A Gift That Calls UsThe Meaning of Eucharistic Gift Exchange

Julia Smucker

The Eucharist is a gift: even more than this, it is an exchange

of gifts. This dimension of what we think is going on when the

Eucharist is celebrated permeates the language and actions of

Eucharistic prayer, in which the gathered assembly offers back to God

what it has already received from him, through which it asks for a

healing sacramental presence, by which the faithful are ultimately

redirected toward a living out of the same self-giving presence they

have received. While such language has profound implications for the

Christian life, significant questions have also been raised concerning

it. Does the very concept of “exchange” carry inescapably economic

overtones that risk undercutting the gift of grace? Can a gift truly

be called a gift when it comes with an attached obligation?

Furthermore, can any gift be fully freed from an implicit obligation,

and in light of this, is any genuine gift even possible? Such

questions pose an obvious challenge to the paradigm of Eucharistic

gift exchange. Others, however, have convincingly reclaimed the

language of gift and its importance for sacramental theology,

contending that a gift that asks something of the recipient is not

negated but rather intensified. It is this type of dynamic (not

magical, legalistic or purist) understanding of such concepts as gift

and grace, not to mention Eucharist itself, that is most helpful for

responding to the call to allow the gift of the Eucharist to bear

fruit in the lives of all who partake of it.

Undoubtedly, the thinker most strongly associated with the

deconstruction of the concept of gift has been Jacques Derrida.

Insisting on a strictly purist definition of gift, in which “there

must be no reciprocity, return, exchange, countergift, or debt,”1

Derrida argues that no gift can in fact be absent of these things, and

thus a true gift “in which no one acquires credit and no one contracts

a debt” appears impossible.2 For Derrida, any reward to the giver,

even the mere acknowledgement of the gift, constitutes a

“contamination” and thus cancels out the gift. This is so even in the

case of an anonymous gift known only to the giver, who is rewarded by

the knowledge of having given.3 In a conversation with Jean-Luc Marion

1 Jacques Derrida, Given Time, quoted in John D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997), 163. Caputo helpfully summarizes Derrida’s argument both here and in his later essay, “Apostles of the Impossible: on God and the Gift in Derrida and Marion,” in God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, ed. John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon, 185-222 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999). 2 Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, 163.3 John Milbank, “Can a Gift Be Given? Prolegomena to a Future Trinitarian Metaphysic,” Modern Theology 11:1 (January 1995): 119-56. Ref. from p. 130.

later in their careers, Derrida clarifies that while he believes the

word “gift” to be self-contradictory,4 he “never concluded that there

is no gift,” only that it cannot be known as such: “as soon as you

know it, you destroy it.”5 A true phenomenologist, Derrida is

concerned with appearances, hence his claim that the gift must appear

as impossible. It follows from this that whether or not a gift can

actually exist at some deeper level is a question that extends beyond

the realm of human knowledge and experience.

Derrida’s philosophy had a considerable influence on Marion, who

attempted to reclaim the concept of gift for its theological

implications while accepting Derrida’s seemingly impossible standards

by which a gift can be defined. Marion agrees with Derrida that a

gift cannot be explained or accessed “within the horizon of economy,”

but he diverges from Derrida in his assertion that a “fully achieved”

gift can still be described by means of reduction. Using the biblical

example of eschatological parables, Marion argues that a gift is

possible when the recipient is unknown, as is the case with those in

the parables who have given to the poor without realizing, until the

eschaton, that they have given to Christ. He further notes, in a

reduction of the gift itself, that what is given is not always a

4 Richard Kearney, moderator, “On the Gift: A Discussion between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion,” in Caputo and Scanlon, 54-78. Ref. from p. 67.5 Ibid, 59-60.

tangible object, and that in such cases the gift is often more

meaningful: “When we give ourselves, our life, our time, when we give

our word, not only do we give no thing, but we give much more.” This

observation becomes his means of escape from “the horizon of economy,”

which both he and Derrida consider a necessary endeavor even while

disagreeing on its possibility.6

In view of this shared concern, John Caputo raises the question

of the appropriateness of debt in relation to a gift, both in direct

response to the preceding conversation7 and again in his own follow-up

essay. In the latter, he points to this question as the greatest

disagreement between Derrida and Marion: for Derrida, any sense of

debt, duty or obligation automatically negates the gift,8 whereas in

Marion’s hypothetical experimentation with reduction, obligation turns

out to play a vital role. In the donor’s experience, the recognition

that something is givable arises out of obligation, “which breaks the

spell of autrarchy – ‘I do not owe anyone anything’ – and I own up to

the debt I owe the other.” In the recipient’s experience, “a debt of

gratitude” is accepted by the receipt of the gift.9

As Caputo goes on to summarize, Marion demonstrates how the

reduction of one or more dimensions of a gift can in a sense raise its6 Ibid, 62-64.7 Ibid, 77.8 Caputo, “Apostles of the Impossible,” 212-15.9 Ibid, 201.

stakes. A gift without a recipient can be achieved “when I love my

enemy who rejects my love” (and who consequently “does himself a

disservice” by rendering the gift more “pure”), and a gift without a

gift may consist of “visible love without a visible token” and thus

remain unquantifiable. In the most problematic reduction, a gift

without a donor (that is, when the donor is unknown to the recipient)

creates an unpayable debt leading to irremediable guilt.10 Thus, in a

rather valiant attempt to get around Derrida’s deconstruction, Marion

has navigated himself into a somewhat awkward position.

Indeed, the entire exchange between the two gives rise to a

degree of awkwardness, as is displayed at the end of the dialogue

mentioned above in a telling remark injected by moderator Richard

Kearney. Thanking Derrida and Marion “for giving us their thoughts,”

Kearney comments, “One of the nice things about the gift is that it

gives you the opportunity to express gratitude for the gift, even if

you betray the gift in doing so.” To this Derrida generously

responds, “No one knows who is thanking whom for what,”11 essentially

acknowledging Kearney’s thanks in the only way possible in light of

the preceding conversation: by describing it as unknown.

10 Ibid, 202.11 Kearney, 77.

What is revealing in this brief exchange is a tenacious impulse

that remains in the face of all theoretical deconstruction: as John

Milbank describes a piece of the Derridean paradox, “though a gift

cannot be, we cannot elide the human desire to give.”12 This is perhaps

the dilemma that leads Marion, in Milbank’s assessment, to being

caught somewhere between Derrida’s nihilism and the notion of

“purified gift-exchange” that Milbank proposes as a more helpful

understanding of Christian agape.13 Milbank explicitly differentiates

his term from the concept of “pure gift,” believing that “modern

purism about the gift, which renders it unilateral,” is partially

based on a misguided identification of agape with disinterest.

Contesting Derrida’s Kantian requirement of absolute purity of motive

as a precondition of a gift, Milbank counters that

if a gift is first and foremost a suitable gift … then the act of giving is notnecessarily ruined by imperfect intention. Moreover, one can enjoy giving, not onlyin the mode of self-congratulation, but also as a kind of ecstasis, or continuationof oneself out of oneself. Likewise, the wanting and even the demanding to receiveback (in some fashion) may be a recognition of ineradicable connection withothers and a desire for its furtherance.14

It is this “connection with others” that is crucial here, as

Milbank reintroduces to the discussion the natural context in which

any gift takes place, which is a fundamentally relational one. From a

theological angle, Milbank speculates, our existence is itself a gift;

12 Milbank, 130.13 Ibid, 131-33.14 Ibid, 132.

anthropologically, our social experience tells us that “human

generosity belongs within the context of prior attachments, or at the

very least the making of such attachments.”15 By highlighting the

absurdity of purely unilateral gift-giving in both romantic and

familial relationships, which would cause the relationships to be

legitimately judged unhealthy, Milbank’s insight on reciprocity

appears less counterintuitive and more common-sense: “Giving here is

most free where it is yet most bound, most mutual and most reciprocally

demanded.”16

Marion’s chief oversight, according to Milbank, is that he “fails

to see that reciprocity is as much a condition for the gift as gift is

for reciprocity.” This appears to be the consequence of allowing the

concept of gift to be extracted from its relational context and set up

in a purely ontological one, as if occurring in some hyper-theoretical

Platonic otherworld. In response to Marion’s intrinsically confused

attempt to free the gift from ontology into an even more remote

abstraction, Milbank insists that “gift without being” is a nonentity,

but an actual gift necessarily entails a relationship.17

The theological implications of this are manifold: in addition to

the Trinitarian dimension of the divine act of self-giving, Milbank

15 Ibid, 124.16 Ibid.17 Ibid, 137.

points to Old and New Testament examples of the biblical witness to

the “primary relationality” necessary for the offering and reception

of a gift. In the biblical narrative, the reciprocally-giving

relationship begins and ends with covenant, expanding from the

intermittent debt cancellation of Jubilee into the normative

generosity of the redeemed community, in which agape love becomes the

new and only debt.18 The perpetual gift-exchange of agape is not simply

a new rule to be legalistically obeyed, nor is it “spontaneously and

freely to love, of one’s own originality and without necessarily

seeking any communion.” Rather, it is an “answering repetition” that

is intrinsically and inextricably relational.19

The occurrence of gift-giving as exchange within a social

framework is of course not only biblical but broadly universal, albeit

governed by varied and particular cultural norms.20 Milbank suggests

that the point at which any such norms fall short of Christian agape is

in their “agonistic components,” by the “purging” of which he arrives

at his defense of exchange as transformed by Christian theology and

practice. He calls this transformed agape reality “purified gift-

exchange,” defined over against the Derridean (de)construct of the

“pure gift.”21 In the same vein, Louis-Marie Chauvet’s development of 18 Ibid, 145-49.19 Ibid, 150.20 Ibid, 126-28.21 Ibid, 131.

the theology of “symbolic exchange” provides a helpful connection

between the relational and sacramental dimensions of the Christian

life. Like Marion, Chauvet seeks to liberate sacramental theology

from any possible monetization, yet he does so without constraining

himself to accept the imposition of an absolute and unattainable

purity as requisite for there to be a gift.

In contrast with market exchange, which measures all transactions

according to quantifiable value systems, Chauvet presents a contrarian

logic of symbolic exchange in which “subjects exchange themselves,”22

without keeping count of what is in the end unquantifiable. According

to Chauvet’s model, some sense of obligation to reciprocate a gift is

not only allowable but necessary. While allowing for the universal

urge toward some degree of disobligation offered along with a gift,

Chauvet nonetheless insists that “obligation belongs to ethical

relation” and cannot, indeed should not, be completely taken away:

“Too much generosity alienates. To overwhelm someone with gifts so

gratuitous that one takes away from the other even the possibility of

giving in return is to treat that person as an object because, by

denying her or him the possibility of being a subject of duty, one

deprives her or him from the dignity of subject, period.”23 The giving

22 Louis-Marie Chauvet, The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body, trans. Madeleine Beaumont (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2001), 119.23 Ibid, 125.

of gifts between active subjects therefore necessitates, rather than

being negated by, an obligation toward some form of reciprocity.

Ironically, it is this very obligation that frees the gift from a

market-exchange paradigm by allowing it to be received as a gift

rather than acquired as a mere “value-object.”24

Drawing out the profound ramifications of symbolic exchange for

sacramental theology, Chauvet concludes that “the reception of God’s

grace as grace … requires … the return-gift of faith, love, conversion of

heart, witness by one’s life.”25 Such a turn of life seems to Chauvet

to require a turn of language in order to get at the meaning of this

exchange, particularly with regards to the traditional language of

sacrifice. Rather than having to choose between “sacrifice” and “non-

sacrifice,” Chauvet proposes the term “anti-sacrifice,” which he

hastens to clarify is not the denial of sacrifice but is essentially a

conception of sacrifice turned on its head, “back toward ethical

practice, the place where the ritual practice is verified.”26 Chauvet

explicitly sees this language of “anti-sacrifice” within the

perspective of a multivalent Eucharistic theology, as one dimension

among many of the Eucharistic rite and of the Christ-event, yet as a

24 Ibid, 122.25 Ibid, 124.26 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence, trans. Patrick Madigan, S.J., and Madeleine Beaumont (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1995), 307.

nonetheless helpful connection between Christology and the ritual that

points toward it – toward the uniqueness of Christ’s radically kenotic

sacrifice.27 This Eucharistic and kenotic “anti-sacrifice,” in sum, is

a call to conversion and reconciliation:

One sees what is at stake in what we call the anti-sacrificial: not the negation of thesacrificial or of a part of it (its dimension of reconciliation), but the task to convert all thesacrificial to the gospel in order to live it, not in a servile, but in a filial (and hence in a brotherly and sisterly) manner.This is precisely why the realization of this intimate association, based on our commonfiliation, by the ethical practice of reconciliation between human beings, constitutes thepremier place of our “sacrifice.” That is what the anti-sacrifice of the Eucharist shows us andenjoins us to do.28

With Christ’s self-offering, made manifest in the Eucharist,

being understood as a calling in this sense, Chauvet’s examination of

the Eucharistic Prayer as being quintessentially representative of the

“symbolic exchange between humanity and God”29 carries strong

relational and ethical implications. On one level, the exchange that

occurs in the Eucharistic Prayer is that of a discourse, yet one whose

content signifies a still deeper exchange of offerings. In the

institution narrative, not only are Christ’s actions recalled, but

they become commands, and not only for the ritual but also beyond it.

Similarly, the anamnesis discourse is not only about memory but is

primarily a reception of Christ’s gift of himself, a reception so

closely tied to the church’s own offering that it becomes a

prefiguration of the return-gift, which is “the existential offering of

27 Ibid, 301-302.28 Ibid, 311, italics his.29 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 129.

one’s own life.” The most direct offering and request are made in the

epiclesis discourse, which Chauvet again takes beyond the rite itself:

“becoming the body of Christ” applies most immediately to the

transformation of the Eucharistic elements, but ultimately to “the

supreme goal of the Eucharist” which is “the gift of charity between

sisters and brothers in unity.” This dual transformation means that

receiving Christ’s presence in the Eucharist entails being Christ’s

presence in the world: “Mass would be barren if it did not enjoin on

Christians the obligation of ‘becoming what they receive.’”30 In all

of these ways, the entire dynamic exchange of the Eucharistic Prayer

maps out what Chauvet calls an “itinerary of conversion” which is

necessary in order to live the Christian life in thanksgiving to God.31

Chauvet’s analysis of the Eucharistic Prayer thus points to a

divine-human exchange that contains a set of reciprocal and very much

interdependent obligations: just as “the realization by human beings

of the performance of thanksgiving demands that God give them the

competence,”32 the needed means of competence is given for a specific

purpose. “The reception of grace as grace (and not as something else

which would be more or less magical) never goes without a task; it

implies the ethical return-gift of justice and mercy.”33 The return-30 Ibid, 133-138.31 Ibid, 133.32 Ibid. Italics his.33 Ibid, 138.

gift is necessary, not as a prerequisite to the reception of grace

(otherwise it would not be grace but legalism), but as a fulfillment, in

order for the gift to realize its purpose, rather than be reduced to

merely minimal validity (otherwise it would not be grace but

superstition). Reception of the sacramental presence of Christ is

meant to flow into “this return-gift of the living-in-grace with one’s

sisters and brothers,” without which “eucharistic communion, though

‘valid,’ would be fruitless” and “a misapprehension of God’s gift.”34

In order to take the reception of Christ’s self-gift in the

Eucharist beyond mere validity, the practice to which we are called,

in Milbank’s terminology, is “perpetual Eucharist”: not grudging or

legalistic acts of charity, but “a living through the offering … of

the gift given to us of God himself in the flesh.” To underscore how

vitally important this living-out of perpetual Eucharist is, Milbank

adds that to deny the possibility of such “non-identical repetition”

(what Chauvet would call the “return-gift”) is tantamount to denying

the continued manifestation of the incarnation through Eucharistic

presence.35 Contrary to Derrida’s purism, Milbank insists with Chauvet

that the gift is dependent not on the lack of reciprocity but rather

on the presence of it: “Only … if first we really do receive, and

34 Ibid, 145.35 Milbank, 152.

receive through our participatory giving in turn, is it conceivable

that there is a gift to us, or that we ourselves can give.”36

The language of gift exchange, as liturgical theologian Kevin

Irwin points out, is in fact deeply embedded in the Eucharistic

prayers of the Roman rite, most obviously in the use of the Latin word

commercium, meaning “exchange,” in the prayers over the gifts.37 This

term is of course not to be confused with its English cognate

“commercial,” which would carry the inherent danger of a badly

misguided interpretation of the Eucharistic exchange that would reduce

the gift of sacramental presence to a quantifiable commodity to be

bought and sold. It is well known that this type of corruption of the

gift into monetized recompense was prevalent during the Middle Ages,38

with long-lasting ramifications. Edward Kilmartin, in his essay “The

Sacrifice of Thanksgiving and Social Justice,” summarizes the history

of this tragic misinterpretation and subsequently offers a helpful

alternative for understanding the place of monetary offerings in

Eucharistic celebrations.39 A better interpretation of the collection,

36 Ibid, 154.37 Kevin W. Irwin, Models of the Eucharist (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2005), 58-60.38 While the medieval period is most infamous in this regard, the temptation toward a commercialized pneumatology is as old as the New Testament itself, asis apparent from the story of Simon of Samaria, who misguidedly attempts to purchase the power of the Holy Spirit from the apostles, in Acts 8:4-25 (see esp. v. 18-20).39 Edward Kilmartin, S.J., “The Sacrifice of Thanksgiving and Social Justice,”in Liturgy and Social Justice, ed. Mark Searle (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1980), 53-71. For his overview of the history of the Mass stipend, see

Kilmartin proposes, necessarily implies a greater level of

participation by the faithful both in and beyond the Mass, as they

express their thanksgiving to God and commit themselves to the service

of humanity.40

Without disregarding the danger of monetization, Nathan Mitchell

responds to Marion’s well-intentioned attempt to escape “the tyranny

of economics” by noting the parallel danger of viewing money and

material goods as “simply filthy lucre” that remains outside the

possibility of divine transformation. If, on the contrary, we believe

that God is transforming all our offerings “into the currency of an

utterly new exchange, one radically different from the ordinary money-

based commerce that exists among human beings,” it then follows that

“the theology of eucharist cannot separate cult from care.”41 Here,

again, is where Chauvet’s language of symbolic exchange and Milbank’s

resituation of the gift in its relational context can forge a helpful

path between a legalistic or market-based approach to sacramental

grace on the one hand, and a quasi-Gnostic separation of the material

from the spiritual on the other. When recognized as a gift (which by

definition implies relationship) rather than a commodity (purchased,

according to a quantifiable value, as an object with no relational

especially p. 57-68.40 Ibid, 68-71.41 Nathan Mitchell, Real Presence: The Work of the Eucharist (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2001), 112-113.

end), the Eucharist frees us to participate “in the reciprocal

relation of give-and-take … that is in turn, in the Holy Spirit, the

gift of relation.”42

The essentially relational nature of the gift is thus profoundly

liberating. At the same time, it is also profoundly paradoxical. The

common drive to free a gift from its implied obligation to

reciprocate, however futile the attempt may be, might in one sense

appear to point toward Derrida’s nihilistic conclusions regarding the

possibility of the gift.43 On the other hand, the very futility of

such an attempt would also seem to indicate a social instinct toward

reciprocity44 that may perhaps be even more deeply underlying. What is

therefore apparent from the struggles that manifest themselves in

numerous interpersonal exchanges is a very live tension between two

widespread and deep-seated intuitions: firstly, that relationships are

not quantifiable (hence the desire to free the recipient of a gift

from anything that smacks of a commercial exchange), and secondly, that

relationships imply, even demand, reciprocity (hence the

inescapability of the perceived obligation to respond, at the very

least by acknowledging the gift). Moreover, human experience tells us42 Milbank, 154.43 Technically speaking, Derrida, as previously noted, is nihilistic regardingthe possibility of the appearance of the gift, but this phenomenological quibble is incidental to the discussion at hand.44 As cultural anthropology shows and as Milbank has pointed out, this social instinct is nearly universal, if not completely so (see Milbank, 126-128).

that this sense of reciprocity has a definite social purpose: to enter

into the reciprocal exchange by responding to a gift received is an

inherently relationship-building act.

If, then, the Eucharist is a gift, what is its ultimate purpose

within the relationship between God and humanity? Simply put, what

does the Eucharist ask of those who receive it? Milbank’s answer to

this is simple and, of course, broadly relational: “This is the one

given condition of the gift, that we love because God first loved us,”

pithily adding, “It being given that God is love.”45 Further fleshing

out what it means to love, particularly in response to Christ’s

“active presence” in the Eucharist, Irwin notes a vital implication of

the “dynamism and action” of this presence: that Eucharistic devotion

“is never to be regarded as something that is passive or that does not

require a response from us. If in fact Christ is active among us

through the Eucharist, then one of the required responses is that we

be engaged in acting on this gift by the way we are present to others

in the community with which we celebrate the Eucharist.”46

Chauvet draws similar connections in his framework of symbolic

exchange: Christ who offers himself in the sacrament calls us to become

45 Milbank, 154.46 Irwin, 325. He also makes clear that a dynamic view of the “required response” to Eucharistic presence does not allow for Pelagianism, since our response begins and ends with God and is continuously dependent on his initiation and sustenance.

what we receive, which is the self-giving presence of Christ to the

world. Thus the “ethical return-gift” implied by reception of the

Eucharist is also a necessary implication of the transformation that

happens in and through it.47 If it is truly the case that Eucharistic

transformation extends to all areas of human life, this fundamentally

incarnational sacrament must surely both call and enable us to live

the reconciling Gospel demonstrated by the incarnate Word. This is

why Chauvet can call love for God and neighbor “the ‘true sacrifice,’”

including “its socio-political implications.”48

Conversely, Kilmartin equates the failure to recognize the claim

that Eucharistic celebration makes to consecrated lives, manifested in

“a real commitment to love all humankind as brothers and sisters of

the same Father,” with a betrayal of the “holy sacrifice.”49 More

positively, he draws on Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the

Church (Lumen Gentium) for an understanding of Eucharistic sacrifice

that is more faithful to the Church’s mission, in which “[the

faithful] offer the divine victim to God and themselves along with

it.”50 When sacrifice and offering are understood in this holistic

manner, Kilmartin ultimately sees a positive place for monetary

offerings in a Eucharistic context, particularly when designated for 47 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 136-138.48 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 315.49 Kilmartin, 55.50 Lumen Gentium 11, cited in Kilmartin, 56.

the poor, in that they strengthen the connection between liturgy and

social justice, and thereby “provide the theological basis for the

laity to meet their social obligations in the liturgy and so bring a

new commitment to social action in their daily lives.”51

If this is the commitment to which the Eucharist calls us, are we

then to conclude that the gift it offers us is somehow diluted or even

annihilated by such a calling? This might well be the case if the

context of the offering (in either direction) were impersonal. If,

however, the offering is ultimately and fundamentally relational, with

all the demands implied by any relationship on those who enter into

it, then the calling is itself a gift. Without it, as Chauvet has

pointed out, we would be alienated by the sheer gratuity of a gift so

“pure” as to deprive us of any possibility of responding to it.52 In

this sense, we may even see the entire divine-human exchange, which

could only be made possible by God’s deliberate condescension to enter

it, as the very gift that graciously allows us to offer ourselves in

return. This divine condescension into relational reciprocity is the

ultimate act of self-emptying kenosis, which is at the heart of the

incarnation. And incarnation, in turn, is at the heart of what

happens in the Eucharist. The best gifts, then, are indeed the ones

51 Kilmartin, 70.52 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 125.

that ask the most of us, never doing so without giving us what we need

to fulfill their purpose. What we receive in the Eucharist is a gift

that calls us to give of ourselves, being simultaneously a

transformative presence that enables us to respond to such a call,

sending us forth, as we sometimes hear in the final dismissal of the

Mass, “to love and serve the Lord and one another.”

Thanks be to God.

Works Cited

Caputo, John D. The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997.

____________ and Michael J. Scanlon, eds. God, the Gift, and Postmodernism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999.

Chauvet, Louis-Marie. The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body, translated by Madeleine Beaumont. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2001.

___________. Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence, translated by Patrick Madigan, S.J., and Madeleine Beaumont. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1995.

Irwin, Kevin W. Models of the Eucharist. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2005.

Kilmartin, Edward J. “The Sacrifice of Thanksgiving and Social Justice.” In Liturgy and Social Justice, edited by Mark Searle, 53-71. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1980.

Milbank, John. “Can a Gift Be Given? Prolegomena to a Future Trinitarian Metaphysic.” Modern Theology 11:1 (January 1995): 119-56.

Mitchell, Nathan. Real Presence: The Work of Eucharist. Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2000.