Overview

Different times and different cultures have influenced the ways in which the Eucharist has been celebrated and understood; and the action received from the Lord to be done in his memory has shown different aspects of its deeper reality in these differing human situations. We now live in times in which belief in God is no longer taken for granted and in which there are many different approaches to life and its meaning. This has its influence on those who believe in Christ as well as those who do not. This new situation invites us to present our faith in Christ differently, calling us to offer a presentation of the Eucharist that can begin on common ground with our contemporaries and in language that believers today may find inviting and meaningful. As a means of achieving this, the Frank O'Loughlin suggests that we look again at the basic things we use as signs in the Eucharist. These are things we have in common with other human beings: bread, wine, water, symbolic actions and our own bodies. These things are taken into our celebration of the Eucharist and are used as signs that take us beyond themselves into the depths of the Eucharist, that is into its very mystery. The author also points out the human grounding of those things indicated by words we use in speaking about the Eucharist: memory, presence and sacrifice. We are dealing with everyday, human things that take us beyond the ordinary from which they come, into the mystery of God among us in Christ which we celebrate when we gather for Eucharist.

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This is a very short introduction to how we Catholics understand the Eucharist coming from an Australian theologian and an Australian publisher. What makes this book stand out from so many similar 'short introductions' is its starting point: our existence in a 'secular age'. Unlike virtually all previous generations we cannot assume that 'the things ofGod' - such as the need to worship - are simply a part of life. For every individual today the assertion 'I believe in God' is a choice, one an individual must make, and one which is incomprehensible to many in our society. Religion is just 'old school stuff, more trouble than it's worth'. This has three effects on that task of explaining what we are about when we offer thanksgiving to the Father. First, we cannot rely on society to pass on a body of attitudes, information and a devotional culture that has a place for liturgy. This is captured by O'Loughlin in a quotation from the late Seamus Heaney: 'I think we are running on an unconscious informed by religious values, but I think my youngster's youngsters won't have that' (p.10). Second, inherited ways of justifying the significance of the Eucharist, such as that of scholasticism or neo-scholasticism, assume a society that no longer exists. Third, we have to move beyond the 'them versus us' theologies of the post-Reformation period where we often were better at being 'different from Protestants' than we were at producing a rounder, more wholesome theology. It is in the light of these demands that O'Loughlin tries to look again at the basic sacramentality - eating, drinking, gathering, food, drink - of the Eucharist, and then give an overview of what we do when we celebrate (and he makes dome pointed comments on perennial defects in celebration such as relying on the tabernacle). However, it is not the actual explanations that O'Loughlin offers that make this book stand out and be worthy of review, but the clarity with which he outlines the new challenges that face all who preside at the Eucharist or who have to justify it to themselves or to others. Thomas O'Loughlin, University of Nottingham As published in Pastoral Review Vol 15 Issue 5 October/November/December 2019

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