March 08, 2026
Dear Friends,
Throughout the history of Catholic Christianity, the Eucharist has been like a kind of furniture in that it could be rearranged in the life of the Church and the life of the individual believers without a bit of reflection and consultation with the actual texts of our Tradition.
The Didache is an organized collection of teachings on doctrines, moral theology, and rituals both sacramental and non-sacramental compiled in the first or second centuries but not found again until archaeological work discovered in in the second half of the 19thcentury. An alternate title of the work is, The Lord’s Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations.
It is considered by the Catholic Church to be an authentic document of the Apostolic age, that is composed by actual apostles or those who had personal knowledge of the apostles that Jesus called to be his followers in forming his Church.
The Didache contains one of the earliest non-biblical accounts of the practice of celebrating the Eucharist that we have in our possession.
Concerning the wine and the cup the Didache teaches: Now concerning the Eucharist, give thanks this way. First, concerning the cup: We thank thee, our Father, for the holy vine of David Thy servant, which Thou madest known to us through Jesus Thy Servant; to Thee be the glory for ever…
and the bread: We thank Thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which Thou madest known to us through Jesus Thy Servant; to Thee be the glory for ever. Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills, and was gathered together and became one, so let Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy kingdom; for Thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ for ever.
In my mind in these texts and in the accounts in the New Testament of what we call, The Eucharist, there is the implicit but undeniable understanding that it is a community that is acting and receiving and that the notion of community action is essential for understanding what it was that Jesus intended.
Throughout our history, however, Catholics have in various ways, isolated the Eucharist from the community as a stand-alone object, sometimes located in a tabernacle or as a personal “spiritual” “reality” that is contained and circumscribed by ideas that are not taken from the New Testament accounts with Jesus being the central actor in convening the People of God to receive from God and give back to God the Father in intentional ritual sacramental action.
I think it is difficult for typical Catholics to connect the procession to receive Holy Communion with the action of an assembled community, giving thanks and receiving affirmation of our thanksgiving, rather The Eucharist has become a personal ritual that frequently does not rise beyond the level of habitual action and can come close to fetish.
This Gospel story for this weekend shows us a Jesus that understands eating and drinking, hunger and thirst, as more than bodily functions and it shows the delight that Jesus finds in feeding on and giving into his relationship with the woman and with her life and the community that shapes and gives meaning to her life and personal history and how all of that gets wrapped into gratitude and a satisfied joy.
The whole setting for this story which you will not get because the metaphors and biblical references will be lost to you, is that Jesus is looking for a “partner” to feast on that will satisfy his heart’s desire, not unlike lots and lots of young people and a few older ones.
If you correctly hack the metaphors, Jesus is looking for a date, but what makes this “date” different is that he is looking in the bright of the noonday sun not the shadows of the evening. The “date” Jesus is looking for is more than romantic, it is the seasoned and life-lived date of our entire lives that will take us into the Kingdom before we die if we allow it to happen.
Think of the romance and the loves of your own lives this third week of Lent 2026 and give thanks.
Peace,
Father Niblick