The Fourth Cup: Unveiling the Mystery of the Last Supper and the Cross

by Scott Hahn

I quite literally hungered for the Eucharist, which I came to know was “Christ our Passover.” The hunger was evident in an embarrassing way the first time I went to Mass. At the consecration I found myself salivating—and weeping—as I realized it was really Jesus, and he was offering his own flesh to me as “living bread come down from heaven.”

I wanted communion with Christ. I wanted to drink his cup, with his Church, even if that meant suffering and sacrifice would follow.

The bread we break is a real communion in the Lord’s body; the cup we share is a true communion in his blood, which is the blood of the covenant.

The Last Supper is what transformed Good Friday from an execution into a sacrifice—and Easter Sunday is what transformed the sacrifice into a sacrament.

Jesus’ priestly offering at the Last Supper transformed his crucifixion at Calvary from an execution into a sacrifice.

Our vocation is to lay down not merely the stories of our lives but the whole of our lives.

Love is the answer to the riddle of suffering.

The grace and mercy of Christ enable us, in turn, to bear witness, even if only by accepting the “cup” we cannot avoid. For the Eucharist will transform our suffering into sacrifice. It isn’t the case that Jesus suffered and died so that we wouldn’t have to. It’s not a purely substitutionary matter. It’s a representative and participatory mystery. He suffered and died in order to endow our sufferings with a redemptive value, something they would never have possessed on their own. He suffered and died in order to invest his love with us. He did this so that our love, while not diminishing our suffering or sparing us from pain, will transform pain into holy passion, suffering into sacrifice. He did this so that our life in Christ might climax in a holy death.

Redemptive suffering is an essential part of our master story. This is what it means for us to bear the image and likeness of God. By the power of the Holy Spirit, our suffering refines our charity, just as our charity transforms our suffering into a living sacrifice that allows God to have his way in our lives.

Yet it was not the magnitude of Christ’s suffering that saved us but rather the magnitude of his love. Love turned his suffering into an offering at the Last Supper, and that love is the Eucharist. It was the Eucharist that transformed Calvary into a sacrifice rather than merely an execution.