On Tuesday night, we continued our retreat, Living the Eucharist: Circle of Life. After having gone through the three previous movements of the Gathering, the Liturgy of the Word, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, we moved onto the last movement of the Sending Forth. The center of the first Gathering movement was humility and seeking mercy from God for all our shortcomings. The center of the second movement was on God’s love shown throughout all of history, and now present for us to internalize, allowing it to transform our hearts. The center of the third movement was gratitude, namely, for us to offer ourselves back to God in thanksgiving for all his gifts to us that are symbolize by his love for us. Then, the center of the last movement is joy.
Here I showed how the natural consequence of gratitude, love and humility is joy. It cannot be faked; it has to be authentic and can only come about when we have humility, love and gratitude in our hearts. I talked about how the best way to share this joy is to offer blessings to others. To bless someone is to say good things about them, to lift up their spirits, to bring the best out and generally to believe in their goodness. These blessings we can offer in word or in action and they will result in us being gentler, kinder and more patience. These blessings are a natural response of the joy of the Gospel and the Eucharist and they will do more to convince people to coming back to Church than any mandates or scolding by bishops or priests.
Then, I made the distinction about how we depart from Mass. We are sent rather than just leaving the Eucharist. The very last words of the priest are those of us being sent on a mission, a mission of love and joy. Our role is not to just leave and go home, but to be sent to “glorify the Lord with our lives.” I brought up the challenge of doing this every week and even more so the scandal of not trying to do so. For if we believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, then we become what we have received; we become the living Body of Christ in the world.
Next week, I will bring all the previous movements together and show what the challenge is for us as a community to live the Eucharist and show how the “Circle of Life” can change our lives and every life of those around us. I encourage you to join me on Tuesday night at 7pm as I connect the Eucharist to our daily lives and invite a friend to join you. If you have not watched any of them, it is not too late as they are all available online on YouTube. Please watch the series online here. Please come and join me for this next session either in person or online.
God Bless,
Fr. Brendan