Saturday, November 13, 2010

The Real Presence should drive us to our knees

There is an old adage – what we believe effects how we behave. This thought really struck me in the Mass this morning as the priest elevated the Host. As Catholics, sometimes it is so easy to take for granted that what the priest elevates is not a mere piece of bread. For sure, it still looks like bread...but what it really and truly is the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It is so easy when something becomes familiar to us that we can miss the sheer magnitude of what we are experiencing. By the grace of God, I was overcome by this truth in a fresh way this morning. When the priest spoke the words “This is My Body”, and elevated our Lord, I was completely overcome by a need to bow down and worship Him with every ounce of my being. Whilst my experience of the Real Presence of our Lord was so real to me this morning, the sad truth is that it is not always the case. How often don’t we go to Mass with our minds distracted? Far too often we seem to have become too familiar with the Eucharist, and we lose our sense of awe. Therein lies the challenge. We say that we believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but does this drive us to our knees, or do we simply kneel out of habit? Let us pray to our Lord that He would constantly refresh within us a holy reverence whenever we come into the Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

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