Eucharistic Minister:
Living bread and wine for everyone

Mariagnese Giusto

More and more often, lay people, after an appropriate training, may become Eucharistic Ministers, to help in the churches and in the districts where the priests are few, but also to help the priests to bring the Eucharist in the houses of the sick and of those who cannot go to church. To a lay person, this means to live their faith in an active and committed way, using the talents that God gave them.

To be Eucharistic Minister means to be committed apostles who try to put into practice the catechism, trying to fullfill the requirements of what John Paul II calls the new evangelization, which is so much needed at the present time.

Here I want to say what means for me to be a Eucharistic Minister and to share with you my experiences.

Well, but how is it possible to become bread and wine? This is possible by Faith, only by faith: Faith is not a good feeling or something outside of us: Faith is the only way we have to communicate with God and this works by prayer. We must know our model Jesus to become like Him and we can know him just by prayer: St Theresa of Avila said: "Prayer is nothing but friendly intercourse and frequent solitary converse with Him Who we know loves us".

The main prayer is the Eucharist (or Mass) and in the Mass we meet Jesus. When during the Mass, before Communion, we pray the Lamb of God, I like to recall the first meeting of John and Andrew with Jesus in the Gospel of John at the first chapter : John the Baptist told "Look, there is the lamb of God" and so the disciples followed Jesus. And when they asked him where does he live: "Come and see" was the answer of Jesus.

It is during the Mass - at the consacration - that we see what it means to be bread and wine: the host and the wine are a Person!!! a living Person! And so we may talk with him like John and Andrew did in Jesus home and we know He is the King of the Universe! St Paul in the letter to the Philippians writes "All beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld, should bend the knee at the name of Jesus and every tongue should acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2, 10-11).

When we give or receive the Communion we must remember this and also we must remember that we have in our hands the Creator of heaven and earth! Moreover Jesus became bread and wine in the night he was betrayed, the day before he suffered; in Eucharistic prayer 4 is said:" He always loved those who were his own in the world . When the time came for him to be glorified by you, his heavenly Father, he showed the depth of his Love".

So it was not in a night of joy and enthusiasm he made this : when he was betrayed! I guess that we might associate bread with Love and wine with mercy. Recall the parable of the good samaritan: here Jesus shows what to love your neighbour means and in particular what mercy is: "The Samaritan went up to him and bandaged his wounds, puoring oil and wine on them" (Lk 10, 34).

That wine is like the blood of Jesus on the cross, a concrete sign of the divine Mercy: it is poured on our soul to heal and to renew it and to fill us so that we can love the others with the same love and mercy that we received from Jesus! Mercy is the love which is always ready to make allowance, to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes (I Cor 13, 7).

So, now, imagine to be bread: Jesus takes you,... breaks you,... give the others you saying "take this". The bread is always ready to be given and eaten. Sometimes we see bread in the street, in the waste... you, I might be that bread. Yes, because it is easy to be broken by Jesus, but not by our neighbours; and they are never as soft as Jesus... To be bread means to be always ready to say "take me".

In this way we really become a living sacrifice, dedicated and acceptable to God (Rom 12:1) and we also understand that bread and wine are just one thing: you can't be bread without sacrifice and hence you can't be bread without the blood of the cross of Jesus.

The host is white and pure, but when we see a host we must see also the blood of Jesus, the Blood of His sacrifice on the cross. Jesus gave his blood in the cup at the end of the supper after his body: I guess this is also to signify that he was giving all of himself: not only the body but also the blood which is inside the body. He dryed up himself for us, for you, for me! The blood (the consacreted wine) is for us like the cup Jesus drank in the Mount of Olives: we want to drink from the cup and to become wine to be pleasant to God: to do the will of God means, as St Therese of Child Jesus suggests, "to be pleasant" to him, nothing else!

We all are temple of the Holy Spirit as St Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians (3:16) "We are the temple of the living God" and also (in the letter to the Ephisians 2:22) "in Him you are being built up into a dwelling-place of God in the Spirit". To be a living tabernacle we must witness the Lord as the Most Blessed Sacrament: in silence there is a light; he is patient, kind, humble, always ready to listen, pure, simple: Presence of God with us!

Some years ago I read a story: there was a missionary in a village and he celebrated that Mass every sunday. After the Mass he saw the chief of the village standing in front of the tabernacle and doing nothing. After some sundays he asked him: "what are you doing?" and the chief answered: "I'm getting a tan for my soul!". So - I say -we can use also the solar cream to get a tan better: we can use the Gospel as solar cream!

The Blessed Sacrament is our private teacher whenever we pray before him in adoration and he also invite us to enter the tabernacle to stay with him; but we are the temple of God and so we have a personal tabernacle within us: if we learn to enter in our own tabernacle in our heart, we can be always with Him, we can always talk with Him so that we are transformed in Him.

Is it impossible? No! because "There is nothing I cannot do in the One who strengthens me" (Phil. 4, 13) and "Yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me. The life I'm now living, subject to the limitations of the human nature, I am living in faith, faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me". (Gal 2. 20).

		moscati@gesuiti.it
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