By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ
[T]he LORD, your God, has directed all your journeying
in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it
was your intention to keep his commandments. Deuteronomy
8:2
Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are
one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.
1 Corinthians 10:17
"I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my
flesh for the life of the world." John 6:51
Piety
Piety is made up from our
relationship to Christ. Piety is more
than putting on the Mind and the Heart of Christ. It is also to have his Body and Blood as part
of us. We never think twice about the
reality of how the food we consume becomes a part of our body and blood. We know we become what we eat. It is harder to appreciate that when we go to
communion, we are becoming the body and the blood of Christ. Most of us sell ourselves short of the destiny
God has waiting for all of us in the ways we are nourished by the water and the
blood that flows from the side of Christ pierced on the cross for us. We
are called Christians and so we are in our gift of self to others. Christian means Christ-like and that perhaps
is enough for most Christians. But it
should also mean real “Christs” and that is what we are becoming by our
frequently communicating our gift of self in the name of Christ.
Study
The finest wine I ever
drunk in my life came from a bottle more than a hundred years old. It might well have been the best wine of the
18th century. I was with young people
that drank it down without appreciating the once in a lifetime opportunity they
were having. I tried to teach them how
to appreciate it. In celebrating
Eucharist, I sometimes wonders if it is even possible to truly appreciate what
the gift of communion is worth. Christ
is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. There is only one Eucharist. Our celebration is a moment that does not
exist in time. Christ died once and forever for us. We celebrate his dying every time we are at
Eucharist. Since we are there at a
moment that exists in all of time, we are there with all the people we love
with whom we have ever celebrated Eucharist. He makes us one in our togetherness with
him. We are one with him and with
all we are with. There is one Lord and
one Eucharist and we are all one with him and everyone else by Eucharist.
Action
We make Eucharist out of
our lives by the ways we share our time and energy. How often we offer all of ourselves to the
person we are with makes the Eucharist of Christ live on in who we are. Christ gave all of himself to us by emptying
himself out of his “God-ness” to be one of us in his humanness. How I empty myself out of the extras of life
surely is Eucharist. But it is more real
when I share the essentials of my life with those in need. We live in a world
that is materialistic in how it tries to hold unto to what is has and to get
more. Eucharist is the opposite. The challenge of Action is in the giving of
self away with the best of us offered each moment of our service of others. Action is the ultimate of prayer, as words
become the reality of who we are, in what we do for another. As we give ourselves away in prayer, our lives
become the reality of the promise of eternal life.
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