Jesus died praying...He fashioned his death into an act of prayer, an act of worship...[And] his dying words fuse his words at the Supper...For the event of the Supper consists in Jesus sharing his body and blood, that is, his earthly existence; he gives and communicates himself. In other words, the event of the Supper is an anticipation of death, the transformation of death into an act of love...Death, which, by its very nature, is the end, the destruction of every communication, is changed by him into an act of self-communication; and this is man's redemption, for it signifies the triumph of love over death. We can put the same thing another way: death, which puts an end to words and to meaning, itself becomes a word, becomes a place where meaning communicates itself.
--Joseph Ratzinger
