As you may be aware, the word Eucharist comes from the Greek for “thanksgiving”—in the gospel story this Sunday Christ, “gives thanks” at his last supper.

Saint Luke calls it the breaking of the bread. Saint Paul calls it the supper of the Lord. Jesus termed it the new covenant in his body and blood. Most of us use "Holy Communion." But however you describe it, Eucharist is the centerpiece of the Catholic Christian experience.

A MIDDLE-AGED PRIEST finally made his way into Alcoholics Anonymous after years of hiding his drinking, frustrated at his inability to stop. Only when he reached out and found others reaching out to him with help did he gradually understand that he was neither evil nor shameful but had an illness as real and progressive as diabetes or hypertension.

We pray in the merciful presence of God.

Saint Paul cited the words that Jesus used at the Last Supper in the Gospel of Luke: “Do this in remembrance of me.” Paul also extended the phrase to include the cup as well as the bread. But what is this remembrance?

Human need doesn’t get much more basic than food and drink. But our hunger and thirst go beyond the physical. We also have essential spiritual requirements: We hunger and thirst for God. To our eternal good fortune, God satisfies all of our needs through the Body and Blood of Jesus.

Every day He humbles himself . . . every day he comes to us and lets us see him in his lowliness, when he descends from the . . . Father . . . at the altar. —Saint Francis of Assisi