Automatic translation from Italian, under review.
Dearest brothers and sisters all,
in this month of June I would like to meditate together with you on the great mystery of the Eucharist, by virtue of which we become blood relatives of Christ and living members of his mystical body.
Our Christian life is inscribed in the reality of the celebration of the Eucharist.
Each of our Masses is a participation in that one supper of Holy Thursday, which every Eucharistic celebration makes present in space and time. This memorial of the death and resurrection of Christ draws us into his mystery and gives meaning to our life.
In the Eucharist, Jesus gives us his flesh and his blood to eat in order to transform us into him and to raise us up with him. He is the bread of life, without which we could not live forever; coming into us, he makes us one with him and, in him, one among ourselves. This is well signified in the signs of bread and wine: as many grains of wheat ground together become a single flour, so we, immersed through the Eucharist in the mystery of the passion and death of Jesus, become one body, the body of Christ, destined for glory; as many grapes pressed together become a single wine, so we, purified and transformed in the blood of Christ, become one among ourselves and with him.
In the two signs of bread and wine Jesus gives us his whole self, without dividing himself.
On that Holy Thursday Jesus anticipated his crucifixion and his resurrection, giving himself to us in the totality of his mystery, transforming into himself the bread and wine, fruit of the earth and of our labor, gifts and sign of the whole of creation.
Jesus in the Eucharist is the glorious Christ, in whom we are all already present; he is the source of our unity with him and, in him, with all humanity and with the cosmos.
Altogether special, then, is the bond of the Virgin Mother with the Eucharist, if we consider that Jesus took his immaculate flesh from her.[1]
“Mystical Mary,” understood as the reality of Christians united to the Mother almost as her body, offers to Christ her “stained” flesh in the Mass so that he, taking it up, may redeem his whole mystical Body.
The Eucharist is the mystery wholly accomplished. It is the presence of all men and all women of all centuries already dead and risen in Christ, of the cosmos already transformed into the “new heavens and the new earth” of which the Book of Revelation speaks.
Yet what is already taking place in the Eucharist is at the same time happening today, now.
The assumption of all of us and of creation into Christ, already wholly “accomplished” in Jesus in the Eucharist, must still come about; the abiding of the sign of bread and wine says so, and it will cease when all the saved and the whole cosmos have become Eucharist, one with the Risen One. Then the banquet will be celebrated just the same, but the guests will partake of the supper in a Glory wholly present.
Every day something more of us, of our life and of the cosmos is made Eucharistic in the celebration of the Mass, but the Mass makes present the assumption of the whole by the Word.
Every offering, once consecrated, becomes the whole.
Time makes the Eternal present.
I am nourished by the Eucharist and Christ takes me up: I in him and he in me. I become Christ, the whole, not the historical Jesus, but the total Christ, the Risen One who is in the bosom of the Father and of whom we are all members. The Risen One is all in all, the Christ truly present in the Eucharist, in whom we are already all, with and in Mary.
Jesus in the Eucharist makes us of one body with him and among ourselves, putting us in communion with one another; we thus become Eucharist, bread of love offered for humanity; in Christ Jesus we become a gift to one another. Nourished by the same Bread, we in turn become Bread for others, of one body with Christ.
The great mystery of the Eucharist thus puts us in communion with humanity of all times and with the cosmos, not with the whole in general, but with each person and with each thing.
There is only one Mass, which every Mass makes present, and only one Eucharist, which makes us one in Christ; but what is already in act must still become. It is the process of the already and the not yet; all that remains for us, then, is to feed on the Eucharist in order to immerse ourselves in this unfathomable mystery.
Jesus in the Eucharist,
abyss of love,
ocean in which I plunge
and find myself again in you,
with Mary
and the immense multitude
of the other sons and daughters
of the one Father.
I am nourished by you,
Jesus in the Eucharist,
make me become, in you,
bread of love
offered for humanity.
Living Bread,
you nourish me with yourself,
you are stronger than I
and you transform me into you,
yet I remain myself,
distinct from you,
capable of loving you
and adoring you.
O mystery of Love,
Christ the Lord,
creation will be
recapitulated in you.
I live in you,
O my Lord,
make me become
Eucharist.
Sr. Nunziella
[1] The reflections that follow are taken from a text of mine from 1983.