It is for good reason therefore that, since its earliest days, the Church has recognized every Eucharistic celebration to be a spiritual meal for the community. The Mass is a true gathering of and nourishing of the family of the Church, the Body of Christ. Of course, unlike merely human meals, we aren’t doing this by ourselves; the Lord Jesus gathers us together and feeds us himself. We heard in the second reading that what we do at Mass is a remembrance of and a participation in what Jesus did for his disciples in the context of a meal. By sharing with them his Body and Blood, in the appearance of bread and wine, he nourished not only their bodies but their souls; he gave them a share in the Sacrifice that he was going to offer the next day on Calvary.
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| Giovanni Lanfranco, The Last Supper (c. 1625) |
In the Mass, that spiritual nourishment happens for us as well. As St. Paul says, “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.” In the Mass, our bodies and, even more, our souls are nourished by participating in and proclaiming anew Jesus’s Sacrifice for our sake. In and through our communion with the Lord, we are united more closely to each other as spiritual brothers and sisters, and we are made ready to show to others the same love, the same charity by which he laid down his life.
Friends, over the last year, the global pandemic has changed a lot about how we have been able to gather together for events as a family, community, and even as a Church. As we begin to return to something approaching normal life, let’s be most grateful that we still have this most sacred family meal, to which we are called every Sunday. Despite the differences that exist among us, in language, culture, and viewpoint, we are even more closely united by the Lord in whom we believe, and by the Sacrifice and Sacrament by which he sustains us.
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