I’M referring
to the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. That
is where we get in direct contact with the living and
redeeming
Christ. We become contemporaries of his and join him in
his redemptive
work, sanctifying ourselves in the process and helping in
the
sanctification of everybody else.
In the Holy
Mass, which makes present the culminating love
of Christ for us by going through his passion, death and
resurrection,
we are invited to offer with him the supreme sacrifice to
God our
Father. It sacramentalizes the fullness of Christ’s
redemptive work on
us.
In so doing, we
obtain forgiveness for all our sins and
achieve our reconciliation with God from whom we come and
to whom we
belong. We cannot achieve this without Christ doing it
for us and with
us. He is the one who does it for us.
On our own, we
cannot achieve that end because the
creature cannot fully repay the debt he incurs from his
Creator who is
infinitely above our nature and capabilities. It can only
be God who
is also man who can perfectly mediate between God and
man.
But our part is
to act, in a manner of speaking, as
laborers in the field. As St. Paul said in his First
Letter to the
Corinthians (3,6-9), we are “God’s fellow workers” and we
ourselves
are “God’s field.” Ours is to till the soil, water the
plants, but it
is “only God who gives the growth” to the plants.
Just the same,
we need to do our part as best that we
could because the effect of God’s mercy and grace in the
Eucharist
would depend on how we prepare ourselves to receive that
divine mercy
and grace.
Yes, it’s true
that the objective effect of the Eucharist
can still take place with our mere virtual intention to
receive it,
but it would be much better if we receive its effect with
the best of
our intentions and effort.
We need to
realize more deeply what a tremendous reality
we have in the Holy Eucharist! We have Christ himself in
his real
presence, he who is the Son of God who became man to save
us. And we
have him as the main food and sustenance in our arduous
spiritual
journey here on earth. And most of all, we have him in
his supreme act
of love for us by bearing all our sins and offering his
life on the
cross.
These truths
about the sacrament should move us deeply to
correspond to God’s love with our own generous love. We
can do this by
participating more actively in the Holy Mass and in going
to Mass for
often than just on Sundays.
By active
participation in the Mass, we mean that we
really should enter into the spirit of the Mass,
realizing as vividly
as possible the very sacrifice of Christ on the cross and
his glorious
resurrection, feeling the tremendous love Christ has for
us, and
making many acts of faith and love.
We should see
to it that we are eager to receive Christ in
Holy Communion as Christ himself has strongly invited his
disciples to
do so. He practically begs us to receive him in
Communion.
“Truly, truly,
I say to you,” he said, “unless you eat the
flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no
life in you.
He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal, and
I will raise
him up at the last day.” (Jn 6,53-54)
We should also
have the intense desire to spend precious
time with Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. As much as
possible, we can
do this everyday. And that visit should be spent
nourishing our faith
and strengthening our supernatural outlook, as we again
go through the
whole redemptive life and work of Christ. In a sense,
it’s in this
visit that we would have the most direct link with living
and
redeeming Christ.
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