Our lives are filled with many blessings, but we do not always allow them to continuously sustain our life. Our faith is often looked at through a retreat mentality which is fueled by spurts of strength which quickly burn themselves out leaving us with our old self. Retreats, of course, are good because they can give us an injection that will give us strength in our faith, but if we do not continue to endure we will be left with nothing. The retreat itself will in time become a mere memory, but hopefully we will not allow our faith to go with it. Our faith is not something that has been built upon feelings because our feelings are always changing. It is good if our feelings can move us to believe deeper, but when these feelings cease we must still believe. To have true faith is to allow our lives to remain with Christ always no matter how we may feel. Our feelings move from joy, to sorrow, to enthusiasm, being too tired, being filled with energy, but our faith is something that always remains firm.
In Saint John's Gospel we are given the third appearance of Christ to His disciples. We know that they have endured a lot since first coming to encounter this man. He had taught them and laughed with them and worked many miracles in their presence, gave them the Holy Eucharist, then died upon the cross, but death could not triumph because He rose again from the dead and has also appeared to them. You would think that after these roller coaster of events that they would truly be able to believe and not fall back into their former ways. Despite all that they have endured we encounter them in our Gospel doing just that because they have begun to forget and to move back into their old ways of life. They had returned to their profession of fishing, but we notice that they were unable to catch anything. With feelings alone at the sake of faith they and us will always come up short. When Christ encounters them they catch abundantly because their lives were built upon the firm foundation of faith that is found with Christ.
Once His apostles gathered at the shore He realized their need to be nourished. He then took some bread and fish and distributed it among them. Through this distribution of food He realized the need that each of them had for their bodies to be nourished, but He also realized that they needed something more then the mere passing of bodily nourishment. Very soon He would ascend into Heaven and these feelings of joy and awe would be left behind and therefore they needed to firmly root themselves in Christ. In this scene of the breaking of bread they and us were and are taken to the reality of the Holy Eucharist. The Eucharist where Christ gave Himself to us for all time through the bread and wine that would become the Body and Blood of Christ. This food not only brings nourishment to our bodies, but also brings nourishment to our souls. If this was mere food we would always be longing for something more, but through the Eucharist we can truly be filled because Christ has come to dwell within our hearts.
The Eucharist is an invitation given from Christ to enter fully into the life of faith. It is to be asked: "Do you love me" over and over again by the Saviour of the World. We notice oddly enough that Christ asked this question of Saint Peter on three occasions. This is because He desired that Peter would love Him not as a mere friend, but come to love Him with an unconditional love. Unconditional love is the ability to love someone unselfishly instead as a mere friend. This invitation extended to Peter is constantly being extended into our lives through the Eucharist. Through the reception of Christ's Body and Blood we are not being asked to receive and be unchanged, but instead to receive and to conform our hearts to this mentality. The Eucharist should become the source and summit of our lives because in this manner we can truly begin to say that we love Christ unconditionally. To receive the Eucharist is not something that we should enter into from habit, but should become the foundation of our lives.
Through our reception of Christ in the Eucharist we should daily attempt to make ourselves say and live out the reality that we love Christ with an unconditional love. By coming to encounter Christ with this unconditional love we leave our feelings behind and begin to understand that we are nothing without our relationship to Him. We therefore should not attempt to mold Christ after our own desires of feelings or time, but begin to truly allow Him to begin to be the foundation of our faith. If this is ever to begin to take hold within our lives or within our families we must begin to allow the Eucharist to become the source and summit of our lives. This will never happen if we only encounter Christ one hour a week as a friend who is there when we feel like we need one. Instead we should realize that through our reception of the Eucharist we are being given a great invitation to enter into unconditional love with Christ that means that we continuously realize the relationship that exists between us.
This parish community is a very blessed one because of the reality that we offer Perpetual Adoration. This is something that not every parish is able to offer, but we are able to offer it and keep it alive. Throughout the course of a day I notice people who make sacrifices throughout their day to take this opportunity to allow the Eucharist to become a pillar of their lives. Sacrifice is especially made during the wee hours of the night and it also becomes a great blessing to see families that come together to take some time with Christ who is worthy of all "honor and glory and blessing." I thank all of you who make this commitment to our Lord and want each of you to know that you are more then invited to sign up for a time to keep watch with Christ or to just stop by when you are free. From this devotion we are able to grow in our appreciation of the quiet of prayer and be connected to Christ through the Holy Eucharist. May of each of us this day be transformed from our encounter with the Eucharist to where we can truly say "I love you" with an unconditional love.
No comments:
Post a Comment