“Biological” or physical death is not the whole death, not even its ultimate essence … in [the] Christian vision, death is above all a spiritual reality, of which one can partake while being alive, from which one can be free while lying in the grave. Death here is man's separation from life, and this means from God Who is the Giver of life, Who Himself is Life.

Death is not an eventuality that with luck, waits for another day. It is today's cup from which God now insists you drink. If you think that somehow you can choose today not to carry the deaths of your past life and former loves, you are wrong. There is no choice about that: if you rise at all, it will be from those. And it will be from those as perpetually present to you – as carried by you and offered by you to all the others who alone can give you life. The only choice you have is between accepting those deaths or pretending to a life that doesn't exist.

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (John 12:24)

The Eucharist, as a communion of love in and through Christ's sacrifice, involves learning cruciformity as members of Christ's sacrificial Body. As such, the Eucharist fulfills Israel's mode of sacrificial worship, in which sacrifice and communion are inextricably integrated.