The possibility of traveling through time, whether back into the past or forward into the future, has long fascinated curious human beings. What most Catholics fail to realize, of course, is that they experience the effects of time travel whenever they attend Mass!

Our Eucharist is modeled after Jesus’ Last Supper, where he gives his body and blood to his disciples in the context of a meal before his passion begins. That meal was a Passover meal; Jesus and his disciples, as faithful Jews, observed Passover annually as a “memorial feast,” commemorating the Lord’s deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. But to remember the Passover is not simply an intellectual recall of an event long since past; it is to bring that past event into the present moment of the believers so that they can rightly say, “The Lord has delivered us from bondage in Egypt.”

With that sense of “liturgical time” as background, I want to share some musings of mine on how the Eucharist itself is the singularity point of all time and space. When Jesus tells his disciples at the Last Supper, “Do this in memory of me,” he is asking them to remember – that is, to bring into their present moment – an event that hasn’t happened yet: his crucifixion! What we have in the Eucharist, then, is the meeting point of past, present, and future, made possible by Jesus’ conquest of all limitations of time, space, and death itself.

So come prepared to reflect on our Eucharistic time travel adventures as we discuss the Passover, the Last Supper, the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and the first Eucharistic meals celebrated by the Christians in Corinth!