June 11
The Body and Blood of Christ
“Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.”
Readings
Reflection
A word of wisdom from a familiar friend of Holy Cross...“The Eucharist is my highway to heaven!”
These, of course, are the simple but nonetheless deeply true words of Bl. Carlo Acutis. Our highway to heaven is the only thing that touches the yearning that we have at the depths of our being for what is ‘really real’, namely, the transcendent, the eternal. This hunger that we all have is nourished whenever we have communion with Jesus in his Most Holy Body and Blood.
The Eucharist “is the Sacrament of communion between God and man, and man and man, and it contains the fullness of Paschal Mystery, whose fruit is the Church” (Benedict XVI). In other words, the Eucharist makes the Church. When the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus enters us, this is good not only for ourselves, but also for how His life feeds and animates our ability to be in relationship with others. Receiving the Eucharist, then, matters not just for us as individuals, but also has an important communal dimension, too. Jesus himself is present in the Eucharist waiting for each of us in this Sacrament of his love, and he desires us the whole of His Body to know this gift. While we consume him in this Sacrament, it is Jesus rather who invites us to be wholly transformed and consumed by Him, by His presence, His love, every time we receive His very life within us.
It's always humbling for me to think of the lives of the Saints, but this is especially true whenever I reflect on how the same Eucharist that we receive at Mass, is also the same Eucharist that the Saints received in their lives. Can't the Lord work his transformation in YOU through the Eucharist the way he did with the Saints before us?! The Lord is calling each of us to the heights of holiness…but sometimes we doubt that the Lord would ever work such miracles for us, or that we could ever be drawn into such intimacy with God. Yet it’s true regardless, the Lord desires this intimacy and this love for all of us so to animate everything we do. This is precisely how the Eucharist gives life to the Church!
Jesus is not exaggerating in his words today: “…unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you” (John 6:53). We need the same reminder that Moses gives today in our first reading. Just as the Lord fed and led his people through the desert, so too the Lord continues to feed us and feed our deepest hunger as we walk amid this passing world.
By this incredible mystery we receive, may our lives be more conformed to Jesus' radical gift of self in the Eucharist; the Sacrament instituted for us to prepare us to one day share eternally with him in heaven. Bl. Carlo pray for us, and continue to pray for the Eucharistic Revival in our parish, in our diocese, and in our world!
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