The Love that God is, the love that is poured into us by the Holy Spirit, the love that gives us hope, and transforms how we act, and animates our desire to live beyond this life—that love is so much more than forgiveness of sins. Our Lord Jesus does not merely want to forgive our sins. He did not die just to forgive our sins. And the change we need is so much more than a declaration of absolution. Otherwise, Our Lord and His love is limited: limited to making up for our wrong-doings, and washing away our dirtiness, and easing our shame.
The Lord’s love is so much more than that. And salvation is so much more than forgiveness. Our life is so much more than reconciliation.
Ultimately, our Lord Jesus wants to make us partakers of His Divine Nature. He wants us to take part in Him, to take His part into our parts, to part with our broken and self-destructive self so that we might take in the fullness of His healing and life-renewing self.
It’s not just a word, but His entire being that Christ offers to us. It’s not just an invitation but all that He is—His divine self, inseparable from His humanity: that’s what Christ Jesus wishes to share with us.
And finally, He wants to share His self not just with our mind, heart, nous, intellect, emotions, or aspirations. He wants His body to become enmeshed in our bodies; His soul to adhere to our soul; His spirit to re-calibrate fully our spirit; and His divinity to knit itself to our humanity.
This is why—and the whole reason why—the only-begotten Son of God let our flesh and blood interpenetrate His divine self. He wants to make us gods—sons of God; gods who are empowered to sit with Him in His throne room, to inherit all that is His. Not gods by nature as He is, but gods by grace—because of His act of relentless love. And so, “ye are gods,” Jesus says, “because you get to consume Me, the Son of God.”
So, Our Lord Jesus offers His body on the cross, and then lays it down on the altar, both to redeem us and sanctify us; but most of all, so that He might truly and actually live in us, and bring us into God His Father.
O Sacred and precious and wondrous banquet, health-giving and filled with all sweetness! What could be more satisfying, more delightful, more curative than the Body and Blood of our God offered in this banquet? It’s not a precursor or reminder. What is dipped in the cup and placed in your mouth is Christ Himself, truly God, the One death cannot conquer, the One who can accomplish in you and for you more than you can ever hope to do for your own good. This Christ—who is fully God and fully man, whose life completes your life—this Christ Jesus is contained in the little bride and wine that He gives you, that you are welcomed to receive.
He is eaten, but He is not torn. In fact, when the bread is broken, when the Blessed Sacrament is shared with each of you—each receives Christ whole and entire, in every particle and drop and crumb. No one gets more or less, even though your portion may be smaller or bigger. Each receives the same—the full body and blood of our God and Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Now, that is astounding. And it strains our ability to believe. Just as it is astounding and hard to believe that God Himself comes into our bodies, and that He is inseparable from you. But that is the truth—because Truth Himself says so.
Our taste buds, eyes, and senses will say otherwise. They perceive bread and wine. But the Spirit from Christ helps us believe what we cannot see, beyond what our senses perceive. This Spirit pulls back the cloud and shroud to show us that Christ Himself—God born of the Virgin and raised from the dead—God Himself is in the food He gives us.
Truth Himself proclaims what is always true:
Whoever eats this Bread, which I am, which is my life from heaven—that person lives forever. And this Bread, which I am, is my flesh. I give Me in this Bread so that you, and the whole world, may continue to live. I give Me in this Bread for the life of the world. I give Me in this Bread so that there will be a world without end.
In fact, I will say more: You have no life in you, you are simply the living dead, unless you eat My flesh and drink My blood. Yet everyone who truly eats My flesh and drinks My blood will be raised up, because death has no hold on me; and you shall have eternal life, because that is the life I am. So, everyone who eats My flesh and drinks My blood dwells in Me—and I live in him. My life is the Father’s life; and now—if you consume Me flesh and blood—your life is from Me and is Mine.
This is why there is nothing better, nothing more desirable, nothing more healing, than this Holy Sacrament. By It, sins are purged, your strength is increased, and your mind is filled with an abundance of spiritual graces. But more than that, by this Holy Food Christ dwells, abides, and makes His home in you. And you, then, have a home in Him.
This Sacrament is offered not just for you and me. It is offered in the Church for all who are living and dead, so that all may receive the benefit of that which Christ instituted for all.
Finally, I have no words to adequately explain or express the spiritual delights in this Sacrament. We get to taste life at its very source; and we receive that love which supersedes and exceeds our imagination. So intimate God becomes with us in this Holy Communion. So close are we to Him, that He is in us and we are in Him. With this, nothing compares. And by this miracle of miracles Our Lord Jesus does more for you or me than He ever did for those whom He healed, or those who talked with Him while He was on earth. Let us be glad, then, that He gives us Himself in the Eucharist; because by It this parish, and those united to us by faith—we get to be the nation that is so great since God is so near to us.
To this Lord Jesus Christ, who is magnified in the Saints together with His Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, belongs all glory, honor, and worship: world without end.
19 June 2025
