The Holy Eucharist: Our Sacrament of Hope

My grandfather, a Catholic convert, had lived with my parents for several years after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s. The debilitating effects of the disease, which remarkably paralleled those of Pope Saint John Paul II, were heartbreaking to witness since, like the saintly pope, he had been physically active until the onset.

One afternoon, sensing the end was near, he squeezed my mother’s hand to indicate that he was ready for his final confession, anointing, and holy communion. After receiving the sacraments, he fell into an even deeper sleep.

I stayed with my parents that night expecting to help them with funeral arrangements the next morning. But much to our astonishment, my grandfather, having pulled himself up in bed, asked if I would help him “take a walk.” As I held him firmly by both arms, he took ten awkward toe-to-heel paces across the living room, turned around, and took ten more. He hadn’t done that in nearly a year.

He then did something even more remarkable. Intoning his favorite hymn, “Amazing Grace,” he invited me to sing along. The Lord gave him one final chance to sing his song of hope. The Eucharist seemed to have prepared him for the afterlife precisely by deferring it, giving him the strength to carry on for another week before finally succumbing to complications related to Parkinson’s, passing away peacefully in his sleep.

We never know what Holy Communion might bring. Yet every time we receive it, we are strengthened with the hope that the Lord will give us what we need, for he knows better than we what that is. My grandfather needed one more walk, one more chance to talk with his family, one more chance to sing his song of hope. And that’s what the Lord gave him. That’s precisely how Holy Communion prepared him for his journey to the next world.

In an ancient hymn, the Church praises the Eucharist as a futurae gloriae pignus, a “pledge of future glory,” but she does so professing that it “fills the mind with grace,” mens impletur gratia. Viaticum did both for my grandfather. Not only his mind but his body and voice were strengthened, serving as a reminder of, and a preparation for, the glory to come.

The conciliar fathers highlighted this title of the Eucharist at Vatican II (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium), grounding it in the classic definition of faith given in Hebrews 11:1: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” To live the Christian life essentially means to look to the future through the lens of the past, and to view both as realities informing our present.

The Eucharist is at the very center of this Christian worldview. Even though Sunday—the day of the Lord’s resurrection—is the privileged day for the Eucharist, Holy Mass is offered daily in parishes, cathedrals, and monasteries throughout the world. It truly is our “daily bread.”

Christian hope is ultimately grounded in the Eucharist. Whenever we participate in it, we attest that something truly happened in the past that will have real consequences for the future. We attest that Jesus of Nazareth really did die, really was buried, and really rose again, and that we will join Him in His Kingdom if we keep His commandments.

At the Last Supper—the final Passover meal with His disciples—Jesus instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of His body and blood, a sacrifice that perpetuates His sacrifice on the cross until He comes again in glory (cf. CCC, 1403). It is no coincidence that Jesus offered this sacrifice on the very night He was betrayed, as the Eucharistic prayers remind us. He instituted this sacrament precisely as the means by which we commemorate His death and resurrection in the firm hope that we shall rise with Him in glory.

We read in the Catechism:

There is no surer pledge or clearer sign of this great hope in the new heavens and new earth . . . than the Eucharist. Every time this mystery is celebrated, “the work of our redemption is carried on” and we “break the one bread that provides the medicine of immortality, the antidote for death, and the food that makes us live forever in Jesus Christ.” (1405)

For help in praying for a greater abundance of hope this Jubilee Year, perhaps we can turn to a fellow pilgrim. Dante Alighieri (d. 1321), who sets the marvelous journey of his Divine Comedy precisely in the first Jubilee year of 1300, is examined by Saint James on the theological virtue of hope, who asks him three questions: “What is hope?”; “To what degree do you possess it?”; and “Whence does it come to you?” (Paradiso, Canto 25). His heavenly guide Beatrice answers the second question for him, preempting him from sounding boastful: “there is no child of the Church Militant who has more hope than he.” Dante himself then answers the first question by giving a scholastic definition of hope taken from Lombard’s Sentences: “Hope is a certain expectation of future beatitude proceeding from God’s grace and antecedent merits.” Dante then gives a bold response to the third question, citing the teodìa (“god-song”): “my those who know Your name put hope in you.” Teodolinda Barolini points out that “god-song,” a “neologism” or made-up word, refers not only to the biblical psalms but to Dante’s own Canticle, namely the Paradiso itself.

What a wonderful example! May the psalms we sing this Jubilee Year—especially at Holy Mass—become our own teodìa, our own “god-song.” Just as Dante “sings” the Paradiso as a “source” of hope, so may the “song” we sing, an echo of the Psalms, become the very source of our own hope, just as my grandfather’s did for him.

Photo by Fr. Barry Braum on Unsplash