Thoughts From Your Regional Formation Director – June, 2015

Pope Francis on the Eucharist

The Eucharist: Source and Summit of the Church’s Life

In his recent series of teachings on the Sacraments of the Church, Pope Francis dedicated two Wednesday audiences and a homily to exploring the nature the Eucharist, its centrality to the Church’s very identity, its application in our lives, and how the celebration of the Eucharist rediscovers and revitalizes the “sense of the sacred.”

“In the Eucharist, Christ is always renewing His gift of self, which He made on the Cross,” the pope said. “His whole life is an act of total sharing of self out of love.”

“It is so important to go to Mass on Sunday,” Pope Francis spontaneously added to the text of his February 5 audience, “not just to pray, but to receive Communion. It is a beautiful thing to do,” he said, for Sunday is “precisely the day of the resurrection of the Lord. That is why Sunday is so important to us.”

Rediscover a “Sense of the Sacred” at Mass

February 10 Homily Excerpts

The first Reading of the day speaks of the “theophany” of God in the time of Solomon the king. The Lord came down like a cloud upon the temple, which was filled with the glory of God. The Lord, the pope said, speaks to His people in many ways: through the prophets, the priests, the Sacred Scriptures. But with the theophanies, He speaks in another way, “different from the Word: it is another presence, closer, without mediation, near. It is His presence.” This, he explained, happens in the liturgical celebration. The liturgical celebration is not a social act, a good social act; it is not a gathering of the faithful to pray together. It is something else. In the liturgy, God is present,” but it is a closer presence. In the Mass, in fact, “the presence of the Lord is real, truly real.”

“When we celebrate the Mass, we don’t accomplish a representation of the Last Supper: no, it is not a representation. It is something else: it is the Last Supper itself. It is to really live once more the Passion and the redeeming Death of the Lord. It is a theophany: the Lord is made present on the altar to be offered to the Father for the salvation of the world. We hear or we say, ‘But, I can’t now, I have to go to Mass, I have to go to hear Mass.’ nto the mystery of God, to allow ourselves to be brought to the mystery, and to be in the mystery,” he said. We are all “gathered here to enter into the mystery: this is the liturgy. It is God’s time, it is God’s space, it is the cloud of God that surrounds all of us. To celebrate the liturgy is to have this availability to enter into the mystery of God,” to enter into His space, His time, to entrust ourselves to this mystery.

Pope Francis concluded, “We would do well today to ask the Lord to give to each of us this The Mass is not ‘heard,’ it is participated in; and it is a participation in this theophany, in this mystery of the presence of the Lord among us.”

Nativity scenes, the Way of the Cross… these are representations. The Mass, on the other hand, “is a real commemoration, that is, it is a theophany: God approaches and is with us, and we participate in the mystery of the Redemption.”  Unfortunately, too often we look at the clock during Mass, “counting the minutes.” This, the pope said, is not the attitude the liturgy requires of us: the liturgy is God’s time, God’s space, and we must place ourselves there: in God’s time, in God’s space, and not look at the clock.”

“The liturgy is to really enter into the mystery of God, to allow ourselves to be brought to the mystery, and to be in the mystery,” he said. We are all “gathered here to enter into the mystery: this is the liturgy. It is God’s time, it is God’s space, it is the cloud of God that surrounds all of us. To celebrate the liturgy is to have this availability to enter into the mystery of God,” to enter into His space, His time, to entrust ourselves to this mystery.

Pope Francis concluded, “We would do well today to ask the Lord to give to each of us this ‘sense of the sacred’ — this sense that makes us understand that it is one thing to pray at home, to pray in Church, to pray the Rosary, to pray so many beautiful prayers, to make the Way of the Cross, so many beautiful things, to read the Bible — [but] the Eucharistic celebration is something else. In the celebration we enter into the mystery of God, into that street that we cannot control: only He is the unique One — the glory, the power — He is everything.

“Let us ask for this grace: that the Lord would teach us to enter into the mystery of God.”

Saint Francis in his Admonition 1 – “As He revealed Himself to the holy apostles in the true flesh, so He reveals Himself to us now in sacred bread. And as they saw only His flesh by an insight of their flesh, yet believed that He was God as they contemplated Him with their spiritual eyes. let us, as we see bread and wine with our bodily eyes, see and firmly believe that they are His most holy Body and Blood living and true.

Let us pray as Saint Francis “My God and my all”

Peace and every good,

Rosie