Bernard P. Prusak says that the Council’s liturgical constitution, Sacrosanctum
Concilium, initiated the Council’s retrieval of the concept of the particular or local church
according to which the universal Church is the communion of local churches and finds its best
56 Synod, 340/C.1. See also Ouellet. Ouellet says: “It is enough to mention liturgical reform, episcopal collegiality, synodality, and ecumenism, to touch on the well-known key points of the ecclesiology of communion and its interpretation.” However, the scope of this study doesn’t allow us to treat all these topics at the moment. Cf. Gabriel Flynn and Paul D. Murray, eds., Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). There is also difference of opinion regarding the ecclesiology of Vatican II. Matthew Vellanickal says that the communion ecclesiology had not emerged fully in the council. Instead, he says, “[i]t contains two different ecclesiologies. One is the Western, juridical, universalistic ecclesiology which starts with the Universal Church, and considers the other Churches as parts of the one Church of God. The other is the emerging ecclesiology of the Universal Church as Communion of the Churches. The fathers of the Council do not seem to have succeeded in making a synthesis of the two ecclesiologies.” Cf. Vellanickal, Church:
Communion of Individual Churches; Biblico-Theological Perspectives on the Communion Ecclesiology of Vatican II, 39.
57 Gaillardetz and Clifford, 66-7.
58 Bernard P. Prusak, The Church Unfinished: Ecclesiology through the Centuries (New York, NY/ Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), 274.
expression in the liturgical communities, and it is reiterated in Lumen Gentium, the constitution on the Church.59 Though the second chapter of Sacrosanctum Concilium is dedicated to explicate the mystery of the Eucharist, the first chapter gives certain glimpses of the importance of the Eucharist. It asserts that in the liturgy “the faithful are enabled to express in their lives and manifest to others the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the Church,” and through the Eucharist we achieve our redemption (SC 2). It is through the Eucharist that the Church
continually lives and grows, and all the members are united or linked by the very bonds by which Christ wishes it to be formulated. As it is the source of the life in the Church, the Council says:
[T]he Church has never failed to come together to celebrate the paschal mystery, reading those things ‘which were in all the scriptures concerning him’ (Lk 24:27), celebrating the Eucharist in which ‘the victory and triumph of his death are again made present,’ and at the same time ‘giving thanks to God for his inexpressible gift’ (2 Cor 9, 15) in Christ Jesus, in ‘praise of his glory’ (Eph 1:12) through the power of the Holy Spirit (SC 6).60
The Council presents the Holy Eucharist as the center of the entire life of the Church. All other sacraments and every ministry of the Church flow from the Eucharist and look towards it.
Sacrosanctum Concilium also explains the presence of Christ in the Church in her Eucharistic
celebration (SC 7), in which, as a sacrament of unity the members of ‘the whole Body of the Church’ are united (SC 26). The same chapter says the Eucharistic celebration centered around
59 Ibid., 275.
60 See Edmund Gomes, The Eucharist and the Church (Shilling: Vendrame Institute Publication, 1999), 110. Gomes says: “In the celebration of the Eucharist, the church experiences its highest actualization. The congregation taking part is given the effectual sign of renewed and deepened, or still further to be deepened, participation and
incorporation in the body of Christ. And to be able to share in this body is the primary and ultimate work of the Holy Spirit sent by the Risen Lord. The sign of this participation takes the form of eating the body and blood of Christ sacramentally present. Nowhere is everything which the church is, and has the mission to announce, more intensely manifested than in the celebration of the Eucharist.” See also Powers, 16. “The Eucharist is the very image of the unity of the Church, the visible sign that bishops, priests and laity alike are members of the communion of the Church, and the testimony to the orthodoxy of their status and teaching. And it is in this context that the statements of the real presence of Christ, the change in the bread and wine are to be found.”
the bishop of the diocese is the principal manifestation of the Church (SC 41),61 and the participation of the faithful in the celebration of the Sunday Mass at one’s own parish is to be fostered as it explains one’s relation to the body of Christ through the local community (SC 42).
The document (SC) that stresses the fact that the sacraments build up the body of Christ (SC 59) dedicates a separate chapter for the Eucharist, and it begins with explaining the
relationship between the sacrament of the Eucharist and the Church.
At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our savior instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of his body and blood. This he did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us (SC 47).
Not only does it say that the Eucharist is also entrusted to the Church to be celebrated, but also clearly shows that this sacrament is the sign of unity and bond of charity in the Church. It also stresses the importance of the liturgical gathering that forms the Church and makes the Lord present in the Church. This document shows the combined work of the two tables, the table of the word of God and the table of the body: “[t]hey should be instructed by God’s word, and be nourished at the table of the Lord’s Body” (SC 48).62
61 Uzukwu’s interpretation of SC 41 makes it clear and touching. Cf. Elochukwu Uzukwu, The Listening Church:
Autonomy and Communion in African Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 60. Uzukwu says that where
there is the full and active participation of the holy people of God in the same liturgical celebrations, especially in the same Eucharist, in same prayer, around the same altar where the bishop presides, surrounded by his
presbyterium and ministers. This is a reality in the local church under the leadership of a bishop. Cf. also Vatican
Council II, "Sacrosanctum Concilium, Dogmatic Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (December 4, 1963)," in
Vatican II: Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents (Mumbai: St. Pauls, 1999), no. 40.
62 The document says that the two parts of the Mass, “the liturgy of the word” and “the Eucharistic liturgy” (SC 56) are closely connected. The importance of the word of God and the means to open its treasures in the Eucharist is explicated in the section on “Decrees,” esp. nos. 51-2. See also, Chauvet, 26. Chauvet says: “It is in the celebrating the Eucharist as his prayer and his action, as it is in the Church welcoming the scriptures as his word, that it is possible to recognize that Christ is alive.”