The Eucharist always had an important role in the life of  Chiara Lubich, ever since her childhood. Both her personal life and that of her first companions – and that of the entire Movement – has been marked by the Eucharistic presence. And it could not have been otherwise, when we recall that Eucharistic Jesus is the heart and soul and very life of the Church. The action of the Holy Spirit in his charism of unity, instilled in Chiara and in her first companions a powerful attraction for Jesus in the Eucharist, to the point that they could not wait to go to Mass and share their lives with Him each day. And later, when they began travelling through Italy by train, they would eagerly gaze out over the countryside searching for church steeples, because they knew that the Eucharist, their love was there. There is a marvelous interconnection between the Eucharist and the spirituality of unity. Chiara comments on this great mystery in the following way: “Since the Lord concentrated our attention on Jesus’ prayer for unity when he wanted to initiate this vast movement, it meant that he had to give us a strong push in the direction of the only one who could accomplish this unity:  Jesus in the Eucharist. In fact, just as newborns instinctively nourish themselves at their mother’s breast, hardly knowing what they are doing – ever since the beginning of the Movement we noticed that people who grew close to us began going to Communion every day. How are we to explain this? What instinct is for a newborn, the Holy Spirit is for an adult, who is a newborn into the life that the Gospel of unity brings. He is driven to the “heart” of Mother Church and he fees on the most precious nectar that it has, in which he feels to have found the secret of the life of unity and of his own divinization. Indeed, the work of the Eucharist is to make us God by participation. Mixing together our flesh that has been made alive by the Holy Spirit and Christ’s life-giving flesh, we are divinized in soul and in body. The Church could be defined as: the oneness caused by the Eucharist, because it is comprised of divinized men and women, made God, united to Christ who is God and united to one another. This God-with-us is present in all the tabernacles of the world, listening to our confidences, our joys, and our fears. How much comfort Eucharistic Jesus has provided for us in our trials when no one would grant us an audience because the Movement was under investigation! He was always there, at all hours, waiting for us, telling us: In the end, I’m the boss of the Church.  And in struggles and pains of every kind he gave us such strength that we thought we should have died many times if Eucharistic Jesus and Jesus in our midst, whom he fueled, had not sustained us.”