ABSTRACT
Chauvet’s analysis of the narrative program of the Eucharistic Prayer reveals both a thanksgiving for what God has done in Jesus Christ and an offering of a return gift, “the holy and living sacrifice.”More importantly, he sees an intrinsic connection between these two elements that is similar to the twofold commandment to love God and your neighbor.Chauvet would put it this way: the reception of the gift, the sacramental body of Christ, is under the mode of oblation.1 This reinforces the notion that the grace of God is not something which we can receive as if it were a “graspable object.”2 We must instead receive it as a gift that demands a return gift. From this point of view, reception is an act of dispossession. Eucharist literally means thanksgiving, but in order to highlight the act of dispossession I will hyphenate the word thus, as thanks-giving. This giving is directed both vertically towards God and horizontally towards the neighbor. In either case, it is a giving that is attentive to the other and therefore constitutive with a decentering of the subject and an “overcoming” of onto-theology.
