Beloved Messengers of Justice (MOJ), and HEAL co-missionaries, in the celebration of the Eucharist, the bread and the wine become the very body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ through the miracle of “transubstantiation.” This sacramental, yet totally real, presence of Christ boggles the mind and lifts the heart. We are profoundly honored by Him as he turns these earthly vessels into His “heavenly reality” so as to eat, drink, and become one with Him! Earlier in salvation history, we saw this Eucharist prefigured when Yahweh offered the wandering people of God “manna” from heaven as sweet as honey.
Our communion with Him has meaning for us. As He freely gave himself to us, we must freely accept the responsibility he delegates to us in our eating and drinking. Every MOJ missionary and HEAL co-missionary is “bread” and “wine” to be freely given to the poor brethren of our “self-emptied Jesus.” Every marginalized poor orphan and widow around us in the abandoned villages is a “chosen race” to be nourished by the freely given “bread and wine of our lives” and, yes, of our sweat and blood.
We are invited in this Holy Week and, most importantly this Easter, to consider the immense opportunity to pattern our offering after His offering of His very body and blood under the appearance of bread and wine. Jesus taught us in His Eucharist that the gift of ourselves is the ultimate offering we can make! He says in John’s Gospel, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” It is a communion of healing and joy with Him and his Brethren for whom He emptied himself on the Cross.
And so, let us all model Jesus’ gift to us this Holy Week!
