Section 3: The Upper Room

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THE MEANING OF THE MASS

Saints and scholars throughout the millennia have already labored to mine the depths of meaning contained in the Mass. I would simply like to draw your attention to a singular power of the Holy Eucharist as I have experienced it in my own life: the power to “give” ourselves to others in spite of our own suffering. We should not be surprised by such a grace in the Eucharist, for this very power is found in Jesus himself. In fact, it is most clearly revealed in his own celebration of that Eucharist in the Upper Room. Notwithstanding the intrigue, betrayal and abandonment of his impending passion, Jesus was still “giving” of himself: “This is my body, which will be given for you” (Lk 22:19).

This strength is also given to us as we participate in the Holy Eucharist. I can continue to give myself up for others – sometimes in spite of terribly difficult situations – by the power of the one whose body has been “given up” for me. In this way, I become Eucharist for others. And I would dare say that the more frequently we participate in the Mass, the more powerfully we will see this Eucharistic life emerge.

Bishop Williams has shared with me a story about one of the faithful in our Archdiocese which witnesses to this power profoundly. Despite this woman’s desire to be a devoted Catholic wife and mother, she had experienced the bitter disappointment of abandonment in her marriage. One day she gave this sorrow to Jesus in tears, who invited her to walk with him in friendship. And walk with him, she did. Every day she went to meet her divine friend in the Holy Mass. It was the blessed bread that filled the hole in her heart. Even more, it was that blessed bread that made her own hurting heart a font of consolation for other hurting hearts. People around her marveled as one person in need after another called upon her for wisdom, strength and hope. Where did she get all of this – she who herself was brokenhearted? Bread! Not ordinary bread, of course, but the bread that is Jesus.

This woman, who never doubted Jesus’ presence in the Blessed Sacrament, nevertheless had her Eucharistic faith confirmed in a marvelous way one morning on the Feast of St. John Bosco. During daily Mass at one of our local parishes, as she approached for Holy Communion, the priest raised the host saying, “The Body of Christ.” In that very moment she saw the face of Jesus in the elevated host. Overwhelmed, she hurried to the sacristy following Mass to share with the priest what she had seen and how his hands had held the face of Christ. The priest instructed her to write down what she had experienced. She went directly home and wrote the following poem in honor of the priesthood and the daily miracle of the Eucharist:

You held the face of Christ today

A gift I will never forget

To be so touched in this special way

An awesome and humbling effect

Rejoice, he shows you once again

God is love in bread forever.

The Mass of Sacrifice shall always remain

My most precious daily endeavor.

The face I saw this morning

On the Host so pure and white

Impressed on my mind as a warning

Never to leave his sight

Praise the sight beheld today

Praised be Jesus Christ

Praise your hands blessed to pray

Praised be Jesus Christ.

My sisters and brothers, this is what we celebrate in the Holy Mass: “God is love in bread forever”! I invite more of our faithful to make the Holy Eucharist your “most precious daily endeavor,” as it was for the author of the above poem. I invite our priests, for their part, to make the Holy Eucharist generously available, knowing that “the Eucharistic Action, over which the priest presides, is the very heart of the congregation,” and that in so doing, he has the privilege of enabling the people “to offer to God the Father the Divine Victim in the Sacrifice of the Mass, and to join to it the offering of their own lives” (Presbyterorum Ordinis 5).

(Source: archspmmainsite/Synod_Pastoral+Letter)