A Reflection for Friday of the Third Week of Easter
Discover at the moment’s readings here.
“That is the bread that got here down from heaven.
In contrast to your ancestors who ate and nonetheless died,
whoever eats this bread will stay ceaselessly.”
Over the previous twenty-two years of my life, having attended Mass virtually each week, I’ve absolutely heard the phrase “The thriller of religion” a number of a whole bunch of occasions. The priest proclaims it as part of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and I’m embarrassed to confess that till final 12 months, I had by no means given the phrase a second thought.
In my protection, there are lots of transferring components in a Mass. There are responses and psalms, we sit and we stand, we pay attention and we sing. However on extra events than I’m proud to confess, I’ve discovered myself breezing by way of the motions, ready for the following response or music, searching for the following cue to face up or kneel.
However throughout final 12 months’s Lenten season, a fellow scholar modified my perspective on the marvelous actuality of the Eucharist we witness each week.
Throughout my junior 12 months of faculty, the Catholic chaplain at my alma mater organized a Lenten devotional written solely by college students and alumni. Every day of Lent had its scholar reflection centered on the day’s readings. The devotional was not unsimilar to the Scripture Reflections written by America employees every single day.
In certainly one of these entries, a peer mirrored on his love of the road “The thriller of religion.” The Gospel, he wrote, appeared to offer purposely hazy imagery generally. He admitted that he was left with extra questions than solutions, and that at occasions he couldn’t determine what the “proper” questions had been in any respect. But the mysterious components of our religion didn’t deter him. We proclaim it each week, he mentioned. The thriller of religion. We imagine within the Eucharist and due to this fact our religion––not regardless of however due to these mysteries.
His reflection utterly reconstructed my understanding of our function as witnesses throughout the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
Jesus in at the moment’s Gospel teaches us of the unimaginable sacrifice and unbelievable reward we obtain each time we eat the true physique and blood of Christ. Identical to those that quarreled with Jesus, it may be tough to totally wrap our heads round the concept Jesus “give[s] us his Flesh to eat” at each communion. However this course of, the transubstantiation we witness and proclaim each week, is the core thriller of our religion.
