This is not just an interesting imaginative exercise: past, present, and future have been at the core of the Eucharist since its institution by Christ at the Last Supper.

Each year beginning in 1926, the famous English convert Msgr. Ronald Knox gave a homily on Corpus Christi Sunday at Corpus Christi Church (also called “the actor’s church”) in the heart of London. In one of his homilies, "First and Last Communion," he asks the reader to imagine the last Mass that will be offered on earth:

Yesterday, today, and forever—cast your mind forward to the last Mass that will ever be said on earth. . . . Yes it will be the same in all essentials. . . .The language in which the vernacular prayers are said will be a language, perhaps, which the human race has not yet invented. The architecture of the church may be of a kind we can imagine as little as the holy apostles, say, could have imagined Westminster Abbey. The feast celebrated on that occasion may be the feast of some saint who will not be born for many years yet . . . in the consecration of that last Mass the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ will be no more and no less present, no more and no less powerful in its effects, than in the Mass you are hearing just now, or in that first Mass of the first Maundy Thursday.

This is not just an interesting imaginative exercise: past, present, and future have been at the core of the Eucharist since its institution by Christ at the Last Supper. Pondering these realities can increase our understanding of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

Maggie Ciskanik

Maggie Ciskanik

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