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What does it mean to be a eucharistic community? In Christ Now Meet Both East and West approaches the Eucharist from the perspective of Christianity being a religion of the table—a place where our thanksgiving happens by gathering as a people with Christ. Author Thomas O’Loughlin emphasizes that any renewal of ourselves as a eucharistic people involves discovering that we are then sent from that table to act, to be eucharistic in our communal activity. He explains that this task is not located in an awesome temple or an otherworldly place but in the heart of the everyday. Through this action of blessing, praising, thanking, and being eucharistic to our heavenly Father, we set about celebrating our faith eucharistically with the risen Jesus present among us.
Thomas O’Loughlin is professor emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham, UK, the director of Studia Traditionis Theologiae, and the former president of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain. O’Loughlin is the author of Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis’s Call to Theologians, The Rites and Wrongs of Liturgy: Why Good Liturgy Matters, and Washing Feet: Imitating the Example of Jesus in the Liturgy Today.
