The Eucharist: The Ultimate Reality, by Phil Lawler

By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture, April 16, 2025

Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org.

On Holy Thursday, our thoughts and prayers focus on the astonishing gift of the Eucharist. My own meditations invariably touch on a theme that was a favorite of the late Jesuit theologian, Father Donald Keefe, about the historic reality of the Eucharist.

There can be no Eucharist without the Church. There can be no Church without the Eucharist. But this is not a chicken-or-the-egg situation; in this case there should be no doubt which comes first. On any given Sunday (or weekday), the Church makes it possible to celebrate the Eucharist. But in the timetable of Divine Providence, sub specie aeternitatis, it is the Eucharist that creates the possibility of the Church. Because the celebration of the Eucharist, the holy Sacrifice of the Mass, is the re-presentation of Christ’s Sacrifice on Calvary, without which the Church could not exist.

In fact, without Christ’s Sacrifice, nothing about our lives makes sense, nothing saves us from our weaknesses, or follies, and our inevitable death. As Father Keefe put it, “Either it is by Jesus the Christ’s institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper that his One Sacrifice transcends history, or history is not transcended, and can only proceed entropically, to nullify all that is historical.” …

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