The Consecration

You will remember that in the Eucharist, when the priest does what Our Lord did at the Last Supper and offers Our Lord to God and uses his own words (“This is my Body, this is my Blood”), then the forms of Bread and Wine on the altar and Our Lord’s Ascended Body in Heaven become one in the Blessed Sacrament.

This wonderful moment in the service is called the Consecration.  You can tell when it is reached because of the bell, which is rung three times at the Consecration of the Bread and three times at the Consecration of the Wine.  If you look up then, you will see the priest lift up the Consecrated Bread, the Body of Christ, and offer It to God, and then do the same with the Chalice.  You should join with the priest in offering Our Lord to God, because it is then that Our Lord, our Great High Priest, presents us with himself before his Father’s Throne in Heaven.

You will notice that after the Consecration the priest genuflects (kneels on one knee) before the Blessed Sacrament as an act of adoration to Our Lord now present on the altar.  We shall say more about this in the next session.

We have a special name for the consecrated Bread which now hides Our Lord’s Ascended Body.  The special name is the Host, which means the Offering.  We call the consecrated Wine, the Precious Blood.