A Case for a Eucharistic Approach to Healthcare According to the Social Teachings of the Catholic Church

The Christian message evokes the motif of abundant life for all. It is a summon to take seriously the holistic approach to life that has meaning and that is relational in all its expressions and manifestations. It is on this note that one has to appreciate the link between healthcare and the social teachings of the Catholic Church. Such a link is grounded in a pneumatological turn that mandates the Church to explore ways that the common good can be expressed through affordable healthcare for all persons. This work makes a claim that a eucharistic consciousness is the proper way to understand the link between healthcare affordability and the social teachings of the Church. It is eucharistic because the theology of the eucharist is a summon for the Church to be a church for others while upending individualism. Also, a eucharistic disposition is what constitutes the vision of the social teachings of the Church. Thus, if the Church is to offer its own wisdom on how healthcare ought to be understood in our times, it necessarily must be rooted in a eucharistic stance that defines its vision of the common good.