The Eucharist, Heart of The Church: Part Two

12-06-2016 ELEVENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR (C)

SCRIPTURE READING:
2 Sam 12:7-10.13.
Ps. 32:1-2.5.7.11 (R.5d).
Gal. 2:16.19-21; Accl: 1 Jn 4:10b.
Gospel Luke 7:36-8:3.

Preamble:

Dear friends please repeat these words after me;
Stay with me Lord Jesus, as I give you my mind, may your word never depart from me.
Stay with me Lord Jesus, as I give you my ears, help me listen and obey your voice.
Stay with me Lord Jesus, as I give you my heart, help me welcome you always.
Holy Spirit, rekindle in me the fire of your love. Amen.

THE EUCHARIST: HEART OF THE CHURCH PART 2
THEME: GOD HIMSELF GIVES TO US, THAT WE MAY GIVE IN TURN.

God’s love for you and I is made perfect in the gift of his Son our Lord Jesus Christ for our salvation. It is the height of love and this love of God for you and I gives us inner strength and that inner strength which flows from love, makes everything bright and aglow wherever it reaches.

It is this love that has led him to forgive us the gravity of our iniquities and readily enables us to participate in the Eucharist for the Eucharist is the banquet of the reconciled. But that participation in this banquet is praise worthy and guaranteed if we are able to acknowledge our sinfulness before God and approach him for mercy as David did in the first reading today.

David and the woman whom the gospel mentions today represent for you and I, people who admitted their guilt, their poverty, and their need for God’s help and forgiveness.
One major strand that runs through the three readings today is that they stress the need to approach God for mercy for as sinners we are in need of God’s continued forgiveness. If we try to hide our sins and continue in them we cannot experience the love of God and his continued abiding presence. We must give up our sins and be free so as to experience the love of God which indeed guarantees peace of mind.

Love is the essence of our wholeness. It is the greatest and the most important commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” The second most important commandment is like it, “love your neighbor as you love yourself.” The whole Law of Moses and the teaching of the prophets depend on these two commandments- Matthew 22:37, 39.

When we talk about love, love is practical not the carnal understanding of been practicality but Godly practicability. It possesses an everyday quality. It has many facets. The most important are: Understanding, Loving kindness, compassion, patience, love has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy as well as the lonely. It has the eyes to see misery and want It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. It is the greatest thing that God can give us. This he did for us in Christ Jesus as the Gospel reading today tells us.

God himself gives to us, that we may give in turn. The initiative in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ comes from God. In the first place it is he himself who comes down to us:

“God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (cf. John 3:16).

Beloved in Christ, Christ is not in the first instance a gift we men bring to an angry God; rather, the fact that he is there at all, living, suffering, loving, is the work of God’s love. He is condescension of merciful love, who bows down to us; for us the Lord becomes a slave.

It is in this sense that, in the second letter to the Corinthians, we find the words in which grace calls out to us: “Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20). Although we started the quarrel, although it is not God who owes everything, but we him, he comes to meet us, and in Christ he begs, as it were, for reconciliation. He brings to be in reality what the Lord is talking about in the story of the gifts in the Temple, where he says:

“If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” (cf. Matt. 5:23). 

God, in Christ, has trodden this path before us; he has set out to meet us, his unreconciled children-he has left the temple of his glory and has gone out to reconcile us.
For example, if we look back to the beginning of the history of faith. Abraham, in the end, does not sacrifice anything he has prepared himself but offers the ram (the lamb) that has been offered to him by God.

Though this original sacrifice of Abraham a clear insight is opened up down the millennia; this lamb in the brambles that God gives him, so that he may offer it, is the first herald of that Lamb-Jesus Christ, who carries the crown of thorns of our guilt, who has come into the thorn bush of world history in order to give us something that we may give.
We see again the deep faith of Abraham in the face of this difficulty in offering his son in that while Abraham was still on his way, and as yet knew nothing of the mystery of the ram, he was able to say to Isaac, with trust in his heart-God will take care of us. Because he knew this God, therefore, even in the dark night of his inability to understand he knew that God is a loving God; therefore, even then, when he found he could understand nothing, he could put his trust in him and could know that the very one who seemed to be oppressing him truly loved him even then.

Beloved in Christ, it was only in going onward to the divine assignment that his heart was opened up, so that he entered the depth of trust and, in the dark night of the uncomprehended God, dared keep company with him, did he thereby become capable of accepting the ram, of understanding the God who gives to us that we may give.
This action of Abraham has something to day to all of us. If we are only looking on from outside, if we only let God’s action wash over us from without and only insofar as it is directed toward us, then we will soon come to see God as a tyrant who plays about with the world.

But the more we keep him company (understand and appreciate his presence in the Eucharist) the more we trust in him even in our dark nights of pain and misery and from this the more we will become aware that that very God who seems to be tormenting us is the one who truly loves us, the one we can trust without reserve.
The deeper we go down into the dark night of the uncomprehended God and trust in him, the more we will discover him and will find the love and the freedom that will carry us through any and every painful night. God gives that we may give. This is the essence of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ; from the earliest times, the Roman Canon has expressed it thus: De tuis donis ac datis offerimus tibi-from your gifts and offerings we offer you.

The question is what do we offer him, what kind of gift do we bring into his presence daily? The fruit of our hands-are they the best gifts we can offer? The gift of our service is it the best? The gift of ourselves; can we say it is the best? Whatever we offer to him must be of great quality. It is only in this can our love be practical for love lead him to offer his son for our salvation, love led his son to leave for us his body and blood-love now becomes the greatest thing that God can give us and we in turn can give God something great. J. Maurus in his little book-“living moments of wholeness” tells us;

God alone can give faith-but you can give trust.
God alone can give hope-but you can beget confidence in your brethren.
God alone can give love-but you can teach others to love.
God alone can give peace-but you can spread union.
God alone can give strength-but you can offer comfort to the discouraged.
God alone is the way-but you can show it to others.
God alone is light-but you can make it shine to all.
God alone is life-but you can generate in others the desire to live.
God alone can do what seems impossible-but you can do what is possible.
God alone is self-sufficient-but he prefers to count on you.

Beloved in Christ- what are you offering to God even as we begin this harvest 2016 today? The gift of yourself, your time, the work of your hands, your service? What ever it be, dear friends, may it be of great quality to God who has first loved you and offered himself for you in Christ Jesus.

God bless you all. Amen.