Posted on 03/25/2005 10:27:12 AM PST by franky
THE HOLY EUCHARIST: NOURISHMENT TO FINISH OUR COURSE
The Son of God became man to die and to rise, to give His life as a ransom for many, to offer us the Paschal Mystery: His death and resurrection. Jesus longed for the baptism of His suffering and death to show us the extreme of His love and the victory of His resurrection. This is His invitation for each of our lives as well; dying and rising is the history of all of us. It is His Paschal Mystery today in the Holy Eucharist that best prepares us to carry our cross and to achieve our destiny with Him in heaven where the Sacrifice of the Lamb is gloriously perpetuated for all eternity. No wonder the words of Consecration still contain the solution for all the problems of the world, including our own.
God had to become a man, a little baby just like you and me once, before He could grow up, to fill up the Chalice of His suffering with the last drop of His Precious Blood. If the mind of God had not devised and invented this wonderful way of giving Himself to us, no human mind could have ever dreamed it possible to come into such a close, such a personal union with Him. We eat our God, not in the cannibalistic form of a former Papua New Guinea, where they ate human flesh, but only the flesh of the enemy after the battle. We eat His flesh and drink His blood in the unbloody way He gave Himself at the Last Supper the night before He died. We are His friends because He shared all the secrets of the Father with us; and it is during the battle for the Church militant as we fight to win our place in the embrace of our God for all eternity.
Love defines itself in terms of union. When you love somebody, you want to be united with them, body and soul, if you can. With our God in the Holy Eucharist, it is not just a question of hugging and kissing our God, or embracing Him even in such a very intimate thing as a marriage embrace. With our God it is actually a question of eating our God; and you cannot get closer to a person than to eat him. The Holy Eucharist is the most tangible expression of Gods love possible in this world with an intimacy greater than that any man and woman ever experience in their unifying act of married love. No one could offer a greater love to us than the Holy Eucharist.
Life is in the blood. Love is proved in the spilling of blood. Jesus life's blood, poured out for us in His Passion, was the ultimate in His sacrifice for each of us. If you or I were the only one to be saved, He would have been willing to come all the way down from heaven and die on the cross just for you or me. We cannot even dream of such love, except perhaps that of our parents at the time of our birth and infancy. His redeeming love goes on as He restores us to His heart in the Sacrament of Penance and nourishes us in Holy Communion. His intervention into our souls in still alive and active if we are but open to His grace, in His Sacraments. His holy desire is ever seeking union with us. All the fruit of the Paschal Mystery passes to us through His sacramental system.
Learn to appreciate what Jesus went through to make Himself so available in the Holy Eucharist. He sweat blood. He was scourged, crowned with thorns, made to carry a heavy cross, and crucified. His blood was drained. He had no more to give. He forgave his enemies. He welcomed the good thief Dismas to heaven. He gave His mother to St. John, and St. John to His mother. He thirsted for water but even more for souls. He completed His mission until it was consummated, giving Himself in complete surrender to His Heavenly Father. - - A horrible agony amidst seeming despair! Therefore, any suffering we have, sandwiched between two receptions of the Holy Eucharist, make them all downable, bearable, swallowable. His redeeming love makes all that endurance possible. Not even God could have given us any more!
Copyright 2005 Father Angelus Shaughnessy, Order of Friars Minor Capuchin All Rights Reserved Annunciation Friary, 5821 Old Leeds Road, Irondale, Alabama 35210 Web site: www.fatherangelus.com e-mail: padre@fatherangelus.com
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