The Eucharist; A Gift To Men And Women On Their Journey

07-11-2016 THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY OF THE YEAR (C).

SCRIPTURAL READING:

2 Mac. 7:1-2.9-14
Ps 17:1.5-6.8.15 (R. 15b)
2 Thess. 2:16-3:5; Accl; Rev. 1:5a.6b
Gospel Lk 20:27-38

Preamble:

Dear friends please repeat these words after me;
Thank you Jesus for your word which I will receive at this hour,
Please Lord, make my heart a fertile soil for the reception of your word today
Holy Spirit, rekindle in me the fire of your love and may God’s word bear fruit in my life. Amen.

THEME: THE EUCHARIST: OUR SOURCE AND SUMMIT
TOPIC: THE EUCHARIST: A GIFT TO MEN AND WOMEN ON THEIR JOUNREY

As we gradually come to end of the church’s liturgical year, the church is calling on her children to reflect on our last days on earth, that is why the church has dedicated the entire month of November to pray for the faithful departed. Death is inevitable to all. No one can escape death, or bribe death or ask death to delay its purpose when the time comes for one to leave the face of the world.

Whether you are a professor, priest, sister, monk, trader, business man or woman, okada or bus driver, rich or poor, whatever class or status we occupy in life, death is sure for all. We must know that everything we have in life or whatever degree we have acquired in life, we cannot take anything with us when we leave this world.

The story is told of the last wishes of Alexander the Great… On his death bed, alexander summoned his army generals and told them his three ultimate wishes:
The best doctors should carry his coffin
The wealth he has accumulated (money, gold, precious stones) should be scattered along the procession to the cementery.
His hands should be let loose, so they hang outside the coffin for all to see!!!

One of his generals who was surprised by these unusual requests asked Alexander to explain. Here is what Alexander the Great had to say:
I want the best doctors to carry my coffin to demonstrate that in the face of death, even the best doctors in the world have no power to heal.
I want the road to be covered with my treasure so that everybody sees that material wealth acquired on earth, will stay on earth.

I want my hands to swing in the wind, so that people understand that we come to this world empty handed and we leave this world empty handed after the most precious treasure of all is exhausted, and that is TIME.
We do not take to our grave any material wealth. TIME is our most precious treasure because it is LIMITED. We can produce more wealth, but we cannot produce more TIME>

When we give someone our time, we actually give a portion of our life that we will never take back. Our TIME is our LIFE! The best present that you can give to your family, friends and neighbours is your TIME.

In the realm of time, God exists outside of TIME but controls TIME, that is why scripture says in Psalm 90:4 “A thousand years to you are like one day; they are like Yesterday, already gone, like a short hour in the night.” Again in 2 Peter 3:8 “but do not forget one thing, my dear friends! There is no difference in the Lord’s sight between one day and a thousand years; to him the two are the same.”

God who exists outside TIME decides the TIME for everything, scripture says in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 God sets the TIME for everything. He sets the time for man to be born and the time for his death, he sets the time for man’s salvation. Since all men are destined to face death, this same God has set out means of liberating man from the power of death and that begin for us at the table of the Lord.

In the table of the Eucharist, we experience a foretaste of the fulfilment for which every human being and all creation are destined as Romans 8:19ff tells us. Man is created for that true and eternal happiness which only God’s love can give. But our wounded freedom would go astray were it not already able to experience something of that future fulfilment.

Moreover, to move forward in the right direction, we all need to be guided towards our final goal. That goal is Christ himself, the Lord who conquered sin and death, and who makes himself present to us in a special way in the Eucharistic celebration. The Eucharistic banquet gives us the strength to journey towards our last end; it gives a foretaste of what we are to experience in the presence of the Lord.

The coming of Jesus was to gather together the scattered people of God and clearly (cf. Jn 11:52) and clearly manifested his intention to gather together the community of the covenant, in order to bring to fulfilment the promises made by God to the fathers of Old (Jer. 23:3; Lk 1: 55, 70).

In the calling of the twelve, which is to be understood in relation to the twelve tribes of Israel, and in the command he gave them at the last supper, before his redemptive passion, to celebrate his memorial, Jesus showed that he wished to transfer to the entire community which he had founded the task of being, within history, the sign and instrument of the eschatological gathering that had its origin in him.

With this understanding, every Eucharistic celebration sacramentally accomplishes the eschatological gathering of the people of God. For us, the Eucharistic banquet is a real forestaste of the final banqut foretold by the prophets (Is 25:6-9) and described in the New Testament as “the marriage-feast of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:7-9), to be celebrated in the joy of the communion of saints.

The Eucharistic celebration, in which we proclaim that Christ has died and risen, and will come again, is a pledge of the future glory in which our bodies too will be glorified. Celebrating the memorial of our salvation strengthens our hope in the resurrection of the body and in the possibility of meeting once again, face to face, those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith. The idea of offering mass for the faithful departed is that they may once purified, can come to the beatific vision of God.

In the first reading taken from the second book of Maccabees, we come to see the strength, the joy, the faith, the power that accompanied the seven brothers and their mother to face death by ignoring the king’s command of partaking in unlawful swine’s flesh. They did this in order to keep the laws of the lord so that they could experience the joy of been in the presence of the Lord.

They counted earthly satisfaction as nothing because of the joy of heaven, the joy of been in the presence of the Lord. They were clear in their mind to stand for what is true, what is right, what gives life so that they may share in the life of God. What a great display of courage.

In the gospel we come to see that for us to come to joy of heaven we must purify our minds and get rid of carnal motifs and understanding inorder to enjoy the presence of the Lord. We may gather as many girl friends or lovers, money, houses and so and so forth, we shall never take any of this beyond this material world. The lord used one clear example in today’s gospel passage to explain this.

Our understanding of marriage is for us to experience love, have companionship, and procreate. The love between the matured individuals leads to procreation and unity. There is a bond but the truth is no matter how much love we have for our spouse, we cannot take him/her to the next life. In this world, marriage is possible, but in the other world there will be no marriage this is because love is perfected.

In heaven our relationships will cease to be as they are on earth. They will be changed in an absolute sense: selfishness and sin will not affect our love and lives. Our love will be perfected; therefore, we will love everyone perfectly. A wife on this earth will not be loved as she was on this earth-imperfectly. She will be loved more, loved perfectly. Everyone will love everyone else perfectly. God will change all relationships into perfection, even as the relationships between angels and God are perfected.

In the other world, it is a resurrected life, a real life, a life that is more real than the life of this world. It is a perfect life that lives for God perfectly. Reason been that; God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus meant at least two things in this point;

God’s relationships are active relationships, not inactive. God says, “I am the God of…”Not, “I was the God of…” his relationships with his subjects are maintained even after departing this world. God is eternal; therefore, he creates and maintains eternal, active relationships. God’s subjects enter into the spiritual realm of His presence and actively relate to Him. The resurrection is a fact.

God’s relationships are good and rewarding. The patriarchs of old were promised very personal rewards (Heb. 11:13-16). There has to be a resurrection if our relationship with God is good and rewarding. To die and to be left dead as a decayed corpse is neither good nor rewarding. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have a good and rewarding relationship with God. They are more alive today than they were while on earth, for they are perfected and eternal.

They are with God Himself and so shall we be. The resurrection is a fact.
The fact that God is, that God exists proves the resurrection and the fact that he can do anything and all things, perfectly and eternally. He can call the elements of a decayed body back together again and raise it up to live in the spiritual dimension, both perfectly and eternally.

The resurrection is a fact. It will be experienced by all men of all ages because God is. God has willed to give us an inheritance-an inheritance to be, that is, to live eternally with him. We will undergo a transformation of nature, a transformation of perfection and permanency that is why scripture says in Heb. 11:6 “and without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he (God) exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

Beloved in Christ, we must believe that God is and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him; that is, He rewards all of us who seek to live eternally with him. We must do all we can to inherit eternally life and ignore the unnecessary pursuit of material things and pursue those things that will last and that is to enrich our relationship with God and enrich our souls.