Eucharist: The Meal and the Word

The sacraments are rooted in the most basic elements of human existence. In Eucharist: The Meal and the Word, an essay of “meditative theology,” Ghislain Lafont reflects on the intimate connection between food and language in the Eucharist. Tracing the progression from the act of eating to the celebration of a festal meal, he then moves to language, because the festal meal often concludes with a discourse addressed to the heroes of the feast. Finally, he examines eucharistic discourse in order to relate the Eucharist to all other festal meals: what it remembers; what is given in it to eat; and what is realized. The Eucharist turns out to be the place of communion with God founded on the memory of Jesus Christ, hoped for in its perfection in eschatological time, and already realized in the symbolic celebration. And yet it also reveals itself as the symbolic fullness of human existence.