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.
