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OMELIE / Omelie EN

14 giu 2020
14/06/2020 - The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ  - A

14/06/2020 - The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ  - A

Reading 1 DEU 8,2-3.14b-16 Psalm 147 Reading 2 1COR 10,16-17 Gospel JN 6,51-58

 

Today, solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord, we are bestowed upon the grace to be able to celebrate the greatness of the eucharistic mystery. The beauty and the need for this mystery overcome our ability of mind, and also of heart. The eucharistic prayer, which begins with the Preface, is called Canon. It comes from a Latin word which means that something is regulated by a rule that cannot be changed. Up to the second Vatican council, we have been using always the same, the Roman Canon. After the council, the bishops have approved the use of other Canons, recovered from ancient times or newly made up. The priests choose every time the one they find more suitable. The shape of this prayers is always the same: praise to the Father, calling the Holy Spirit on the gifts of the bread and the wine, the words of the consecration, those said by Jesus during the last Supper, the acclamation of the faithful, the remembrance of the core mystery of the salvation, the offering of the sacrifice, the calling of the Holy Spirit to descend on the faithful, the memorial of the Saints, the prayer for the shepherds and for our loved ones living and dead, and the final doxology.

The third, for example, begins by recalling the words of the Sanctus: You are indeed Holy, O Lord, and all you have created rightly gives you praise. The Father deserves to be praised because through Jesus and thanks to the Spirit gives life and holiness to the Church and He reunites it as a people without boundaries but those coming from the faith. The Church is gathered exactly in order to celebrate the Eucharist, the perfect sacrifice. We can enjoy this plan of the Father’s which makes us great, worthy of a mystery that highlights our indignity and our dignity!

Today’s first reading let us admire the beauty and the strength of the Father’s love: He has given His people the manna, a unknown, unexpected, food. From this food the people should have understood that we do not live “by bread alone” because also “by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”. God Is able to give a unknown bread to the thirsty and hungry man, to the man who is in the desert, in constant need to receive nourishment, to be accompanied and protected. God has given the manna when the man was already giving up the hope of finding something to let him live, keep walking and get where God Himself was waiting for him. “Do not forget”, tells Moses his people. Do not forget that mysterious bread rained from the sky. Do not forget that God loves you and finds a way for you to overcome every difficulty.

The double command coming from Moses, remember and do not forget, is echoed by Jesus' word we repeat every Eucharist: do this in memory of Me. It is one of the Lord's instructions, a new instruction, which is similar to the one repeated in the gospel according to John: “love one another as I have loved you. In fact, what is the « this » Jesus asks us to « do » in His memory? He certainly does not only think of a memorial with bread and wine, but of what these gifts mean: the offering He made to the Father of His own body and blood, the sacrifice that has brought Him to give His life for us. We obey this instruction of Jesus’ by offering ourselves, offering our body, meaning the concreteness of our life, in order to live the Father’s and Jesus' love for men. « Do this » is the new commandment. We love one another in Memory of Jesus. We love one another by uniting ourselves to Jesus, receiving the strength from His Body and His Blood, by offering ourselves with Him to the Father. To eat and drink the body and the blood of Christ becomes the deepest moment of communion with God and men, with the Father and the brethren. We eat the Body and the Blood of the Lord: the mystery of our faith.

We adore this mystery with the burning desire to be always worthy of it. We do not stop to adore it while we feed on it, but we adore it constantly in our days, so it may enlighten them and fill them with meaning and strength.

Will we be able every now and then to find one hour of time to stop in silence in front of the Eucharistic Bread in order to be enlightened by its light and transformed by the Spirit coming on us from it?