The Eucharist, Heart Of The Church: Part Three

26-06-2016 THIRTEENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR (C)

SCRIPTURAL READING: 

1. 1 Kings 19:16b.19-21

2. Ps. 16:1-2a.5.7-8, 9-10.11 (R. 5a).

3. Gal. 5:1.13-18; Accl; 1 Sam. 3:9c; Jn 6:68c

4. Gospel Lk 9:51-62

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 THREE.

THEME: OUR GIFTS TO THE LORD IS THE GIFT OF SERVICE.

Last two Sundays we spoke to us about that the Eucharist is God’s gift to us born out of love-a gift of himself, the presence of the lord in the dark night of our misery is very real only if we can absolutely put our trust in him as Abraham did who had a great faith in the lord and followed him to the end. He was convinced when he knew nothing of the lamb of sacrifice that God will still provide the lamb of sacrifice. That was Abraham’s gift to God-a gift of a blind faith, that deep but yet firm trust in the lord even in the dark night of his challenges and a feeling of God’s absence.

Today we ask, like Abraham, what gift do we bring to Lord? What do we offer since on the one hand, we have nothing to give; it is God who gives to us and that on the other hand we are not thereby reduced to mere passive objects of his action, who can only stand there in shame, but on the contrary are genuinely permitted to give him something.

What then becomes the best gift to offer the Lord? The psalmist gives us the absolute response to this question. Psalm 51:17 “my sacrifice is a humble spirit, O God; you will not reject a humble and repentant heart.” A contrite spirit is the true sacrifice to offer you. May our prayers ascend to you like the smoke of incense. May our prayers to you carry more weight than the sacrifice of thousands of fat rams.

From this response, Israel as a nation began to understand that the sacrifice pleasing to God is a man pleasing to God and that prayer, the grateful praise of God, is thus the true sacrifice in which we give ourselves back to him, thereby renewing ourselves and the world.

The heart of Israel’s worship had always been what we express in the Latin word memorial: remembrance. Whenever the Passover is celebrated, before the lamb is eaten, the head of the household recites the Passover Haggadah, that is to say, an account praising the great works God has done for Israel. The head of the house gives praise for the history God has made with his people, so that the next generation may hear it. But he does not recount this like mere past history; rather, he gives praise for the presence of God who supports us and who leads us, whose activity is thus present for us and in us.

In the period in which Jesus lived, there was a growing consciousness of the Passover Haggadah as being at the real heart of Israel’s worship, as being the true offering to God. The religion of Israel was at one here with the new religious outlook of the pagan world, in which the idea was emerging that the true sacrifice was the word or, rather, the man who in thanksgiving gave a spiritual dimension both to things and to himself, purified them, and thereby rendered them fit for God.

Beloved in Christ, it was into the texture of the Passover Haggadah, this thanksgiving prayer, that Jesus wove his saying at the last supper, and it thereby acquired, over and above the shape it had developed in Israel, a new heart and center. 

In the past it had remained merely verbal, in danger of turning into a mere form of words; it remained a verbal word in the midst of a history in which the victory of God is far from obvious, despite all his great works. Jesus Christ now gave to this prayer a heart that opens the locked door; this heart is his love, in which God is victorious and conquers death.

The canon (rule) of the Roman mass developed directly from these Jewish prayers of thanksgiving; it is the direct descendant and continuation of this prayer of Jesus at the Last supper and is thereby the heart of the Eucharist. It is the genuine vehicle of the sacrifice, since thereby Jesus Christ transformed his death into verbal form-into a prayer-and in so doing, changed the world.

The result of this is that the death of Jesus is able to be present for us, because it continues to live in the prayer, and the prayer runs right down through the centuries. A further consequence is that we can share in this death, because we can participate in this transforming prayer, can join in praying it. This, then, is the new sacrifice he has given us, in which he includes us all: because he turned death into a proclamation of thanksgiving and love, he is now able to be present down through all ages as the wellspring of life, and we can enter into him by praying with him. He gathers up, so to speak, the pitiful fragments of our suffering, our loving, our hoping, and our waiting into this prayer, into a great flood in which it shares in his life, so that thereby we truly share in the sacrifice.

Beloved in Christ, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross means for us a participation in the work of redemption. We notice very clearly that Christ identifies himself with us to such an extent that our sins belong to him and his being to us: he truly accepts us and takes us up, so that we ourselves become active with his support and alongside him, so that we ourselves cooperate and join in the sacrifice with him, participating in the mystery ourselves. Thus, our own life and suffering, our hoping and loving, can also become fruitful, in the new heart he has given us.

It is that new heart we must bring each time we come into his presence, leave his presence into our respective works of life to offer that pleasing sacrifice/gift to him by making our environment a pleasing place of coexistence where we offer that genuine freedom/respect to everyone as against war and violence which Jesus condemned out rightly in the gospel reading today. 

Genuine freedom is realised in a social sphere and therefore demands that every person’s rights and freedom should be respected. The person can take the decision to enrich the society and the world by his own life. He can bear witness to the values of freedom, truthfulness, justice, peace. By his effort he can promote public concern for them.

The person takes the responsibility of his bond with the earth in the realm of family, culture, politics and economic relations. Men and women show wisdom by defending whatever goes against the dignity and intergrity of the person, such as murder, abortion, euthanasia, even voluntary suicide, torture and any violence to their conscience.

A person-if he has to be happy-has to have the satisfaction not only of the basic needs of food, education, shelter and health-care, but also an environment of peace;

Where people respect each other,

Where values takes precedence over objects,

Where the human spirit can give expression to its artisitic and aesthetic capacities,

Where the quality of life is valued,

Where the principles of equality are respected,

Where the common objective is that of struggling against poverty, unemployment and ignorance,

Where there is the endeavour of transforming the potential resources of nature with intelligence, industriousness, responsibility and honest management.

These indeed can only be our gift to the lord in the environment we live if our gift to the lord must be of any value. Jesus gave three different responses to those who desired to follow him and all points to the same answer- detachment, selfless service and sincere worship of the lord is the gift the Lord expects of us every time. Once we are committed to a task as in the case of Elisha in today’s first reading, resilience and dedication is demanded of us. May the lord inspire us to do great things in his presence in the name of Jesus.