Today I look upon a young woman who will receive the Eucharist for the first time in her life. She is excited and rightly so! Today all of her sins will be washed away in baptism and she will be found pure in the yes of God. Today she will be sealed with gift of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation and thus will be given the grace to always practice and defend the faith that she professes in our midst today. She is excited because her past will be no more and she is excited because she knows that the Eucharist IS Christ's Body and Blood. I hope that the example of faith that she gives to us today will renew our own faith in the Eucharist.
Every time that we approach the Eucharist we should be filled with this same childlike faith. No matter how many times that we have received the Eucharist we cannot allow it to become just a mundane action of our everyday life. If the Eucharist becomes mundane we will begin to fail to examine our conscience daily, we will begin to come forward to receive the Eucharist sloppily, we will begin to lie away the need to hold to the Eucharistic fast, and thus when we are sent out into the world we will be left unchanged because this was our desire. The thought of the Eucharist should fill our heart with excitement, why? But, because Christ loves us so much that He continues to dwell here with us here in the Eucharist.
The golden box that is located behind the altar is known as the tabernacle. The word tabernacle means "dwelling place." This is to say that Christ has come to dwell here with us for all time out of love. Yes, Christ is always present with us, but through the Eucharist He is physically here with us. When we look upon the Eucharist we are looking upon the physical presence of Christ. When we receive the Eucharist we receive the physical presence of Christ. When we humbly kneel in adoration in the presence of the Eucharist we are thus too doing this in the physical presence of Christ. Christ did not give us a mere metaphor when He said in our Gospel: "this is my body" and "this my blood." This is no metaphor, but instead through these words we know with good faith that Christ continues to come here to dwell with us for all time. If we understand the Eucharist and what takes place here we would never be given a reason to leave the Church because the Eucharist cannot be found outside of the Church.
We were instructed by the Second Vatican Council that the Eucharist is the source and the summit of our faith. This is exactly why devotion to the Most Holy Eucharist is so important. Devotion to the Eucharist centers our life upon Christ. If we took the sun away from our solar system we know that we would be in a lot of trouble. We know this and we believe this to be so! If we remove the Eucharist from our life the exact same will happen. We cannot allow ourself to deny this truth. Our life and thus too the world would be broken and helpless without the Eucharist. If the Church lacked the Eucharist, Christ's sacrifice would of never taken place, and thus too reached its culmination through His Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven. Our readings point towards this reality because sin has hurt our relationship with God, many sacrifices were offered in atonement for this sin, and yet none of these sacrifices were the perfect sacrifice to be offered until Christ poured Himself out entirely for us upon the cross.
How can we not be excited by this reality? How can we not be excited each and every single time that we have the opportunity to draw close to the Eucharist? How can we not be excited to know that the Mass takes us to Calvary where Christ poured Himself out entirely for us as a perfect offering, who was found without blemish, in atonement for our sin. The Eucharist is a most exciting mystery of our faith because what we behold comes under the appearance of bread and wine, but it has also been transformed to become Christ's Body and Blood. May this young woman's faith inspire each of us to always receive the Eucharist with this same childlike faith. May none of us, yourself included Becca, ever allow the Eucharist to become a mundane unimportant action of our life. Instead may the Eucharist flow into all areas of our life and thus may we receive Him worthily, may we receive Him with proper reverence, may we flock to offer prayer before the Blessed Sacrament where Christ is truly present, and if possible let us make time to walk with our Lord who is present in the Eucharist today in our Eucharistic Precession that we will be held at 3:30. May we always come to encounter the Eucharist with childlike faith.
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