A funny thing happened the other day that had nothing to do with anything much. I baked some bread. Before I entered the seminary, when I was teaching, I was a very good baker. I had a lot of fun in the stress relieving aspect where kneading dough would give me after a long day/week of teaching. My friends and neighbors, as well as my fellow faculty members, enjoyed the fruits of this labor…because I couldn’t eat that much bread.
I am not just a little but a lot out of practice so a I downloaded two roll recipes and began to make my bread. As you knead the dough their is a certain texture and feeling you get that tells you it is ready and being out of practice the “feeling” wasn’t very fine tuned, and although I thought something was a little off, I soldiered forward letting the bread rise, punching it down, and then making the rolls. They tasted okay but they looked awful and I knew something was wrong.
I read through the recipe several times before i figured out what I had done wrong. Well, in truth, I hadn’t done anything wrong. I had followed the instructions to a tee but…the two recipes had gotten stuck together so I began with one recipe and using most of the ingredients for that bread and finished it with a few ingredients and the mixing and kneading instructions for the second bread.
In this small error, I go back to there reality: the rolls tasted good and have been a nice edition to several meals since the baking. And this is often how life goes…something we hope for doesn’t turn out as we had planned but we discover some blessing, some gift, some joy in the unexpected outcome.
This has been the adjustments we as a Church, I as an individual and each family, have had to discover and work with over the past 5 months as we continue face the different scenarios this pandemic has placed into our lives.
This is where the Eucharist becomes so central to our lives as Catholics because it centers us and feeds us as we move through the different struggles of life. It is in the mystery of the sacrifice where we become what we receive and join in the work of God’s creative goodness that leads us through the messiness and mistakes of life and discover the good and holy of love.
It has been the labor of celebrating the Eucharist, the sticking together of the pages so to speak, where the struggle comes but the outcome is always the glorious presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ. As Pope Francis reminds us “Every celebration of the Eucharist is a ray of light of the unsetting sun that is the Risen Jesus Christ,…To participate in Mass, especially on Sunday, means entering in the victory of the Risen, being illuminated by his light, warmed by his warmth.”
We have celebrated the Mass isolated from everyone and connected only through the gift of the internet livestream for so long, and then the limited number outdoors and the “drive-in” Mass but none of these are the true recipe of our wonderful celebrations of community surrounding the Eucharistic table of the Lord.
St. Therese of Lisieux reminds us, “Do you realize that Jesus is there in the tabernacle expressly for you- for you alone? He burns with the desire to come into your heart… don’t listen to the demon, laugh at him, and go without fear to receive the Jesus of peace and love.”
See you in the Eucharist.
God bless
Fr. Mark,