During this time of Eucharistic Revival in the United States we are given the opportunity to do many different things when it comes to our faith, understanding and practice of our relationship with God and especially in the receiving of the grace and blessing that comes from an encounter with “the Eucharist” in our daily lives. Our intimacy with God comes from finding a place in our lives where grace flows from God andwhat do with this wonderful gift. It is practicing gratitude within the blessing of God and recognizing how we are united with one another.
Pope St. John Paul II in his Encyclical Letter “Ecclesia de Eucharistia: On the Eucharist in Its Relationship to the Church” was a gift to the Church in 2003 and it’s importance and blessings continue to shine forth. One of the great themes is that of joy in living life to the fullness of blessing. Below are three quotes that help me to tell part of my own story.
“The saving efficacy of the sacrifice is fully realized when the Lord’s body and blood are received in communion. …Jesus himself reassures us that this union, which he compares to that of the life of the Trinity, is truly realized. The Eucharist is a true banquet, in which Christ offers himself as our nourishment. … This is no metaphorical food: “My flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed” (Jn 6:55).” (#16)
Do I/we believe? If we believe then the obligation to receive would be one of joy and blessing. I can remember times when I struggled to “go to Mass” on Sunday and would often wonder why I needed to go. This was especially real in my late teens and early twenties like so many members of our families.
How do we confront this moment of doubt with confidence and truth? The reality is I can’t remember when I came to truly believe. It wasn’t a big bang conversion but it was a conversion. Somewhere in my mid-twenties it became life giving to go and recieve the Eucharist. It was moments like, after a night of having fun with the guys I would get up early, while they all slept, and slip off to Mass. Or when coming back from and all day event on Sunday checking heading off to an evening Mass when I got home. In other words, it was God’s patience and a family supporting the grace-filled conversion
“Saint Ephrem writes: “He called the bread his living body and he filled it with himself and his Spirit… He who eats it with faith, eats Fire and Spirit… Take and eat this, all of you, and eat with it the Holy Spirit. For it is truly my body and whoever eats it will have eternal life.… In the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, for example, we find the prayer: “We beseech, implore and beg you: send your Holy Spirit upon us all and upon these gifts… that those who partake of them may be purified in soul, receive the forgiveness of their sins, and share in the Holy Spirit.” (#17)
I love that quote from St. Ephrem…”eats Fire and Spirit”. As a priest I I have watched thousands of people receive and I often wonder how many believe the Fire and Spirit entering and transforming the body. To put it simply, does receiving Jesus change our lives? Sadly for many Catholic Christians it does not. It is not a judgment, just a reality of watching and waiting.
Jesus tells us, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing.” (Luke 12:49) How different would the world look? The first time I discovered this fire was attending Holy Names College in Oakland at a Sunday Mass. I was a mess. Full of doubt, fears about what was going on in my life. As I sat in Mass after receiving Communion a deep and profound peace settled over me that I had never experienced before. I was still a mess. I still had a lot of troubles in my life. But something else was occurring at that moment too…it was the embrace of love and a healing of the heart I never thought would be possible.
Now does this occur every time I receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist…no. But it is also what draws me back over and over again, the reality of what has occurred and will occur again because the Fire and Spirit are real.
The Eucharist is a straining towards the goal, a foretaste of the fullness of joy promised by Christ (cf. Jn 15:11); it is in some way the anticipation of heaven, the “pledge of future glory”… Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life: they already possess it on earth, as the first-fruits of a future fullness which will embrace man in his totality. ….With the Eucharist we digest, as it were, the “secret” of the resurrection. For this reason Saint Ignatius of Antioch rightly defined the Eucharistic Bread as “a medicine of immortality, an antidote to death”.(#18)
We are made for Heaven. The celebration of the Eucharist, not just receiving but celebrating with the Church is the foretaste of Heaven. It took me three readings of C.S. Lewis’ story “The Screwtape Letters” to finally understand how it was in the broken diversity of the Church on earth that gave us the gift of Heavenly unity. Like many young people I struggled with the hypocrisy of the Church, the sinfulness of the Church and the imperfection of each and every person I met in the Church. It was in and through the Eucharist I began to see something quite different because each fault, crack and sin within the Church was also an encounter with Jesus Christ. The hurts didn’t exclude our Savior rather they were the open doors through which his Eucharistic grace flowed with abundance. We can get so stuck on looking at and for the wounds, we fail to see and experience the healings surrounding us.
God Bless and see you in the Eucharist.
Fr. Mark