Jean Khoury

Summary: This article examines a fundamental liturgical and pastoral concern: the tendency of the faithful and even priests to perceive the consecratory moment of the Eucharist as belonging primarily to the Last Supper narrative rather than as a sacramental making-present of the Passion itself. Drawing on observations from Eucharistic mysticism, Eucharistic miracles, and a pastoral assessment of contemporary Mass participation, the author argues that while the Church’s doctrine rightly identifies the Eucharist as the one Paschal sacrifice, the lived experience of many believers has become psychologically distanced from this reality. The article proposes that theological development and a careful expansion of the Eucharistic Prayer’s structure—both within the Roman tradition and in comparison with Eastern liturgical traditions—could deepen participation in the mystery of Christ’s self-offering without compromising the integrity of the Church’s sacramental theology.

Introduction

When we attend the Eucharist and hear the words of consecration pronounced by the priest, our minds are naturally and almost inevitably transported to the Last Supper. This is understandable: the institution narrative explicitly places us at that table in the Upper Room on the night Jesus was betrayed. Yet in focusing on this scene, we risk what I would call a psychological isolation—an ‘aseptic’ separation that leaves the Passion itself somehow at a distance from the sacred moment in which Christ gives himself to us.

It is true that the Church has never taught that the Mass is merely a commemoration of the Last Supper. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is explicit that ‘the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice.’ But between what the Church teaches doctrinally and what the faithful actually perceive in the lived moment of the consecration, there exists a pastoral gap. When the priest says the words of Jesus—’Take this, all of you, and eat it’—we find ourselves not primarily at the foot of the Cross, but at table in Jerusalem.

This article seeks to articulate why this distance matters, what witnesses from the tradition tell us about the true character of the Eucharistic sacrifice, and how we might, through careful theological development, deepen the formation of priests and faithful so that the consecratory moment is perceived and lived as the sacramental presence of Christ’s Passion itself.

I. The Reality of the Eucharist: More than Last Supper

The conviction that the Mass is a real sacrifice, not merely symbolic, not repeated, is foundational. We call it an ‘unbloody sacrifice,’ and in using this language we speak of mode, not of a reduced or attenuated form of Christ’s offering. The Mass is not another sacrifice added to the one on the Cross, but the same sacrifice made present to us in sacramental form.

Two pieces of evidence suggest that the lived reality of this sacrifice extends beyond the narrative frame of the Last Supper into the mystery of the Passion itself.

First, consider the spiritual witness of Padre Pio, the first stigmatised priest in the Church’s history. Those who knew him and documented his celebration of the Eucharist consistently testify that the way he lived the Mass was not primarily a remembrance of the Upper Room, but an entrance into the Passion. His body, bearing the literal marks of Christ’s suffering, seemed to place him not at table but at Calvary. The events of the Passion and the Mass appeared to be, for him, one and the same event happening.

Second, and more dramatically, we have the phenomenon of Eucharistic miracles. One such miracle, reported from Poland, involved a host that fell to the floor. It was put in water to dissolve. When discovered days later, it bore stains of blood—cardiac tissue, according to medical analysis. More striking still: the condition of that tissue, when examined by pathologists, revealed the physiological state of a heart in the final moments before death. The consecrated host did not reveal the body of Christ as it was at the Last Supper, at table with his disciples, but as it was in his dying moments—the gift of himself at the moment of his self-offering on the Cross.

These witnesses converge on a single point: the Eucharist makes present to us not primarily the scene of institution, but the reality of the sacrifice. And that sacrifice is the Passion—the suffering, the dying, the total gift of Christ to the Father and to us.

II. The Liturgical Problem: What We Actually Perceive

Here I must speak with pastoral honesty. When priests and faithful are asked what happens at the moment of consecration, the most common answer is: ‘We go back to the Last Supper.’ This is not wrong doctrinally, but it is incomplete, and that incompleteness has consequences.

The celebration of the Mass, as we experience it, unfolds in a way that can psychologically separate us from the Passion. The ceremony is orderly, clean, carefully prescribed. There is no blood, no bodily suffering, no chaos. The table is set, words are spoken, and communion is received with reverence and decorum. This is good and necessary; the liturgy must be ordered and reverent. But in its very orderliness, the Mass can become too easily identified with what it commemorates as institution rather than with what it effects as sacrifice.

The Passion itself, by contrast, was messy, chaotic, filled with suffering and abandonment. The moment when Jesus gave himself to us was not at table but on a Cross. It was the moment of his death. When the priest says the words of consecration—’Take this, all of you, and eat it’—he is speaking Christ’s words, but Christ spoke those words not first in the Upper Room as a promise of what would come, but ultimately and really on Calvary, as the accomplished reality of his self-offering. We need the faithful and especially the priests to understand this not as a matter of doctrine but as the lived truth of what is happening at that moment.

III. The Words of the Consecration: Sacred and Performative

It is immediately after the words of consecration that we proclaim, ‘Great is the mystery of faith.’ This acclamation deserves careful attention. We do not say, ‘Great is the memorial of the Last Supper.’ We say that the mystery of faith is great—and in that very proclamation we continue with reference to death and resurrection: ‘We proclaim your Death, O Lord, and profess your Resurrection.’ The Church’s own response immediately returns to the reality that it is the Death of Christ that is the substance of what has just been enacted.

The question becomes acute: if the Passion is what we are truly celebrating, why does the moment of consecration itself seem so temporally and narratively distant from that reality? The answer cannot be that the tradition forbids it. The truth is far more subtle.

In Catholic theology, the words of consecration are not primarily descriptive or narrative. They are performative: they do what they say. ‘This is my Body. This is my Blood.’ These words do not function as a commentary on the Last Supper, nor even as a dramatic recreation of it. They are sacramental speech that makes present the body and blood of Christ. And the body and blood they make present are not the body and blood of a man at table, but the body and blood of the Lamb offered for the sins of the world.

The tradition has been very careful to preserve this distinction between the institution narrative (which is historical, which is Scripture, which must be received as given) and the anamnesis that follows (which is the Church’s explicit proclamation of what mystery is being enacted). But in this very carefulness, a distance has been created in the lived perception of the faithful. We remain mentally in the Upper Room when we ought to be spiritually present at Calvary.

IV. The Tradition and the Possibility of Development

What I am proposing is not a break with tradition, but a development within it. The Church’s approach to the Eucharistic Prayer shows this is not only possible but already established as practice.

Consider the diversity of Eucharistic Prayers. The Roman Canon, as it has been known, is relatively spare in its narrative section before the institution words. But if we look beyond the Roman Canon to “new” Eucharistic prayers and if look beyond the Latin rite to the Eastern liturgical traditions, we find a very different approach. The Anaphora of St. Cyril, for example, follows a pattern that many other Eastern rites also employ: the priest narrates the entire history of salvation. He speaks of creation, of the fall of Adam, of the covenant with Israel, of the incarnation and birth of Christ—the whole arc of redemptive history—before arriving at the institution narrative. This is not introduced as a danger to be avoided; it is the received structure of the liturgy.

If the Eastern and Western tradition permit (indeed, has consistently employed) an extended narrative of salvation history before the institution words, why should we not permit a deepening of Passion imagery in the approach to the consecration? The answer cannot be that narrative context surrounding the institution words is forbidden in principle. The answer is that it is permitted in some traditions and not others, and the permission depends on prudent discernment of what serves the faith.

The Council of Vatican II introduced the term ‘actuosa participatio’, i.e. full, conscious, and active participation of the faithful in the liturgy. This conciliar principle was not meant to be merely rhetorical. It called for a real recovery of the participation of the people of God in what the Church does. That recovery is not yet complete. For many, the Mass remains something that happens, and they are present to it, but they are not interiorly participating in its mystery in a way that transforms them.

Part of why this is the case is that the structure of the Eucharistic Prayer, as it is currently presented, does not adequately prepare the human consciousness—the imagination, the affection, the intellect—for the reality that is about to be enacted. We are left in the narrative frame of the Upper Room, and the transition to the mystery of death and resurrection happens too quickly, without sufficient space for interior assimilation.

V. What Needs to Happen: A Pastoral and Mystical Solution

What I am proposing is neither a destruction of tradition nor a mere attitudinal adjustment. I am proposing a genuine theological and pastoral development: an enrichment of the textual structure of the Eucharistic Prayer in the vicinity of the consecration.

Here is what I believe could be done: in the Roman rite (or in any rite where this development is discerned to be appropriate), elements could be added to the Eucharistic Prayer (either before the institution narrative or immediately before the words of consecration themselves) that explicitly invoke the Passion. This need not alter the words ‘This is my Body’ and ‘This is my Blood.’ Those words remain as given by Christ himself. But what precedes them could place us consciously in the reality of Calvary, not as a future event that the Last Supper anticipates, but as the eternal reality that the sacramental moment makes present.

Moreover—and this is crucial—the priest himself must be formed to understand and to live what he is doing. The priest does not merely narrate a past event or mechanically repeat words. He acts in the person of Christ at the very moment when Christ, on the Cross, gives himself to the Father and to us. When the priest pronounces the words of consecration, he is drawn into the one eternal act of Christ’s self-offering. This is the ancient teaching: the priest is an instrument through which Christ acts as the principal agent.

If the priest truly understands this, and if the words of the Eucharistic Prayer prepare him interiorly for this understanding, then those words could be spoken not hurriedly but with a slowness that reflects the weight of what is occurring. They would be spoken with reverence that corresponds to the reality: these are the words of a dying man, giving himself away. They are not said at table alone, but on the Cross. They create a moment in which the Church and the priest and the faithful are drawn into the Paschal Mystery not as spectators but as participants.

The Union of the Priest with Jesus and its Effects in Liturgy

The objection will be raised that the Lord himself commanded, ‘Do this in memory of me,’ and that we are not to add to what he instituted. But this objection misunderstands what development means. The Church is not adding to the essential words of Christ. It is surrounding those words, interpreting those words, making more explicit what those words contain. This is what the tradition has always done. It is what Vatican II called the Church to do more consciously and more actively.

VI. The Deeper Question: Perception and Reality

There is a profound theological principle at stake here: the relationship between what is objectively true and what is subjectively perceived.

The Church teaches, rightly, that the Eucharist is the Paschal Mystery made present. This is true independent of how deeply any individual priest or faithful member perceives it. The sacramental efficacy operates ex opere operato (by the work worked) not by the intensity of human feeling or awareness. The sacrifice is real whether or not we feel its reality.

But the human person is not merely intellect and will. We are embodied, imaginative creatures, withe feelings and emotions. We perceive through symbols, through narrative, through space and time. If the symbolic structure of the liturgy does not prepare us adequately for what is being enacted, we can intellectually assent to the doctrine while remaining affectively and imaginatively distant from the mystery itself.

This is why the solution cannot be purely doctrinal or catechetical. Telling people, over and over, that the Eucharist is the Passion does not guarantee that they will perceive it as such at the moment of consecration. The perception arises from formation—from the words spoken, from the tempo at which they are spoken, from the space created for contemplative dwelling in the mystery.

Vatican II’s call for actuosa participatio recognises this truth: the faithful are not passive recipients of a doctrine, but active participants in the liturgy. And active participation requires that the structure of the liturgy itself invite, form, and guide that participation. If the Eucharistic Prayer as currently structured leaves people primarily in the narrative frame of the Last Supper, then that structure itself needs development to serve the fuller perception of what is being enacted.

VII. The Necessity of Theological Flexibility

I must address a tension that appears in much contemporary theological writing: the tension between defending the tradition and developing it. I do not believe this tension is genuine. Development is not tension; development is the natural life of a living tradition.

The Church has never treated the Eucharistic Prayer as a fixed, unchangeable text immune from development. The history of the liturgy shows continuous evolution. The post-Vatican II reform introduced new Eucharistic Prayers precisely because the tradition was understood to be open to development while preserving essential elements.

What I am proposing is in line with this principle of living tradition. I am not suggesting that the words of Christ should be altered. I am suggesting that the context in which those words are situated, i.e. the narrative and theological preparation, could be developed to deepen the Church’s and the faithful’s consciousness of what is actually happening.

The Gospel itself, after all, is part of the tradition. The Gospel describes the Passion in detail. Why should we not draw more explicitly on Gospel language about the Passion in the context of the Eucharistic Prayer? The objection that ‘this has not been done before’ is not a theological argument against doing it now. All development was once ‘not done before.’ The tradition moves, it grows, it deepens.

Conclusion

The Eucharist is the work of our redemption. This is not metaphorical. At every Mass, at the moment of consecration, the Cross is made present, not symbolically but sacramentally. The body and blood of Christ as they are offered in dying love are placed before us and within us.

Yet for many of the faithful—and I would venture to say for many priests—this reality remains abstract while the narrative frame of the Last Supper remains concrete. The moment of consecration is experienced as a return to Jerusalem, to the table, rather than as an entrance into the mystery of Calvary.

I have argued that this distance need not be permanent. Within the living tradition of the Church, a tradition that already permits narrative Eucharistic Prayers, that already distinguishes various approaches in East and West, there is room for development. The Eucharistic Prayer could be enriched with elements that explicitly draw the assembly into the Passion before the words of consecration are spoken. The priest could be formed to understand himself not as an actor in a historical reenactment, but as one who has been drawn into the eternal act of Christ’s self-offering.

Such development would serve what Vatican II called for: the active, conscious, recollected and fruitful participation of the faithful in the liturgy. It would honour the tradition not by refusing to develop it, but by allowing the tradition to grow in the direction it has always pointed: toward a deeper and more lived communion with the Paschal Mystery of Christ.

This is not a matter for abstract debate alone. It is a matter for the spiritual theology of the Church, for the formation of priests, and ultimately for the lived experience of all who gather at the table of the Lord to participate in the mystery that makes us one with Christ in his dying and rising. The Passion is not something that happened in the past and that we commemorate. It is what is happening when the priest pronounces the words of consecration. Until that reality is perceived as such, our participation remains incomplete.

It is my conviction that development (careful, theologically grounded, respectful of the tradition) can serve this deepening of consciousness. And such development is not only possible; it is, in my view, pastorally and spiritually necessary.

Read also

Bibliography

Catechism of the Catholic Church. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1992.

Chrysostom, John. Homilies on Hebrews. In Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca, edited by J.-P. Migne. Paris, 1857–1866.

Council of Trent. Doctrina et canones de sacrificio missae, Session XXII (17 September 1562). In Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta. Bologna: Istituto per le Scienze Religiose, 1973.

John Paul II. Ecclesia de Eucharistia. Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2003.

Second Vatican Council. Sacrosanctum Concilium (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1963.

Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae, III. Rome: Marietti, 1950.