On the feast of Corpus Christi in 2004, our late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, promulgated a Year of the Holy Eucharist that was to run from October 2004 through October 2005. He was hoping the whole Church would renew its appreciation and deepen its understanding of this central mystery of our faith in preparation for the October 2005 World Synod of Bishops on this same theme. Throughout this year of the Eucharist, I have been writing monthly columns on various aspects of the Eucharist; this month's column will conclude and summarize these reflections.

In solidarity with the World Synod of Bishops meeting this month in Rome with Pope Benedict XVI on the Holy Eucharist, I thought an appropriate theme would be "Eucharist, Sacrament of Unity." Here in our archdiocese, we have been celebrating this Eucharistic year in various ways; these celebrations come to a culmination with our Archdiocesan Eucharistic Day at Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament on Sunday, Oct. 9. At the 10 a.m. Mass, I will be the celebrant and homilist and we are inviting all the neophytes (newly baptized/newly received into Catholic Communion) to participate. At 3 p.m., I will preside at a special Holy Hour focused on all those who have some ministry connected with the Eucharist throughout the Archdiocese; Bishop Robert Morneau will be the homilist. Finally, in the evening, Bishop John Quinn will be celebrating a special prayer service for youth and young adults.

Throughout this year of the Eucharist, we have chosen images from our local churches which match the theological and/or spiritual message being emphasized in my column. As I considered possible images for the theme of "Sacrament of Unity," my mind and heart kept coming back to the exquisite stained-glass windows above the apse of our cathedral, a focal point for anyone entering the cathedral.

The windows contain three different panels — on the left is the Agony in the Garden, in the center is the Last Supper, and on the right is the Crucifixion. Taken together, the three panels remind us of the mystery of Christ's saving death and His desire to allow people of every time and place to share in His sacrifice of love in and through our celebration of the Holy Eucharist. The Last Supper continues to happen again and again whenever we gather at the Lord's Table and carry out His command.

In a more contemporary, post-Vatican II theology of the Eucharist, there probably would be a stained-glass window of the Resurrection as well, for the Resurrection of Christ from the dead is also an essential part of the mystery of His sacrifice. The Resurrection shows the Father has accepted the sacrifice of love; the Resurrection manifests Christ's victory and the promise that the Holy Eucharist brings us a share in eternal life.

There is something very beautiful and appropriate about the fact that the central panel of our Cathedral should be a depiction of the Last Supper, for as Pope John Paul II, so often said, "The Eucharist makes the Church." Everything flows from the mystery of Christ's Death and Resurrection, a mystery that began to unfold in a powerful way in the breaking of the bread and the handing of the cup at the Last Supper.

As St. John tells the story of the Last Supper, the action of Jesus washing the disciples feet and His high priestly prayer proclaimed the meaning and purpose of the death He was about to undergo: His fervent prayer that all be one. On the night before He died, the Lord handed over His Body and Blood so the Church might be born and that we might remain united to Him and one another until the day He comes again in glory.

The Eucharist is our sacrament of unity. The Church is not something we ourselves create or organize; rather, it is the Holy Eucharist that makes us a Church. The Church is born "from above," by the action of the Holy Trinity, a saving revelation made known in and through Christ's Passion, Death and Resurrection, a mystery we can enter into and experience anew in every Holy Eucharist.

There is a beautiful Latin phrase: ubi Eucharistia, ibi ecclesia — wherever the Eucharist is celebrated, there the Church exists. The Holy Eucharist is not just one of the sacraments, it is truly the "Sacrament of all the Sacraments," or as the council fathers of Vatican II put it, it is the "source and summit" of the whole life of the Church (see "Dogmatic Constitution on the Church," article 11). From the Eucharist comes forth the Church and all its ministries.

When I was in Cologne with several hundred young people from our archdiocese, we joined Pope Benedict XVI and a million young people from around the world for several powerful and spiritually energizing gatherings, most notably, the concluding Mass at Marienfeld outside Cologne. I would like to quote part of the Holy Father's homily from that occasion for it speaks to our theme of unity and describes the flow of the Church's life from the Last Supper and the Death-Resurrection of Jesus. Our Holy Father said, "Through the Eucharist, the 'hour' of Jesus becomes our own hour, His presence in our midst…" The Holy Father then goes on to note that at the hour of the Last Supper, the moment when He began the process of the Paschal Mystery, Jesus anticipated His death and the violence He would suffer by handing over to His disciples His Body and Blood. Our Holy Father explains: "What on the outside is simply brutal violence, from within becomes an act of total self-giving love. This is the substantial transformation which was accomplished at the Last Supper and was destined to set in motion a series of transformations leading ultimately to the transformation of the world when God will be all and all… This first fundamental transformation of violence into love, of death into life, brings other changes in its wake. Bread and wine become His Body and Blood. But it must not stop there… We are to become the Body of Christ, His own flesh and blood. We all eat the one bread, in this means we ourselves become one… God no longer simply stands before as the one who is totally other. He is within us and we are in Him."

Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, also went on to explain how the Eucharistic Prayer is the fulfillment of the "hour" of Jesus, our way of continuing to experience the Last Supper. He writes: "Jesus did not instruct us to repeat the Passover meal … He instructed us to enter into His 'hour.' We enter into it through the sacred power of the words of consecration — a transformation brought about through the prayer of praise which places us in continuity with Israel and the whole of salvation history, and at the same time, ushers in the new, to which the older prayer at its deeper level was pointing. The new prayer — which the Church calls the Eucharistic Prayer — brings the Eucharist into being. It is the word of power which transforms the gifts of the Earth in an entirely new way into God's gift of Himself and it draws us into this process of transformation … Jesus' hour is the hour in which love triumphs … Jesus' hour seeks to become our own hour and will indeed become so if we allow ourselves in the celebration of the Eucharist to be drawn into that process of transformation that the Lord intends to bring about. The Eucharist must become the center of our lives."

As we can see from our Holy Father's beautiful reflections, the Church and the Eucharist must always be understood in relation to each other. The Church could not exist without the Eucharist and the Eucharist naturally flows from the gathering of God's people, the Church. As St. Thomas Aquinas explained, in the Eucharist we have the whole mystery of our salvation synthesized and summarized: past, present, and future all converge and the Church is born again.

There are many implications to such an understanding of the Eucharist as a sacrament of unity. First of all we can often individualize our Eucharist piety and focus too narrowly on our own personal relation with the Lord. While it is true the Lord loves each of us individually and calls us to times of private prayer, we must always remember the Eucharist is a gift given to the whole Church. When we adore the Lord in this sacrament and when we receive His Body and Blood, we are praying with, for, in, and through the unity of Christ's whole Body, the Church. Furthermore, no community celebrating the Eucharist can ever think of itself as independent; the Eucharist makes sense only in terms of our communion with all the other communities celebrating the same Holy Eucharist. We can rightly speak about an "interdependence" of all churches — that is, dioceses depend on their bond with all other dioceses around the world and every parish, for its part, needs to be vitally aware of its union with all the parishes of the vicariate and the rest of the archdiocese. We receive one body and one blood — Christ — and we are called to live and be one body, one spirit in the Lord. And so it is, that as far as humanly possible, our celebrations of the Holy Eucharist should follow the same rubrics and liturgical disciplines; the Eucharist belongs to the whole Church and not just a given priest or community. The Eucharist necessarily links us with all other Eucharistic communities in harmony with the worldwide College of Bishops and the Holy Father. Hence, the prayerful mention in the Eucharistic Prayer of the name of the pope and the local diocesan bishop.

In every celebration of the Holy Eucharist, the unity of the Church is expressed as we set aside all our human differences and distinctions and recognize that we are one in the Lord. The Holy Eucharist is a sacrament of unity inasmuch as it expresses God's plan of love to call all creation into one eternal celebration of love; every Eucharist is a foreshadowing of the glorification of God and the communion of saints in heaven. Every Eucharist has what might be called a "universal and cosmic" dimension, something very important in our world today as we cry out for healing and reconciliation, an end to violence and division among peoples and nations.

One of the many ways the Christian community has always expressed its understanding of Eucharist as sacrament of unity is the custom of collecting food and money for the poor. Since the time of St. Paul, the Church has always understood that we cannot share Eucharistic bread if we refuse to share our daily bread. The Eucharist also celebrates and expresses communion in the kiss of peace and our pledge to work for unity and harmony with one another by lives of compassion and forgiveness.

In all these things, it is important to remember the Eucharist is a celebration of a unity that is God's accomplishment, not our own. The unity we experience in "from above" — that is, a unity that flows from Christ's presence and love. As we receive with humility and gratitude this unmerited gift, our lives are changed and we are energized to work for the unity of the Church and the reconciliation and harmony of all mankind.

On the night before His death, Jesus prayed that "all might be one." Obviously, this prayer has implications for our ecumenical efforts. We need to remember again, we will never achieve full unity as Christians all on our own; unity is a gift of the Holy Spirit. On our own, we cannot solve the tragedy of division among Christians. Our role is to pray for the day when all might be one and to continue to understand our own faith heritage as deeply as possible so we can communicate and dialogue as well-informed believers.

Inasmuch as Eucharist and unity belong together, one can only receive the Eucharist if he or she is in complete communion with all that the Church teaches and believes. And so it is that we, as Catholics, can never issue a general or open invitation to others not of our Church to share in Eucharistic fellowship with us. Hopefully, by continued prayer and dialogue, according to the plan and mystery of God's love, the unity and peace of the Holy Eucharist will one day be complete. For now, the Holy Eucharist is a sacrament of unity, and as a sacrament, it makes present but never completely … Sacraments will cease in the Kingdom when we will all truly be with the Lord completely. For now, we continue on our pilgrim way.

As I conclude this year of columns on the Holy Eucharist, I want to take the occasion to commend you for your Eucharistic faith. Wherever I celebrate throughout the archdiocese, I am always deeply impressed by the enthusiastic participation of people in the various Eucharistic ministries, especially in the proclaiming of God's Word with courage and conviction, singing with enthusiasm, and praying with reverence, respecting the need for silence and proper use of all the liturgical symbols and liturgical space. I encourage you to be faithful to the celebration of the sacrament, especially on Sundays. Take the time for Eucharistic adoration, especially praying for an end to violence, for those who suffer from natural disasters, and for an increase of vocations to the priesthood and religious life. May you always remember that in the Eucharistic Prayer and in Eucharistic adoration, we are experiencing the whole Body of Christ, the Church. Through our reverence for this sacrament, may we truly grow in love and respect for the mystery of the Church and the dignity of every human person, appropriate thoughts during this month of October dedicated to respecting life.

May God truly bless our Church of Detroit: may all that we say and do flow from the Blessed Sacrament, symbolically fulfilling the command and promise of Christ depicted on the central window of our cathedral.

Your brother in the Lord,
†Adam Cardinal Maida
Archbishop of Detroit