Most Holy Eucharist.
Apostle’s Fast.
1 Corinthians 11:23-32; John 6:48-54.
Read 1 Corinthians 11:23-32
Today the Feast of the Most Holy Eucharist is commemorated. Last Sunday was the commemoration of All Saints in which Saint Paul’s letter to the Hebrews was read. (Hebrews 11:33-12:2) St. Paul gave a great litany of the lives of the many in the context of the suffering they endured. He saw all their persecutions and struggles as the precursor to Christ’s crucifixion and their ultimate reward fulfilled in Christ’s victory over death. The crown of their martyrdom was the eternal life fulfilled through Him and in Him. There is no pretending in the lives of the Saints. The cost was the giving of their lives completely. This is the context of how our understanding of the Sacred Mysteries of the Precious Body and Blood of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ must be understood; anything less than this diminishes Truth and Their very Power.
Catherine Doherty touches on exactly this power of the Holy Eucharist in her description of “Real Love of Neighbour.” The following are her words from, “Fragments of My Life, Dearly Beloved.”
I have often spoken of identification with the poor. By that I mean, an identification that only love can achieve by complete forgetfulness of self and total concern for the other person. It is an identification so deep, so complete, that it becomes part of oneself – like breathing. It is a way of love that is willing to be a Simon of Cyrene to the passion of Christ in all. Eagerly joyfully, this love picks up the cross carried by one’s neighbour – that heavy cross of pain, sorrow, and fear – and shares the weight of it as far as is humanly possible, and a little beyond. It is a personalized love that never counts the cost of giving. It is a love that incarnates the abstract words we use so glibly every day – sympathy, empathy, understanding. It makes them come alive under its touch.
True identification is a tremendous spiritual act, which demands that you yourself take the lance (there is no Roman soldier to do it for you) and plunge it deep into your heart. You tear the spiritual muscles of your soul wide open. You open yourself to the other, totally, and let that person enter in. You use all your senses, your grace, your empathy, your sympathy, all of your being, to “become” that other person.
So keep forgetting yourself totally. Keep dying to yourself. This annihilation-of-self, this surrendering of all one’s needs to the others – including one’s emotional, intellectual, and even spiritual needs – will help you to rise to great sanctity, if you persevere.