Reflection on the Eucharist for Saint Louis Lay Dominicans March 5, 2023

Reflection on the Eucharist This was a reflection given to the Saint Louis Chapter of the Lay Dominicans on Sunday, March 5, 2023. The topic was the Eucharist, the Body of Christ. Using John 6, there is a movement from the multiplying of the loaves to Jesus as the bread of life, to the Eucharist itself, when disciples are told unless the eat the flesh (in the Greek sarx) of the Son of Man and drink his blood, they have no life in them. Every time we celebrate Mass, then, it is the case that we participate in the divine liturgy in heaven. Jesus gives himself to us at Mass, body and blood, soul and divinity. But the gift is a subject, a person, not an object. That means that the gift of Jesus in the Eucharist is for the very purpose of so changing us at Mass that we can then witness to the power of Christ's love in the world. There must, then, be a connection between seeing Jesus at Mass in the Eucharist and see Jesus in the least of his brothers and sisters. So if John 6 is a movement into deeper and more profound understanding of Jesus as the Bread of life, then the second "act" is to move from 1 Corinthians 12, which declares the believers of Jesus, the Church, to be the body (soma in Greek) of Christ, members of a community bound together by love. We are in fact, then, connected to each other. Using the words of Mother Teresa, which connect our unhappiness to the forgetting we belong to each other, it becomes clear that there is a profound connection between our worship at Mass, which leads to our conversion, and the recognition of Christ in the poor which leads to our conversion to become more like Christ. The Spirit has poured out upon us many gifts, and that we are a community of believers, the Body of Christ, to Matthew 25, where our celebration of Mass so changes us that we see Christ in the Eucharist and in the least of his brothers and sisters.