"If
we but paused for a moment to consider attentively what takes place in this
Sacrament, I am sure that the thought of Christ's love for us would transform
the coldness of our hearts into a fire of love and gratitude." - St.
Angela of Foligno
(Gospel
text: Jn 6:52-59)
The
Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
“How can this man give us his Flesh to
eat?”
Jesus said to them,
“Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless you eat the Flesh
of the Son of Man and drink his Blood,
you do not have life within you.
Whoever
eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood
has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the
last day.
For my Flesh is true food,
and my Blood is true drink.
Whoever eats
my Flesh and drinks my Blood
remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living
Father sent me
and I have life because of the Father,
so also the one who feeds
on me will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from
heaven.
Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,
whoever eats this bread
will live forever.”
These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in
Capernaum.
Imagine this………………………………….
A worldwide mystery flu epidemic is
killing thousands of people. Doctors finally find a cure: a vaccine can be
created from the blood of someone who hasn’t been infected. Everyone has to get
tested, and doctors find that your
young son has the right type of blood for the vaccine. Everyone is so joyful,
but soon you’re told that doctors need all
of your son’s blood - your son must die so that everyone else can
live. Your son dies, but the vaccine created from his blood saves everyone from
the flu. People decide to have a ceremony every week to honor your son. At
first, people pay attention, but as the weeks go on, people stop caring as much
– they fall asleep during the ceremony, pretend to care, or don’t even show up
at all. You stand there, heartbroken, screaming, “My son died for you! Don’t
you care?”
God loves
us more than we can even imagine. He died so that we may have life, and if we
eat of his Body and drink of his Blood, we may have eternal life. Yet, we often
take this for granted. How would we feel if we were the parents in the story?
How would we feel if we watched others take this enormous sacrifice for
granted? Is that how God feels? He did give us His only son so that we
could live. Jesus is the only way to salvation, to God and to eternal life.
Without Him, we have no hope; we need him and the people who don’t think
they need him, need him the most. We seem to emphasize this during Easter time,
when we remember Jesus’ life and death, but we need to remember and celebrate
the importance of communion every single week.
In his Apostolic Exhortation, Sacramentum
Caritatis, written in 2007, our now Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, wrote, In
the sacrament of the altar, the Lord meets us, men and women created in God's
image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:27), and becomes our companion along the way. In
this sacrament, the Lord truly becomes food for us, to satisfy our hunger for
truth and freedom. Since only the truth can make us free (cf. Jn 8:32), Christ
becomes for us the food of truth.
Holy Communion will bring order to our
desires. It will lay out the way for us, serve up the truth of things,
and gives us resources to bring forth the qualities of life that reflect the
heart of God - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness faithfulness,
gentleness, self-control, generosity and chastity. It will satisfy our
desire to unite our hearts and minds to one another and to God.
This
communion will nourish the moment-by-moment course of our lives, if we let it.
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