There is a choice we all need to make at a certain point in our journey. Some make their choice earlier than others. And while some come face to face with it, they end up not making any choice.
In my case, it was set by my then spiritual director, Fr. Benny Calpotura, SJ: “Now you need to make a choice to enter the core of your relationship with Christ, or stay in the periphery.”
We see this same choice in today’s Gospel, the final installment in our month-long reflection on the Mass using Evangelist John’s Discourse on the Bread of Life.
“As a result, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. Jesus then said to the Twelve, ‘Do you also want to leave?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God’.” (John 6: 68-69)
This is the grace of the Mass, the Liturgy of the Eucharist. It sets before us the choice—to believe in, to stay with, and to follow Christ. As Peter put it, they “have come to believe and are convinced that [he is] the Holy One of God.”
There is a choice we all need to make at a certain point in our journey. Some make their choice earlier than others. And while some come face to face with it, they end up not making any choice.
There are three focus points for reflection in the Liturgy of the Eucharist. One, the remembering: “Do this in memory of me.” Two, the Doxology and the Great Amen: “Through him, with him, and in him… Amen.” Three, the final blessing and sending off, with varying expressions: “Our celebration is ended. Go forth to love and serve God and one another.”
Fr. Catalino Arevalo, SJ, often emphasized in our Theology classes, his homilies and talks that the Mass is a memorial. It is the special graced moment of remembering Christ’s saving sacrifice, his forgiving and redeeming love for us.
Christ asks us to remember that he “took, gave thanks, broke, and gave” himself and his life to us. In the words of the song: “We remember how you loved to your death, and still we celebrate for you are with us here; and we believe that we will see you when you come in your glory, Lord. We remember. We celebrate. We believe.”
He asks us to do the same—in memory of him, in remembrance of him.
Reconnecting
Margaret Wheatley, writer and management consultant, said in her classic work, “Leadership and the New Science,” that the best way to restore an organization to work is to reconnect it with its identity.
Reconnecting through remembering is the opposite of disconnecting, dismembering. The Mass reconnects us to our core identity, invites us to enter the core of our relationship with Christ “who loved me and gave himself up for me.” (Galatians 2: 20)
As Fr. Horacio dela Costa, SJ, put it, our identity is “to know that one is a sinner, yet called to be a companion of Jesus Christ in the service of faith and the promotion of justice.” Our identity is our mission. Our identity and mission is the depth and quality of our love for Christ.
We affirm in the Doxology and the Great Amen: “Through him, with him, and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, almighty Father, forever and ever. Amen!” We affirm and choose to live our life through, with, and in Christ in union with the Spirit and the Father.
This is the choice, acknowledged in the words of the Centurion: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and [your] servant will be healed.” (Matthew 8: 8b)
In communion, we “reap the rewards” of entering the core of our relationship with Christ. We are healed and made whole. We are ready for mission.
The Mass, the privileged and graced moment when we “see [Christ] more clearly, love [him] more dearly, follow [him] more nearly.”
And we are sent out, filled with gratitude, love and grace: “Our celebration is ended. Go forth to love and serve God and one another.”
To which we respond: “Thanks be to God!” It is a fitting “ending” to a most beautiful moment of love and grace and the beginning of the “first day of the rest of [our] life.” Thanks be to God!
Thanksgiving
What better description could there be of the life of our beloved Howard, that little guy and that great man. We mourn his loss.
But as we now turn to the Eucharist, which is the liturgy of thanksgiving and the sacrament that comforts and strengthens us in our sadness, we ask the Lord to welcome Howard into his kingdom, to embrace him, to kiss him, to put a ring on his finger and the best robe on his shoulders, and then to introduce him to all the angels and saints in that blessed place where the singing and dancing goes on day and night, 24-7, forever and ever, world without end. Amen. —CONTRIBUTED