For A Catholic Christian THIS IS IT

The Consecration of the Holy Eucharist

I am a Catholic.  I was a cradle Catholic, but I left.  The Church was not "relevant" for me when I was a 20 year old.  When I was a 30 year old, I heard the voice of God speak to me three words, as I stood in my kitchen.  HE said: "Go to Church."  That was it.  That was all.  There was no more.  I knew my Master's voice, and I obeyed.

I am now 60 years old, and I still go to Church.  But, more than that I attend and participate in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass whenever I can.  I love the Mass, and above all I love the Eucharist.

When my prayer partners and I gather in the chapel at St. George Parish, here in London Ontario in the mornings to pray the Breviary, Christ is present with us in the reserved Eucharist, reposed in the tabernacle in front of us.

The Eucharist is He who died to save us, and He who was then resurrected for us.  I do not know how it is so.  It looks like bread and wine to my naked eyes, but to my eyes of faith, and to my heart, it is My Saviour.  If you believe it, you know it to be so.  If you do not believe it, there is no way to prove it to you; it must be experienced.

The nourishment that comes from this Real Food must be consumed, must be incorporated into your very being.  You may believe by faith alone in the Eucharist, but it is there to be experienced, to become part of your life, that Grace, that indescribable joy that comes from being One with Our Lord and Saviour.

Here is where it all begins, in the Consecration narrative, and in the grace that flows from God that makes this bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus, the Christ.  Yet, it is not a re-enactment of the Passion and Death of Jesus.  IT IS the Passion and Death of Jesus.

Time has not stood still.  No, time does not stand still.  Yet, there is no time and space in God.  He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow as well.  He is present at this moment, employing the hands and heart of an Alter Christus, a priest, to bring Himself to us, in our state of life, this moment in our history.

It is a Mystery.

Recently, Father Tim Moyle, an internet friend, said Mass for My Dear Wife and I on the deck of his cottage on the Ottawa River, on the day that we had our marriage convalidated.  That was and remains a very precious gift to us both.  While we were becoming the sacrament of Marriage with and for each other, he was bringing us Jesus in the Eucharist, hundreds of miles away, and yet with us, crossing the bounds of space and time, as only God can do.



h/t Where the Rubber Hits the Road