Eucharistic Reflection - He Comes To Life In Us

Christ who has been sacrificed on the altar is laid in the tomb of their hearts. There is no place where He will not come: prisons, hospitals, schools, camps, ships at sea, cathedrals and little tin churches; he comes to them all. He comes into the houses of the sick and the dying, regardless whether they are mansions or slums.

 

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

He comes to all kinds of people, from little children at First Communion, who bring Him their first tender acts of love and reparation to be myrrh and aloes on His wounds, to old sinners who open their empty hearts to Him hurriedly, at the last minute, just as Joseph of Arimathea’s empty tomb was opened hurriedly, at the last minute before the feast, to receive His crucified body.
 

Every day crowds of unknown people come to Him, who feel as hard, as cold, as empty as the tomb.  They come with the first light, before going to the day's work, and with the grey mind of early morning, hardly able to concentrate at all on the mystery which they themselves are part of: impelled only by the persistent will of love, not by any sweetness of consolation, and it seems to them as if nothing happens at all.  

 

But Christ's response to that dogged, devoted will of a multitude of insignificant people is His coming to life in them, his Resurrection in their souls.  In the eyes of the world they are without importance, but in fact, because of them and their unemotional Communions, when the world seems to be finished, given up to hatred and pride, secretly, in unimaginable humility, Love comes to life again.  There is resurrection everywhere.

(From The Risen Christ by Caryll Houselander)