Eucharistic Musings

The eucharist is the wellspring of my life. My objective in life is to live sacramentally, as an outward sign of an inward reality. This reality is an ever expanding and deepening encounter with the source of all being, truth. I understand myself to be confronted by truth, by what is ultimately real, through the sacrament of the eucharist. Partaking in the Lord’s meal makes space for the encounter with humanity fully alive in the action of Jesus Christ. It is through the means of the eucharist that we are able to participate in the divine.
A particular strengthening of my eucharistic contemplation has broken through this term. Specifically, the concept of the collapse of time in the eucharist is a potent thought that I have spent a good deal of occasion pondering. The idea of looking back on Christ’s sacrifice and understanding that offer to be eternal in nature allows the Church to become the same offering body. We are swept into the costly way of the cross that brings nothing less than resurrection. Furthermore, all of the saints of the past, present, and those to come, become contemporaries gathered around the Lord’s table and partake in the food of eternal life. The contemporaneous nature of the ecclesia, with all the blessed saints, is a life giving thought that allows for a joyful participation.
Another compelling notion of the eucharist is the way it turns the ecclesia into the body of Christ in the world. By being fed with the spiritual food of Christ’s body and blood we are sent forth into the world to witness to his life, death, and resurrection. A sacramental witness in the world allows for the truth of the Christian faith to bust out of the walls of the church. It is through baptism that we are grafted onto the body of Christ and become his followers. The eucharist is the heartbeat that gives us life, a life centered in the depth of God’s love. An image I often drum up during the eucharist is one of a race that is being run and we are running through the woods to the impossible center of it all which is God. Along the way we come across all the deep mysteries found in the woods, but tucked around trees and popping out from bushes are the saints, cheering us on, compelling us to keep striding and their encouragement can do nothing but make you dig a bit deeper, beam, run faster.