Rocca di Papa, October 20, 1976
Chiara spoke to those responsible for the Movement in the world and explained the immense reality and mystery of the Eucharist, defining the Movement as the fruit of “an affair between me and Jesus in the Eucharist”.
“The Eucharist doesn’t just produce effects that are beautiful and good, effects of sanctity and love; nor is its primary purpose that of increasing our unity with God and with one another (as we have understood unity up until now), and so of serving to nurture the presence of Jesus in the midst. Yes, this is true too. But the task of the Eucharist is something else.
The purpose of the Eucharist is to make us God. It mingles Christ’s flesh, which is given life by the Holy Spirit and life-giving, with our flesh, and thus divinizes us in soul and in body. Therefore it makes us God.
Now God can only be in God. This is why the Eucharist takes a Christian who has worthily received it into the bosom of the Father; it places us in the Trinity, in Jesus.
At the same time, the Eucharist doesn’t do this with just one person, but with many, and since they are all God, they are no longer many but one. (…) They are God and all together in God. They are one with Him, lost in Him.
Now this reality which the Eucharist brings about is the Church.
What is the Church? It is the “one” brought about by the Eucharist. To use a human expression, to express it in human terms – with an example from Scripture – we could say that the Church is a body whose head is the glorified Christ. But just as Christ is in the heart of the Trinity, so the Church is called to be – and already is, here on earth in those members in whom the Eucharist is at work, – in the bosom of the Father. And if in part it’s not there yet, it’s on its way.
Human beings, then, (Christians) take all creation with them because the human person sums up creation.
Everything which has come out of God returns, therefore, through the Eucharist, into the Trinity.”
Chiara Lubich
