Sunday Reflection – 23 February – Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
“Take and divide it among yourselves.”
St John Henry Newman (1801-1890)
“Christ then took on our nature, when He would redeem it;
He redeemed it by making it suffer in His own Person;
He purified it, by making it pure in His own Person.
He first sanctified it in Himself, made it righteous, made it acceptable to God, submitted it to an expiatory passion and then He imparted it to us. He took it, consecrated it, broke it and said, “Take and divide it among yourselves.”
Newman was convinced that no one “realises the mystery of the Incarnation but must feel disposed towards that of the Holy Communion.” Both are mysteries of the coming of Christ, longed for as the hope of mankind for salvation. If we accept that God unites Himself, His divinity and His spirit, to humanity, nature and matter in His birth as man, then we can also accept that He binds His presence to the species of bread and wine. When Jesus says, “This is my body, this is my blood,” this remains a mystery but our faith in it, is not against our reason.
Years later this Catholic priest wrote:
“O wisest love! That flesh and blood
Which did in Adam fail,
Should strive afresh against the foe,
Should strive and should prevail.”
“And that a higher gift than grace
Should flesh and blood refine,
God’s presence and His very Self,
And Essence all-divine.”
AnaStpaul 