We’ll spend the next eight days with Chapter Three, “The Apostolicity of the Eucharist and of the Church.” A brief section to get us primed:
26. If, as I have said, the Eucharist builds the Church and the Church makes the Eucharist, it follows that there is a profound relationship between the two, so much so that we can apply to the Eucharistic mystery the very words with which, in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, we profess the Church to be “one, holy, catholic and apostolic”. The Eucharist too is one and catholic. It is also holy, indeed, the Most Holy Sacrament. But it is above all its apostolicity that we must now consider.
Sections 26 through 33 explore this. Aware that Pope John Paul II had a strong evangelical ministry, I am surprised he doesn’t devote more reflection to this aspect of apostolicity. But we’ll get to that in the next week or so.