The Eucharist, Heart Of The Church: Part Eight

14-07-2016 TWENTIETH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR (C).

SCRIPTURAL READING:

Jer. 38:4-6.8-10
Ps 40:2.3.4.18 (R. 14b)
2 Heb. 12:1-4; Accl. Jn 10:27
Gospel Lk 12:49-53

Preamble:

Dear friends please repeat these words after me;
Stay with me Lord Jesus as I give you my mind; help me understand your word.
Stay with me Lord Jesus as I give you my ears; help me hear your voice.
Stay with me Lord Jesus as I give you my heart; help me welcome you.
Holy Spirit, rekindle in me the fire of your love. Amen.

THE EUCHARIST THE HEART OF THE CHURCH-PART EIGHT.
THEME: THE SACRED NATURE OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST-MEDITATION FIVE.

I once chanced upon this video clip sent on Whatsapp about the story comparing life to a cup of coffee; this made a great impression on me. The story goes thus;

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee.

And an assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal. Some expensive, some exquisite. Telling them to help themselves to the coffee. When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said if you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups have been taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.

Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups. And then you began eyeing each other’s cups.

Now consider this as the morale of the story: life is the coffee, the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of life we live. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee. Savour the coffee…not the cups! The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything. Live simply. Love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him… Romans 15:13.

This story presents us with the experience we go through on a daily basis. As human beings we are often distracted by the attractive things of life, we constantly chase shadows, we hind from the truth and that which will actually help us. We always want the best things of life but not willing to make the honest sacrifice or pay the prize. The prize I am talking about here is not the worldly prize to gain the material things of life and not paying the prize to gain the eternal things.

If we must have the eternal things of life which the gospel reading of last Sunday admonished us to-“fear not, little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms; provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (cf. Luke 12:32-34).

We must begin to relearn, rediscover, value the presence of the lord in the Eucharist which is sacred, of immense help to us if truly appreciated, we must not pass it as if we are before nothing, we must not participate in it as if it is incapable of transforming our lives and making us better, we must not take part in it as if we are been forced to, reciting a ritual or a poem of little ones in the kinder garden, as if we are just fulfilling an obligation laid upon us by the church.

We must rather participate in it because the presence of the Lord is real and present at all times; during, and after each celebration as he is reverently kept in the tabernacle. He is present within the context of the celebration for he has allowed himself to be in the form of transubstantiated bread and after the celebration as one whom we adore in silence and with deep reverence- a gesture of appreciation for what he has done for us and what he will do with us.

Beloved it is only when we rediscover the Sacredness and beauty of the Eucharist can we understand the true meaning of the Lord’s sacrifice on the cross. The Station of the Cross acclamation is “we adore you oh Christ and we praise you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.” This acclamation is our humble submission to the majesty and power of God, a recognition of the victorious God who has humbled himself to be one like us in order to make us one with him, a recognition of one who was not ashamed to call us his own or even die for us, a recognition of the wood of the cross that has brought us salvation and by this holy cross we shall always be victorious in the name of Jesus.

It is that cross that awakens within us the reason for which he came. The gospel reading of today’s liturgy emphasises this. His coming was to effect a change both in the world and in the life of the individual.

This change first and foremost begins with the individual and then to the world. It is not a superficial one but one of immense value-substantial such that it transforms the whole being, sets you apart for mission. The message of Christ is not only peace but of fire that is of judgment. A message that will shake your whole being and reveal the truth about yourself and who God as well as the purpose of your life.

A message that leads one to speak for Christ, it is this speaking that would cause the division amongst men who want to remain in sin. This is not without persecution as was the case of Jeremiah which the first reading talks about. The end result is that God always saves those who remain true to his name and cause as was the case of Jeremiah.

The death brought the fire of judgment to the world. His death on the cross judged (condemned) sin in the flesh or body. 1 peter 3:18 says “for Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to the God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the spirit.” His death Judged (condemned) the prince of this world. John 12:31-32 “Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out.

But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” His death caused men to judge themselves in the flesh or body, that is, to judge their flesh as being weak and subject to sin. The flesh of men needs to be controlled and denied and brought into subjection to Christ.

The statement in Heb. 13:12-“Christ suffered outside the gate” and the saying that at the death of the Lord, “the veil of the temple was torn in two” carries for us deep meaning as we reflect on the Eucharist.

The suffering of Jesus outside the city wall and the tearing in two of the temple veil does not mean that the Temple is now either everywhere or nowhere at all. That will not be the case until the New Jerusalem. Rather in the words of the Emeritus Pontiff-Benedict XVI, these things mean that with the death of Jesus Christ the wall between Israel and the world of the nations has been broken down.

They mean that God’s promise has stepped out of the narrow framework of the Old Covenant and its temple into the wide world of the nations. They mean that the place of the merely symbolic holiness of the Old Testament images has been taken by the true holiness, the holy Lord in his love become man.

Finally, they mean that henceforth the holy tent of God and the cloud of his presence are found wherever the mystery of his Body and blood is celebrated, wherever men leave off their own activity to enter into fellowship with him. That means that the holiness is more concentrated and powerful than it used to be in the Old Covenant, because it is more true; it also means that that has become more vulnerable and demands of us still greater respect and reverence: not only ritual purity, but the comprehensive preparation of the heart.

It demands that we lead lives directed toward the New Jerusalem, that we bring the world into the presence of Jesus Christ, and that we purify it for this; that we take the presence of Jesus Christ into everyday life and thereby transform it.

With this understanding, Reverence has become, not superfluous (artificial), but more demanding. And because man is made up of body and soul and is, further, a social animal, that is why, now and for the future, we need a visible expression of reverence, the rules of play for its social form, for its visible sign in this sick and unholy world. People are not shaped merely from within outward; another line of influence runs from without inward, and to overlook this or to deny its existence is a kind of spiritualism that soon takes its toll.

Holiness, the Holy One, is there in this world, and whenever the educative effect of his visible expression disappears, this leads both people and the world to become more superficial and more barbarous.

In his letter to priest the Holy Father reminds us of a particularly striking sign of reverence in the Roman Liturgy: the hands of the priest are anointed. There is perhaps no organ as much as the hand that so clearly shows the special place of man in the world: parted from the ground, it shows how man walks upright. We give and we take with our hands; we heal and we hit with our hands. Among all peoples, men lift up their hands whenever they turn in prayer to him who is above them.

Our hands are anointed. Our hands are bound in duty to the Lord. We are allowed to touch him. What a holy obligation for our whole will and being, what a change it might bring, and would necessarily bring, if we felt the demands made upon us and the direction given us by this sign, day after day.

We must constantly ask the Lord that this sign of the anointing of our hands may more and more be made real in our lives, that our hands may more and more be instruments of blessing, that through his mercy we ourselves may become a blessing and, thus, receive blessing.