Recognized Him in the Breaking of the Bread

On the Third Sunday of Easter, the Church urges us to reflect on another encounter with the risen Lord and how his disciples recognized him in the breaking of the bread.  Christians know the phrase “breaking of the bread” is not an ordinary meal but the bread from heaven, consisting of Christ’s body, blood, soul, and divinity.

The Eucharist is so important in the Catholic faith that Vatican II declared it the “source and summit” of Christian life. The Council teaches that through the Eucharist’s action, humans offer Jesus, the Divine Victim, to God and themselves.

The Nuptial Meaning of the Eucharist 

In making this declaration, the Council cited a sentence from John’s Gospel that implies that the Eucharist is meant to strengthen and make real our relationship with God. “And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.” Jesus, in obedience to the Father’s will, accepted the mission of reconciling the world to himself by breaking the isolation from God that sin had caused.

The restoration from the darkness of sin was made possible through the sacrifice of the Cross, whereby Jesus, in love for humanity, gave his total self. The sacrifice of the Cross is made timeless and ever-present through the sacrament of the Eucharist, wherein the act of Jesus’ total self-giving is made present in a substantial way in each Mass and for every generation, continuing until the end of time.  

The Eucharist becomes how Jesus intimately relates to his bride, the Church. Jesus’s relationship with his bride through the Eucharist significantly presents the reality that the head of the body (Jesus) is united with her faithful members who make up the Church. 

In his Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, St. John Paul II connects the Eucharist with Christ’s spousal love of his bride, the Church. He writes, “Christ’s spousal and redemptive love continuously given to his bride the Church is made present in the Eucharist and is ‘the gift par excellence,’ for it is the gift of himself, of his person in sacred humanity, as well as the gift of his saving work.”

Pope Benedict, in his apostolic exhortation, Sacramentum Caritatis, also refers to the  Eucharist as a nuptial sacrament.  The Pope explains, “Conjugal love is a sacramental sign of Christ’s love for his Church, a love culminating in the Cross, the expression of ‘his marriage’ with humanity and at the same time the origin and heart of the Eucharist.”

Meeting the Risen Lord

Like the disciples who did not recognize the risen Jesus immediately, we sometimes fail to recognize him when we receive the Eucharist. Due to our blindness and inattentiveness, we fail to realize and appreciate that as members of the Church, we enter into an intimate relationship with God himself through the sacrament.     

As we have already illustrated, the Eucharist is the vehicle by which human beings can be intimate with God and is so profound that the use of ‘nuptial’ language is most appropriate.  St. John Paul II, in talking about the gift of the Eucharist and the relationship strengthened between God and human beings through the sacrament, writes: “We can say not only that each of us receives Christ, but also that Christ receives each of us. He enters into friendship with us: ‘You are my friends’ (Jn 15:14). Indeed, it is because of him that we have life: ‘He who eats me will live because of me’ (Jn 6:57). Eucharistic communion brings about in a sublime way the mutual ‘abiding’ of Christ and each of his followers: ‘Abide in me, and I in you’ (Jn 15:4).               

What can be a greater mutual expression of love, whereby two fleshes become one in the Eucharist? Through the reception of the Eucharist, we meet the risen Lord and already share the Lord’s eternal life, possessing it here on earth as the bride (the Church) welcomes the intimate union with the bridegroom (Risen Jesus). “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread I give is my flesh for the life of the world.”