The Eucharist is the ‘source and summit’ of Christian life. What does that really mean?

This essay was originally published on March 4, 2024, on Americamagazine.org.

This essay is a Cover Story selection, a weekly feature highlighting the top picks from the editors of America Media.

The call for Eucharistic revival we have heard in the church is particularly important to priests. Why? Because we are responsible for presiding and offering the Mass, which priests do in persona Christi. This configuration to Christ as head and shepherd of the church that takes place at our ordination as priests comes to its full expression gradually through our devoted pastoral ministry and care for God’s people. This expression is centered upon Christ present in the sacrifice and offering of the Eucharist that then is extended through the other sacraments and apostolic works that we celebrate and administer to the faithful.

The development and fruition of this configuration is entirely owed to grace. We read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that “the Eucharist is ‘the source and summit of the Christian life.’ All sacraments, ministries, and works of the apostolate are bound up and oriented to the Eucharist” (No. 1324).

I would offer, however, that we currently might be placing a disproportionate emphasis upon the Eucharist as the summit of Christian life through our intense focus on the form of liturgical celebration and its accompanying emotional consolation—one strictly identified with interior healing—while overlooking or even ignoring the Eucharist offered and received in its sacrificial character as the source of Christian life.

This disproportionate emphasis soon leads us to value the Mass only as the object of our desires and priorities, to the point that its celebration becomes something functional that we do for ourselves, to which we invite God. When we approach Mass this way, we begin to subordinate the Eucharist into an instrument for evangelization, instead of the other way around. We confuse ends and means, cause and effect; the Eucharist soon becomes reduced to spectacle, whether at Mass or in procession and adoration.

The contemporary challenge of evangelization for the church should be at the heart of our pastoral ministry and mission as priests, configured to Christ as head and shepherd of the church, entrusted by him to offer the sacred mysteries and preach his Gospel. In praying the Mass, we are reminded that Christ is not the instrument of evangelization: We are his instruments. Similarly, we are not the primary agents of evangelization: Christ is.

You can find the rest of the article at https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2024/03/04/olson-eucharistic-revival-source-summit-247416