Scott Hahn Eucharist Quotes

The belief is that Jesus is made present to his people in word and sacrament, both in the inspired accounts of the evangelists and in the consecrated elements of the Eucharist.

The fact is, there can be no true evangelization without the Eucharist. It’s not simply that the Eucharist is the context in which evangelization unfolds or even the goal of evangelization. It’s the content of evangelization. It’s what we

What the first Christians knew as the “New Testament” was not a book, but the Eucharist. In a cultic setting, at a solemn sacrificial banquet, Jesus made an offering of his “body” and “blood.” He used traditional sacrificial language. He spoke of the action as his memorial. He told those who attended to repeat the action they had witnessed: “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).

The first Christians were eucharistic by nature: they gathered for “the breaking of the bread and the prayers.” They were formed by the Word of God, the “apostles’ teaching.” When they met as a Church, their worship culminated in “fellowship”—the Greek word is koinonia, communion. The Mass was the center of life for the disciples of Jesus, and so it has ever been. Even today, the Mass is where we experience the apostolic teaching and communion, the breaking of the bread and the prayers.

Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist which is administered either by the bishop or by one to whom he has entrusted it.

We follow the Eucharistic Prayer with the Our Father, the prayer that Jesus taught us. We find it in the ancient liturgies, and it should have richer meaning for us in the context of the Mass-and especially in the context of the Mass as heaven on earth. We have renewed our baptism as children of God, Whom we can call "Our Father." We are now in heaven with Him, having lifted up our hearts. We have hallowed His name by praying the Mass. By uniting our sacrifice with Jesus' eternal sacrifice, we have seen God's will done "on earth as it is in heaven." We have before us Jesus, our "daily bread," and this bread will "forgive us our trespasses," because Holy Communion wipes away all venial sins. We have known mercy, then, and so we show mercy, forgiving "those who trespass against us." And through Holy Communion we will know new strength over temptations and evil. The Mass fulfills the Lord's Prayer, perfectly, word for word.

Why has God done the things that he has done in history? One word: Love.

The Bible is not merely informative, the Holy Father went on to say, but “performative.” It leads us to an action: the Eucharist, which Jesus meant to be transformative.

Allegorically (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Catena of the Greek Fathers): the setting of Christ's birth points us to the Eucharist. Since through sin man becomes like the beasts, Christ lies in the trough where animals feed, offering them, not hay, but his own body as life-giving bread.