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We Cannot Live without the Eucharist

This Rock Volume 19, Number 8   October 2008     Reasons for Hope By Cherie Peacock   Letters   How the First Christians Changed the World (and What We Can Learn from Them) By Fr. Michael Giesler   Suffering and Death Have Meaning   We Cannot Live without the Eucharist   Pop Goes the Mass: The Curse of Bad Liturgical Music (Part One) By Anthony Esolen   The Church Has Spoken. Is Anyone Listening? By Mary Ann Carr Wilson   From the Horse’s Mouth: Quotes from Church Documents By Mary Ann Carr Wilson   Muddy Waters By Mary Ann Carr Wilson   Why I Didn’t Convert to Eastern Orthodoxy By Fr. Brian W. Harrison, O.S.   Should Catholics Be Environmentalists? By Ron Rychlak   Children Indoctrinated at Museums   Sierra Club’s Two-Child Policy   Further Reading   Damascus Road No Longer Tossed To and Fro By John E. Lopez   By the Book How to Be a (Truly) Tolerant Christian By Jim Blackburn   Eyes to See What Is Hidden Will Be Revealed By Michael Schrauzer   Truth be Told The (Not-So-Mindless) American Catholic Voter By Robert P. Lockwood   Quick Questions   Last Writes By Karl Keating    Subscribe    Permissions

For an early Christian to miss the Sunday Eucharist was unthinkable. At the beginning of the fourth century, 49 Christians in northern Africa went to their deaths rather than miss the weekly Mass (Cf. Message of the XI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist, October 22, 2005). "We cannot live without the Eucharist" was a statement repeated by early Christians. St. Justin Martyr, who taught in Rome between A.D. 140 and 165, wrote one of the earliest accounts of the Mass. It had essentially the same structure as it has today: gathering of the faithful, readings from the inspired books, homily or exhortation, offering of gifts, eucharistic prayer, reception of Communion, final dismissal. It was in the Eucharist that these early believers participated most intimately in the life and sacrifice of Christ, sharing in the power of their God which then overflowed into the rest of their day. This conviction and practice was so strongly rooted in them that not until later times—when some Christians began to grow lax in their worship—did the Church institute the law of Sunday observance, binding under grave sin.