Continuing his catechesis on Jesus' promise that the apostles would be "baptised in the Holy Spirit" (Acts 1:5), John Paul II traces an objective link between Christ's paschal sacrifice, offered "through the eternal Spirit" (Heb 9:14), and the gift of the Spirit. Since the Eucharist mystically renews that sacrifice, the Spirit who forms the Church at Pentecost orients her toward the Eucharist, a foretaste of the royal wedding banquet of the parable and of the "banquet of the Lamb" in Revelation. The Eucharist remains until the end of time the sacrament of the blood of the covenant, poured out for the forgiveness of sins, and he quotes his encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem on the Spirit's presence in the Son's sacrifice. Recalling the Capernaum discourse, he notes that listeners took Jesus' words about eating his flesh in a "material" sense, and Jesus answered that "it is the Spirit that gives life" (Jn 6:63); only by the Spirit can the Eucharistic food and drink bring about saving communion with the crucified and glorified Christ. The first believers' devotion to "the breaking of bread" (Acts 2:42) shows the Spirit guiding them toward the Eucharist. Through it, persons and communities discover the divine meaning of human life and the image of the Trinity within, an idea linked to Saint Thomas and to Ephesians 3:14-19. At the centre of the Church and the new universe stands the Eucharist, where Christ acts through the Holy Spirit.