Blessed Sacrament Parish

Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,

Greetings of Peace, hope and joy to each one of you!

We have just celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi. Let me share with you another brief reflection on the Holy Eucharist.

Christ can be present with us in so many ways: in his living, spirit-filled word, which comes to us in Old and New Testaments; in the daily rhythm of our prayer, spoken or just gathered and offered in silence. We can find Christ present with us in those moments when we need him, or when we least expect him to be there; when we catch a glimpse of him in the loving, un-self-conscious work of someone, or hear him speaking to us in words that someone offers us. Christ can be present in all these ways, but there is a sense in which they are all part of and reflections of the Eucharistic moment, when we know he is uniquely and truly present to us: to his community, the Church; and to the whole world.

Each day in the Mass, Christ gives us the gift of himself – all of himself. Whether the Mass is the ordinary daily parish Mass, without much ceremony, just quietly said and prayed, or it comes in the splendour of chant, ancient or modern languages, it is the same gift, the same Eucharist. In whatever form, place, age or tongue, at the heart of the Mass there is an eternal simplicity: the words that Christ used on the night when he gave the Church this inestimable gift, the sacrament of himself. In words and actions, his words and actions, he concentrates the whole mystery of his person, divine and human, in giving himself to us. He asks nothing of us other than to receive him in gratitude and in faith.

When Christ gives himself, it is not a temporary or passing act, nor is it just a form of words put to an act of offering a wine-filled cup or broken bread. It is an eternal act sealed in the reality of history by the sacrifice and suffering of the cross. It gathers the whole of time – past, present and future; it gathers the whole of the community of God’s people in every age. And especially it gathers those who suffer and have suffered, the downtrodden, oppressed, used, exploited and forgotten: everyone who has lived the violence of powerlessness and these multiple poverties. Each day, in the crucified Christ, the suffering meet us and summon the world to see them, to answer their cry. In the Eucharist is the hope of every victim that their life and their pain, whatever they have lost or sacrificed, has not been in vain. God is faithful. Christ will heal their wounds with the balm of his loving justice.

In the simple celebration of the Eucharist, Christ is present and shows how he is Lord of time, space and matter. He is present not because we command him or control him. He is present not because of us, but because he chooses to be present with us and for us. If he is present as the true minister of all the sacraments, in the Eucharist he is not only the minister but is himself the gift, and for this reason, the Eucharist is the sublime summit of the whole of the Church’s sacramental life.

Here is the great wonder: Christ uses everyday things and raises them into something sacred and holy. He does this respecting their very ordinariness: the bread remains our daily bread and the wine our daily drink. These simple created gifts, the work of our hands, become the means where we find him and meet him. Forever, so long as time and matter last, we will always be able to encounter him and make our home in him. Here, too, we will learn his way of healing love: in the small but infinitely powerful and transforming acts of self-gift, the sacrifices that reason can never fully understand but make the daily sacrament of love, our lives in him are becoming the Eucharist. In him we meet each other anew and start over again. Like the disciples, our lives become always a return to and sending forth from this sacrament.

Blessings upon you all.
In Christ,
Fr. Simon