The Thirty+ Names of the Eucharist - How Many Do You Know?

This Thursday, June 19 (it is transferred to Sunday, June 22 in some dioceses), the Catholic Church throughout the world will celebrate the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, also known as the Feast of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. This feast honors Jesus Christ, Really, Truly, and Substantially Present under the appearances of bread and wine. This Presence happens through the change which the Church calls transubstantiation (“change of substance”) when at the Consecration of the Mass, the priest says the words which Christ Himself pronounced over bread and wine, “This is My Body,” “This is the chalice of My Blood,” “Do this in remembrance of Me.”

What a treasure we have in the Eucharist! We are so blessed to have access to this wonderful gift. The inexhaustible richness of this sacrament is expressed in the different names we give it. 

I believe it would be very beneficial to spend time in prayer meditating on these different names. This way when we receive Jesus in the Eucharist our hearts will be more open to all of the blessings that Our Lord would like to give us through this wondrous sacrament! But in humility, we have to understand that, because the Eucharist is God, and therefore is infinite, we can never wrap our heads around it entirely. Our inability to perfectly understand it is why much of it remains a mystery to us. But we don't have to understand it completely to benefit from it so we come at it from different angels and we give these angels names. 

Each name evokes certain aspects of it; the different ways that Jesus is present to us in the Eucharist and leads us in perfect worship of God. It is called:

1. EUCHARIST, because it is an action of thanksgiving to God.The very term Eucharist is derived from the Greek word eucharistein, which means “thanksgiving.”

2. THE LORD'S SUPPER, because of its connection with the supper which the Lord took with his disciples on the eve of his passion and because it anticipates the wedding feast of the Lamb in the heavenly Jerusalem.

3. THE BREAKING OF BREAD, because Jesus used this rite...when as master of the table he blessed and distributed the bread, above all at the Last Supper. It is by this action that his disciples will recognize him after his Resurrection, and it is this expression that the first Christians will use to designate their Eucharistic assemblies; by doing so they signified that all who eat the one broken bread, Christ, enter into communion with him and form but one body in him.

4. THE EUCHARISTIC ASSEMBLY (synaxis), because the Eucharist is celebrated amid the assembly of the faithful, the visible expression of the Church.

5. THE MEMOIAL OF THE LORD'S PASSION AND RESURRECTION. It is not merely the recollection of past events but … they become in a certain way present and real.

6. THE HOLY SACRIFICE, because it makes present the one sacrifice of Christ the Savior and includes the Church's offering. 

7. HOLY SACRIFICE OF THE MASS, The Council of Trent taught that the Mass is the same as Calvary, "only the manner of offering being changed" from bloody to unbloody. Similarly Vatican II (On the Liturgy #10) said that the Mass is the renewal of the new covenant.

8. SACRIFICE OF PRAISE, because "two thousand years ago, Jesus, our Lord and God, descended from heaven to a defiled earth and consumed himself on the holy cross as eucharistia, the supreme sacrifice of praise. This offering, this eucharistia, never ceases, but rather continues on every altar throughout the world."

9. SPIRITUAL SACRIFICE

10. PURE AND HOLY SACRIFICE, since it completes and surpasses all the sacrifices of the Old Covenant.

11. THE HOLY AND DIVINE LITURGY, because the Church's whole liturgy finds its center and most intense expression in the celebration of this sacrament.

12. THE CELEBRATION OF THE SACRED MYSTERIES, because in the Body of Christ the mystery of Christ is made manifest and all people, Gentile and Jew alike, are made "fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel."  

13. THE MOST BLESSED SACRAMENT, because it is the Sacrament of sacraments. The Eucharistic species reserved in the tabernacle are designated by this same name.

14. HOLY COMMUNION, because by this sacrament we unite ourselves to Christ, who makes us sharers in his Body and Blood to form a single body.

15. HOLY MASS (Missa), because the liturgy, in which the mystery of salvation is accomplished concludes with the sending forth (missio) of the faithful so that they may fulfill God's will in their daily lives.

16. HOLY THINGS

17. THE BREAD OF ANGELS

18. BREAD FROM HEAVEN

19. MEDICINE OF IMMORTALITY, the antidote for death, and the food that makes us live forever in Jesus Christ because feeding on this medicine we can be strengthened to face our own trials and, God willing, pass through a happy death to the glory of the resurrection.

20. VIATICUM, is a term used for the reception of Holy Communion by a sick person on their deathbed. Viaticum is the Holy Eucharist received by those who are about to leave this earthly life and are preparing for the journey to eternal life. 

Most of these were taken from the Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraphs 1328-1332

Here are a few more that I thought of:

21. THE BODY, BLOOD, SOUL AND DIVINITY OF JESUS 

22. STRENGTH/FOOD FOR THE JOURNEY - In 1Kings 19:7-8, we see a prefiguring of this: 

And the angel of the Lord came again the second time, and touched him, and said to him: Arise, eat: for thou hast yet a great way to go. And he arose, and ate, and drank, and walked in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights, unto the mount of God, Horeb.

23. SACRED BANQUET in which we receive Christ and the pledge of glory is given to us!

24. THE DIVINE FLAME "at which apostles must light their lamp if they wish to inflame souls" (Mateo  Crowley).

25. HOST OF SALVATION "that opens the doors of heaven and scatters our enemies" (Hymn, Verba Supernum).

26. GOOD SHEPHERD AND REAL BREAD "nourish us and defend us now and make us one day enjoy the true goods in the land of the living" (Sequence, Lauda Zion).

27. THE DIVINE CYRENEAN OF HUMANITY Simone of Cyrene carried the cross on his shoulders only because the soldiers forced him to do so. Instead, Jesus bore our sins with great joy, spurred on by infinite love. Jesus in the Eucharist continues to the Divine Cyrenean of humanity by making reparations for our sins and easing our pains. 

28. FONT OF GRACE poured forth upon us (Constitution On the Sacred Liturgy).

29. SACRAMENT OF LOVE

30. SIGN OF UNITY

31. BOND OF CHARITY

32. PASCHAL BANQUET in which Christ is eaten, the mind is filled with grace and a pledge of future glory is given us (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy).

33. THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS because in Eucharistic miracles, when the host visibly becomes human flesh and is scientifically tested, it is heart tissue.

34. SOURCE OF LIFE

35. LIVING BREAD

36. MOST HOLY SACRAMENT OF THE ALTAR

37. LOVE AND GIFT because in his Eucharistic presence he remains mysteriously in our midst as the one who loved us and gave himself up for us (CCC). 

38. SACRAMENT OF UNION - Jesus said "he that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood, abideth in Me and I in him." Jesus made Himself our food in order to assimilate us to Himself, to make us live His life, to make us live in Him, as He Himself lives in His Father.

Do you have any to add?  

Follow this link to watch a short video on Meaning of the Mass: Source & Summit. It is excellent!