Liturgy & The Joy of Holy Communion

Ordinariate Mass at the National Shrine in D.C. | 3 August 2023 NLM

[ 2 minute read ]

What greater joy hath we mortals than that of sitting at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, rapt in His mercy and grateful for the eternal life He offers to those who keep His commandments of love?

The Mass is truly the source and summit of the Christian life. Therein lies our origin and destination, our life, our sweetness and our hope... to borrow a line. We converse with the Lord, witness His Sacrifice, share in His life, sing with the angels, and revel with the saints.

The Church teaches that the Mass is Jesus Present in four ways (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy #7):

1. in the person of the priest, His icon, through whom Christ acts to receive our offerings of self to transform those gifts, symbolized by the bread and wine, and make Himself truly Present;
2. through the word of God, Holy Scripture;
3. in the congregation gathered in His Name, the body of Christ, the people of God;
4. and most sublimely in the Holy Eucharist, His very Body and Blood offered to us for our salvation, our healing and purification.

Christ becomes entirely vulnerable in the Mass. How can we not welcome Him into our hearts, into our minds, into our bodies when we receive the Holy Eucharist which is Jesus fully Present?

CCC 1374 | The mode of Christ's presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as "the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend." In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained." "This presence is called 'real' - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be 'real' too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present."

Are we not obliged to acknowledge the Presence of Jesus with the utmost reverence we can muster? We can beseech the Father for the grace to adore His Son with hearts ablaze with love and thanksgiving.