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The Constitution ‘Sacrosanctum Concilium’ reminds “At the Last Supper, on the night when He was betrayed, our Saviour instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of His Body and Blood. He did this in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the Cross throughout the centuries until He should come again, and so to entrust to His beloved spouse, the Church, a memorial of His death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is eaten, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us”.

Yes, we have witnessed the Passion of Christ while there were live way of the cross or enactments! Reading and reflecting the Passion of Christ enables us to understand the Way of the Cross! And what is Jesus Christ asking us to offer together with His body and blood.

Photo by Mateus Campos Felipe on Unsplash.com

Here is something I was touched upon: What do we offer then when we offer our body and blood along with Jesus in the Mass?

In the word “body” we offer our time, health, energy, abilities, affection, brokenness perhaps even one little smile – because only a spirit that lives in a body is able to smile, and, at times a smile is a very, very precious thing. In the word “blood” we offer our humiliations, failures, illnesses, limitations that come with age or ill health: everything, in short, that “mortifies” us.

Let us try to imagine what would happen if we could bring this kind of personal participation to our celebration of the Mass: if each of us, silently, could truly say, at the moment of the consecration, “Take, eat: this is my body. Take, drink: this is my blood.”

A wife and mother celebrates her Mass this way and goes home, to start her day filled with a thousand little things. Her life is crumbled away like a biscuit. But what she does is in no way insignificant: she is Eucharist, together with Jesus.

A parish priest or a Bishop celebrates the Mass that way, and then gets on with his day: praying, hearing confessions, reading, receiving people, visiting the sick, listening. His day too is Eucharist. He can say: “In the morning, I am the priest and Christ is the victim: during the day, Christ is the priest and I am the victim.”

A nun too says in her heart, at the moment of consecration, “Take, eat …” and gets on with her day: children to teach, the sick to nurse, old people to care for... The Mass invades her day, and it becomes one long continuation of the Eucharist.

For the workers, the Eucharistic bread as, “fruit of the earth and work of human hands”, has something very important to say about work, and not only work on the farm. In the process that leads from the grain of the wheat to the loaf on the table, and from the grape to the wine in the glass, all industry is involved: the running of all kinds of machinery, all of commerce, transport, in fact, all the work that human beings do.

What does Eucharist have to say to the young people? What is it that the world most wants from girls and boys? Nothing but their body! According to the mentality of the world, the body is something to be exploited for pleasure. But remember boys and girls your body is something sacred, not to be looked on as a “tasty dish” for one’s own delight or to satisfy the cravings of others. “This is my body” means for a young person, this is my youth, my beauty, my zest for life, my enthusiasm, my cheerfulness: all the things that I want to make my gift to you!

Whoever we are: Married, Anointed, Consecrated, workers or young people, let’s give glory to God with our body with an undivided love for Christ to the service of others and give it as a gift of love for humanity.

- Article by Sr. Molly Fernandes sfn