“Subsisting for a long periods solely on the reception of the Eucharist, St. Catherine of Siena prayed incessantly and suffered especially for sinners who refused to pray for themselves.”
It was after a frightened and disheartened Friday, when all hope was gone, that two of Jesus’ disciples who were on their way to Emmaus discovered the risen lord at the breaking of bread. The bread that was life giving; the bread that energizes them to carry out the Easter kerygma: that is proclamations of Jesus’ dead, resurrection and of course his appearance.
It is this bread of life that we celebrate today in our liturgy. We bring in our celebrations natural thing like water, produce of the earth like bread and wine. But in their natural symbols they are being transformed and yet remain as important examples of the universe, now graced and redeemed in Christ (SC no 7).
Bread and wine are symbols of the sacrifice, and they represent our entire lives. They can represent our giftedness, fears, insecurities, woundedness, brokenness, sinfulness and humanness. As the bread and wine are transformed and made sacred, so are we transformed and made sacred, if we unite ourselves consciously and prayerfully with these symbols of sacrifice. But now we must ask what it means to sacrifice. When we sacrifice we are giving away something that belongs to us without expecting anything in return.
A sacrifice comes from a deeper love and commitment and it expresses the true intentions of the heart. The kind of sacrifice, the meaning the object of sacrifice has to do with the person giving it, and the abandon (or lack) with which it is giving all express and reveal the true nature of the person making the sacrifice. Total respect or love demanded a total sacrifice that is giving away the most precious possession one could have, a child for instance in the case of Abraham and Isaac; God and Jesus.
What is important to realize is that when we identify with an object and perceive it as ours, it begins to matter to us what happens to it, simply because it becomes attached to our egos. It has become, unconsciously, a symbol of ourselves and so we see it as a part of our personality.
Celebrating the Eucharist means becoming poor. It means giving our lives as a gift and not receiving any “thing” back but just a relationship. It means facing the poverty of our humanity. It means letting go of our cherished values.
The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper encourages us into this kind of spiritual poverty through continuous sacrifice of our selfishness. When we continue to sacrifice more and more of ourselves and our lives to God, we begin to hold back our desire for and need of things which fill our egos by adhering to them and making us self-centered people. Freeing our dependency on things makes us empty and it is only in our emptiness that we realize our hunger and thirst for God like the deer that yearns for running stream so will our souls yearn for God (psalm 42.1-2). It is only then that we can say, “oh God, you are my God for you I long, for you my soul is thirsting…”
Self sacrifice also demands from us the awareness of how deeply we are attached to the things in our lives. It challenges us to admit our dependency on things and let go of them. It challenges us to depend ultimately on God alone.
At each Eucharist, then, Jesus calls us to celebrate with him. He calls us to sacrifice ourselves with him, as he says to each of us “do this in memory of me.” Let go of your anger in memory of me; let go your aggressiveness in memory of me; let go of your competitive attitude in memory of me; let go of your attitude of character assassination in the name of reporting brothers in memory of me; He asks us to become conscious of various parts of ourselves we have not yet given to the father, and to sacrifice them to him. He asks us to become aware of how much we depend on things to make us feel good about ourselves and to give security and meaning to our lives. When we do this, then, he will offer us the true glory that the father offered him, for when we join in his sacrifice with a all that is in us, we open ourselves to the father’s ability to transform us.
Jesus was transformed, was raised from the dead, because of the perfect way he offered his life to the father. In every Eucharistic celebration, Jesus offers the same opportunity for transformation and renewal to us in every part of our lives that we choose to sacrifice with him to our father. Normally Jesus assumes our humanity at the transubstantiation, because it is only then, that he is incarnated. Thus, the Vatican II fathers were very quick to proclaim in Ad Gentes that what was not assumed by Christ was not healed. Therefore, during communion, we go to the altar expectantly to receive a new humanity: a humanity which was once brokenness and wounded but now renewed, revived, restored, refashioned, remolded; a humanity that was deformed but now reformed and transformed.
The transformation, wholeness, healing and renewal which we experience in the Eucharistic sacrifice do not happen because God is returning a gift to us in recognition of our gift to him. Rather, they are natural result of the dynamic of every self sacrifice. For sacrificing our egos creates an emptiness that needs to be filled; a motion toward the one to whom the sacrifice is made. As we are filled with God, we can be nothing but filled with new life.
When we open ourselves to God by empting ourselves of selfishness, we enter a state of union and communion, with Jesus, his father and the Holy Spirit. The union God achieves with us therefore, causes transformation in our lives, for God is now filling what has previously been filled with ourselves.
It was this eternal bread that transformed the hopelessness of the disciples and propelled them to sacrifice their lives in the midst of persecution. It was also this eternal bread that gave them courage to testify to the resurrection and appearance of the Risen lord. In the same way, St. Catherine of Siena was sustained for several days on the holy Eucharist. Through the Eucharist, she prayed for the sick and they were healed.
Donatus Abul, C.Ss.R
Redeemer House, Ibadan, Nigeria.
