Friday, September 4, 2015

Wednesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time, Cycle B - August 26, 2015

Wednesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time
August 26, 2015   8:30am

 

This morning I am recalling something that Pope Benedict wrote about Eucharistic transformation, about the transformation that happens in the Eucharist.

The Pope said that when material things are taken into our body as nourishment, in one way they remain the same.
But in another way, they are changed or transformed.
The food becomes part of the living organism that is my body.

The Holy Father then said that when the bread and wine are brought to the altar at Mass, the Lord takes possession of them.
He lifts them up.
He takes them out of their normal existence and lifts them up into a new order of being.
On the one hand, if we took the bread and wine, after the prayer of consecration and the entire Eucharistic Prayer, if we took them into a science lab, they would still test out as bread and wine.
But they have been transformed and they are profoundly different.
Wherever Christ has been present, wherever Christ has laid his hand and spoken his word, something new has come to be.
Transformation has occurred.

So, when we receive this bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ, we too are to be transformed – bit by bit, little by little.
This is to touch the very depths of our being and change or transform us from within.
And that transformation will then affect, touch, and be seen in all that we do.
As the writer Richard Rohr says, only a transformed person can then transform the world around himself or herself.

It is this kind of transformation that Jesus wants for the religious leaders of his day.
It is because they have missed this point that Jesus is so tough on them in this passage and the passages we have been hearing this week.

So this morning, let us open our hearts and allow the Lord to further transform us through our celebration and reception of the Eucharist.