Sunday Reflection – 5 May – Third Sunday of Easter, Year C
Pope Benedict XVI
” The Eucharist, the privileged place in which the Church recognises “the Author of life” (Acts 3: 15) is “the breaking of the bread”, as it is called in the Acts of the Apostles. In it, through faith, we enter into communion with Christ, who is “the priest, the altar and the lamb of sacrifice” (see Preface for Easter, 5) and is among us.
Let us gather round Him to cherish the memory of His words and of the events contained in Scripture, let us relive His Passion, death and Resurrection. In celebrating the Eucharist, we communicate with Christ, the victim of expiation and from Him we draw forgiveness and life.
What would our lives as Christians be without the Eucharist? The Eucharist is the perpetual, living inheritance which the Lord has bequeathed to us in the Sacrament of His Body and His Blood and which we must constantly rethink and deepen so that, as venerable Pope Paul VI said, it may “impress its inexhaustible effectiveness on all the days of our earthly life.” – (Insegnamenti, V [1967], p. 779)
Many Christians take their time
and have leisure enough in their social life
(no hurry here).
They are leisurely, too, in their professional activities,
at table and recreation (no hurry here either).
But isn’t it strange, how those same Christians.
find themselves in such a rush
and want to hurry the priest,
in their anxiety to shorten the time devoted
to the most holy sacrifice of the altar?“