ABSTRACT
Chauvet’s Eucharistic theology and ecclesiology is very much indebted to the Lucan account of the time of the church. In the time of the church, Jesus of Nazareth no longer walks among the disciples. Jesus is dead and yet the community he gathered comes to experience his presence. How we understand this presence is a matter of great importance and has been a source of controversy in Western Christianity. For Chauvet, the disciples’ experience of the presence of Jesus is necessarily tied to the recognition of his absence. He says for example that we must renounce the desire to “see, touch and find” the Body of Jesus.1 This is also fundamental for an understanding of Chauvet’s Eucharistic theology. We must then consider the Eucharistic body to be “a sign of the lost and impossible presence of Jesus.”2 Chauvet turns to several key passages in Luke-Acts in order to explicate this experience.
