The Eucharist

Father Robert Rivers, a Paulist priest, in his talk “Eucharist and Evangelization: Two Sides of One Reality” said, “I was conducting a mission in Amish country and happened to engage in a conversation with the local Baptist minister…We were discussing the Catholic understanding of Eucharist…  The minister said…”If I believed what you Catholics believe about the Eucharist, I would crawl to church on my hands and knees!”

One of the memorable characters in Dorothy Day’s “The Long Loneliness [said]…, If I believe as you do, that Christ himself is present…on the altar, nothing in this world would keep me from it”.     (Origins)

Phil Coulter wrote a beautiful song, “The Old Man”

The tears have all been shed now,

We’ve said out last good-bye.

His soul’s been blessed,

He’s laid to rest,

And now I feel alone.

He was more than just a father,

A teacher, my best friend.

He can still be heard

In the tunes we shared.

When we play them on our own.

And I never will forget him.

For he made me what I am.

Though he may be gone,

Memories linger on,

And I miss him, the old man.

The Gift of the Eucharist urges us to “…never forger him….”  Never forget Jesus Christ who gave Himself to us in The Eucharist “…the most ordinary and the most divine gesture imaginable. That is the truth of Jesus.  So human, yet so divine; so familiar, yet so mysterious; so close, yet so revealing!”  (Nowen, “With Burning Hearts”)

The Second Vatican Council taught us the Eucharist is the “…source and summit of Christian Life.”  The Eucharist is the heart of the Church’s life, it (the Eucharist) literally means, “act of thanksgiving.”

To live the Eucharist means living a life of gratitude; it means seeing life as a miracle. “Belief in the Eucharist gathers people together.  It affirms their communal faith… The honor [we] Catholics show to the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood is not a narrow expression of shallow pity.  It is …an expression of our recognition of the presence of God in all that is created.”  (This Sunday Scripture, June 18, 2006).

The Eucharist is the Divine kiss, the Divine embrace, the Divine love given to us to bind us to Christ in our journey here on earth.

The Eucharist affirms.

“George Docsi’s grew up in Hungary as a boy growing he loved dinner… big plates, the maids serving soup; he loved going into the dinning room.

One evening he went downstairs & the dining room was in an uproar.

Another pogrom was taking place in Russia, & his grandfather went to the railway station & brought home some Jews.

Men were in skull caps in the living room, mothers nursing babies in the dining room; he threw a fit & yelled, ‘I want my supper!’ I want my supper!  One of the maids saw this & gave him a piece of bread.

He threw it on the floor & screamed, ‘I want my supper!’  His Grandfather entered the dining room at that moment - bent down, picked up the bread, kissed it & gave it to George.”  He ate it.

George Docsi said, ‘… I think there’s a little of my grandfather in me now.’”  (Robert Bly in, The Little Book on the Human Shadow p. 41)

The kissing the bread reminds us that in the Eucharist Jesus kisses the bread and the wine at the Consecration, changing them into His Body & His Blood.

Today take some time to reflect on The Eucharist the profound reverence that we should have for the Eucharist and for the PRECIOUS gift of Eucharist!

Reflect on the awesome responsibility we have to share the Good News of Jesus Christ, true God and true man, and the Gift of His Body and Blood (The Eucharist) with our world!

May God Be Praised!