THE MYSTERY OF THE EUCHARIST IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH (Part-7)

For as Jesus promised in His Last Supper Farewell Discourse: “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” [John 14:23] And since Christmas celebrates Christ’s Nativity AND the nine months that preceded His birth, we can enjoy another ‘little Christmas’ every time we worthily receive Holy Communion! For through the Eucharistic elements of bread and wine – blessed, broken and shared, consecrated and transubstantiated, Jesus Christ is reborn IN US! In his second Letter, our first Pope wrote, “[God] he has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature.” [2 Peter 1:4a] For when we love someone, we want to be with them; so, too, with God, who loves us and desires to be with us and desires us to be with Him. One main way God accomplishes this loving union is through Holy Communion. And by entering into us, we are made divine, or as Saint Augustine explained it: “the maker of man was made man, so that man might be a receiver of God.” And all this merely scratches the surface of all that the Eucharist can do – for – and in – us! God Bless!