I am going to use the theme of the Holy Eucharist this Lent- leading us to Holy Thursday. For me, many of the ills in our world and especially in our Church are due to a lack of understanding of Christ’s greatest gift to us in His own Body and Blood. If we really believed that what He left us before His death, is truly His Body and Blood, there would be more true joy in our lives, and in the world. I remember my mother, who never converted to the Catholic faith, telling my brother Jeff and I after one of our squabbles: if I believed what you do, I would not be in this trouble!
When I taught CCD to teens on another island, I would ask them if they would crawl to the bank through muck if they knew there was $10,000 waiting for them. All agreed they would. Then I asked- how much more would they go on Sunday to receive the Body of their God?
"By a beautiful paradox of Divine love, God makes His Cross the very means of our salvation and our life. We have slain Him; we have nailed Him there and crucified Him; but the Love in His eternal heart could not be extinguished. He willed to give us the very life we slew; to give us the very Food we destroyed; to nourish us with the very Bread we buried, and the very Blood we poured forth. He made our very crime into a happy fault; He turned a Crucifixion into a Redemption; a Consecration into a Communion; a death into Life Everlasting,"
Servant of God Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen (This is the Mass)