-by Fr. Diovany Ramos, S.T.
1. The Eucharist:
The Eucharistic banquet has two fundamental elements: Bread and Wine. The bread symbolizes the fruit of our efforts and the solidarity that exists among men and women: many grains come together to form one loaf, “fruit of the earth and the work of human hands.” Wine, a sign of human solidarity, is a sure sign of the joy of the feast, making the Eucharist to be, at the same time, an encounter, a sharing and a fraternal communion.
The Eucharist as a memorial makes present the sacrifice of love that Jesus gave for all humanity. It calls every true Christian to be the visible image of Jesus, broken and shared in every Eucharist, the great sign of love and the acceptable offering to the Father. A Christian’s sacrifice is subsumed in the sacrifice of Jesus for the salvation of the 'anawim of God’s Reign.
Today God’s people are starving, not only for bread, but also for love, dignity and respect. Our communion and solidarity with our poorer brothers and sisters should translate into attitudes that help dignify their culture, customs and the fact that they are children of God.
For this very reason Jesus gave his life in suffering solidarity for all, to give rise to the hope for a new type of existence where there will always be room for all, even convicted criminals (cf. Mt 5:45), a hope that perdures in every space, wherever we are, however we move, wherever we interact with others.
The ontological change that has taken place in the human being shows also the need for a change in mentality. For the first time in our history we really have to get over the concept of a God who seemed to be a sign of violence – the guarantor of the strong – who is now revealed exercising a new priesthood offering a sacrifice without repressive violence. This Servant does not achieve his liturgy on a Temple altar that lives through the blood of dead animals, but, in a more intense sense, as a true priest and victim, he raises his suffering up to God as a sign of hope that is a guarantee for justice. He does not exclude anyone, expects no vengeance, nor desires that his death be the beginning of a new chain of violence, but, as every victim, he suffers and dies because of sin. He accepts and assumes the suffering and the unjust death in such a way that it becomes a sign and experience of a non violent life.
We can share in this through our personal disposition, the rightness of our intention, to want to be and to act like Jesus. Without this motivation, it remains difficult to show this world lacking in love, our Jesus, as food, drink, feast, joy, commitment, responsibility, wisdom and love, the one who so clearly showed us and keeps on doing it through the memorial that we offer in his name.
This encounter with Christ, continually deepened through Eucharistic intimacy, raises up both in the Church and in every Christian the demand to preach the gospel and to give witness.
2. The Eucharist is a continuing mission:
According to Vatican II, the Eucharist should occupy a central place in Christian life: “all Christian life and all of the Church’s evangelization efforts has as its source and summit the celebration of the Eucharist (LG 11; PO 5), the Church lives and grows through the Eucharist (LG 26), and the celebration of the Eucharist is her source of life (UR 15), since this is the sacrament around which the Church is built up (PO 6).” Definitely “there is no Christian community if it does not have the celebration of the holy Eucharist at its roots and center (cf. PO 6). It is here that we celebrate God’s mercy and love, and, as disciples and missionaries we commit ourselves to preaching that love which we live out in the Eucharist.
Canon Law reminds us that by means of the sacrament of the Eucharist the Church continues to live and grow, perpetuating Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, the source and summit of all Christian life. In the Eucharist God’s people unify and build up the body of Jesus, pointing to the close link that exists among the works of the Church and the apostolate (CIC n. 897).
As a result, Eucharist and mission do not simply coexist, but they profoundly intermingle with one another. The Eucharist is the origin, the source, the summit and the finality of the Church’s mission, while the mission of the Church is the natural fruit of the Eucharist. Consciously celebrating and living out all of the aspects and thrusts of the Eucharist is what makes the Church missionary. God’s love, incarnate in Jesus, fills the disciples’ heart at Eucharist. We reach out to our brothers and sisters in that love to proclaim to them Jesus.
The celebration of Eucharist makes for the missionary dynamism of the Church. Christ, raised up on high and offered in sacrifice to the Father, raises up a humanity drowning in suffering and pain with him, and draws it to himself (cf. Jn (12,32), to offer to them God’s love and to renew their lives.
The call to be the missionary image of Jesus Christ is a call to be fertile, to reach our full potential as persons. The more that the imago Christi shines forth within us as a living Eucharist, the more we fulfill the plan for salvation and announce the Reign of God to the poor and abandoned of humanity. It brings us also to a deeper love and respect for each other as God loves and respects us in his Son, without partiality or condition, but only for the love of God whose image we reflect.
3. The Eucharist has love as its goal:
We should not overlook the invitation to be, like Jesus, a bread to be broken and shared, blood to be poured out for the life of this world. It reminds us of the Last Supper: “Do this in memory of me” (Lk 22:19), otherwise, the celebration of Eucharist without commitment would not be fully “the announcement of the Gospel.”
Christians are called to be the image of God’s love in the world and to carry it to others. It is an urgent cry to mediate this dimension to our world, so cruelly crucified, so badly in need of God. The image of God that has to be reflected now is not an arbitrary or an abstract omnipotence, that, even if it can, does not free us from evil, or if it does, it seems more on the side of a few privileged individuals. Rather it is of a God in solidarity with us in our suffering, even to the pouring out of His blood. We have to show the image of a God who is not distant and indifferent but of that ‘gran compañero’ who suffers along with us, who understands our plight and who gave his life in love for us.
So let us all ask that Christ, our Eucharist, now lifted up on high, draw our heart to himself, that the command that he repeats to us in each and every Eucharist resound within us: go out into the world and announce the Gospel of love (cf. Mk 16:15).
There is an old wise saying, ‘no one can give what they don’t have’: if I am not experiencing Jesus as the living Eucharist in my life, it will become very difficult to take up his invitation to take this message of love to others. But if I live this way, the words become superfluous, and we might not even have to say anything. Whoever sees you, can perceive it and read it in your daily activities, in your reaching out to others.
The celebration of the Eucharist, as the source of our commitment in love, becomes a clarion cry to the conscience of all to work seriously so that the universal brotherhood of God’s Reign come about, where there are not ambitions, envies, hatreds, etc.
In the mystery of Eucharistic communion, we conform ourselves to Christ and in Him we find the sap that strengthens our faith to launch ourselves into mission, to bring the message of love to all of the poor, the sad and the abandoned. Without the mystic that is present in this mystery it would be impossible to continue to proclaim and announce the greatness of Jesus Christ, who gives his life in love for his people.
So, as we end each holy Mass, as the celebrant sends the assembly forth with the words “Ite, misa est,” everyone should feel themselves sent forth as “missionaries of the Eucharist,” to spread the grace that was received to all spheres. As a matter of fact, whoever finds Jesus in the Eucharist must proclaim with their lives our Redeemer’s merciful love.
Thus we are able to understand that the experience of received grace in our eucharist communion brings us to beg pardon for not having collaborated in the liberation of the victims and their accomplices with whom we have contact and to celebrate thanksgiving for God’s liberating action that has transformed the pain of so many into happiness and joy.
Openness to each other in an attitude of service should characterize the relations among Christian brothers and sisters, in the same way that God’s love and mercy, shown forth in Christ, are a sign of openness to the Father who invites us to participate in his life of communion, before our eyes so that through this voluntary cooperation we become responsible for the passing on of the gift of human life.
Should we look at things from this perspective, the scandal of evil can become the mysterious wonder of God in Jesus, which first and foremost seeks to re-establish the dignity of the poor, of the sorrowful, of the suffering, of the persecuted to bring us to think and to hope that tomorrow will be better and that what will always accompany us will be love, mercy, the indubitable reflection of the Imago Dei restored in us, which invites us to bring God’s love to others.
Throughout our history of salvation, we can recognize the presence of the Son, who gave himself over for our sake to redeem us from sin and to reveal to us the merciful love of the Father and his salvific will to love.
We can also identify the action of the Holy Spirit who continues the work begun by the Son, building up the Reign of love and respect, of brotherhood and peace.
Should we truly desire to live out the communion as we find it in the heart of the Most Holy Trinity, it will bring us, as a Church, to a willingness to accept the differences present in our world, recognizing that no race, religion or culture is better than any other. We are all sisters and brothers, children of one and the same Father, and in solidarity we should struggle so that there are no more victims and collaborators in our world, where what reigns as felt and perceived, is the merciful love of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
It is indeed a worthwhile commitment and a lofty goal to be pursued, as Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity. This is the grand legacy that our founder and should we really want to follow in his ways, we have to open ourselves to the Spirit and be willing to spend our lives in the service of God’s Reign, just as he did.
Current times deserve and demand that we be ambassadors of God’s love, our history cries out for it, and there is a people anxiously awaiting to be surrounded and embraced in our love, just as Jesus did for us -- just as our founder did.
Let us not disappoint this people which anxiously awaits us, let us not dilute the history of our congregation. Let us search out those ways that lead us to become living Eucharist of love, to be broken and shared to continue to give life to others. Let us do it in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
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Reflection points:
Ask God’s grace that he accept us as a gracious offering of love.
1. Am I willing to love and to be loved the way that Jesus was, Eucharistically speaking, or how would I describe the type of love that motivates my apostolic life?
2. What do we need to reevaluate the Eucharist as the source for our commitment to love?
3. Think of all the good that you can do and about how many souls you can save if you really commit yourself, as an ST, to being a living eucharist of love.
| Diovany F. Ramos, S.T. was born in San Benito, department of Sucre, Colombia. He is the second of three children and did his initial studies in his native San Benito. Wanting to serve God and his people, he decided to enter the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity to be closer to people through missionary life. He did his ecclesiastical studies in Medellín and in Mexico City and was ordained a priest on December 5, 2009. He is currently parochial vicar in Saint Martin Bishop of Tours Parish in Iztapalapa, Mexico where he coordinates the pastoral liturgy (extraordinary communion ministers, liturgy teams and altar servers). Diovany also serves as the assistant dean of the ninth deanery of the Archdiocese of Mexico. |  |
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