Sunday Reflection – 7 October – Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
The Beating Heart of the Church –
the Eucharistic Heart of Christ.
This is what Pope Benedict XVI said on 10 June 2007:
“Today’s solemnity of Corpus Christi, which was celebrated last Thursday in the Vatican and in other countries, invites us to contemplate the supreme Mystery of our faith – the Most Holy Eucharist, the Real Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Sacrament of the altar. Every time that the priest renews the Eucharistic Sacrifice, in the prayer of consecration he repeats: ‘This is my Body…this is my Blood.’ He lends his voice, his hands and his heart to Christ, who wanted to remain with us in order to be the beating Heart of the Church.
But even after the Celebration of the Divine Mysteries the Lord Jesus remains present in the tabernacle. For this reason, praise is rendered to Him especially through Eucharistic Adoration, as I sought to remind everyone in the recent Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (see nos. 66-69) following the Synod on this topic. In fact, there is an intrinsic connection between celebration and adoration. The Holy Mass is in itself already the greatest act of adoration on the part of the Church. ‘No one eats this flesh,’ St Augustine wrote, ‘unless he has first adored it’ (Com. on Psalms 98,9; CCL XXXIX, 1385). Adoration, apart from the Holy Mas, prolongs and intensifies what has taken place in the liturgical celebration and makes it possible, to receive Christ in a real and profound way.”
AnaStpaul 