Eucharistic Reflection - How Shall We Act?

 

(Image Source: Hands At Mass)

“The Eucharist is the fundamental norm for our actions. Jesus’ Eucharistic sacrifice is our ideal, our guiding principle, our rule. A rule that is much more demanding than a monastery rule, since it does not leave anything in life unaffected. When we wonder how we shall act, the answer is: ‘Look at the Eucharist!’ There is the Christian life in its fullness.

The Christian ethic is a Eucharistic ethic. Jesus has instituted the Eucharist so that we will have His sacrifice in our midst as a constant source of inspiration and a clear reference point. The Eucharist is the criterion when it is a question of judging our actions! Are they or are they not in accord with the Eucharist?

Christians have always known that the Eucharist must bear fruit in daily life if one does not wish to be ‘a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal’ (1 Cor 13:1). But in the last decades, the Church has become evermore aware that the Eucharist is intended to penetrate everything we do.”

 

(Wilfried Stinissen, O,C.D. from Bread That Is Broken)

Eucharistic Reflection - Don't Remain Without Life

(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons) "That the Eucharist—and thus the whole of Christian life—is a meal shows us that we do not have life in ourselves. We must receive it, eat it. We become what we receive. If we refuse to receive, refuse to eat and drink him, we remain without life."

(From Father Wilfrid Stinissen from Bread That Is Broken)

Eucharistic Reflection - We Are Like Children

(Photo©Michael Seagriff)

"We are like children who receive money from our mother to buy her a  a birthday present when she has a birthday. When the children come with their gift, the mother does not say: 'You ought to be ashamed of yourselves to come with a gift that I myself have paid for!' No, she acts as though it were from them. That is what God does with us. Everything we give Him we have received from Him. Nevertheless He acts as though everything came from us.

Our thanksgiving consists in that we give everything back to God...It is not because God is greedy and therefor wants everything back, but rather so that we should have the joy of giving."

(Wilfrid Stinissen, O.C.D. from Bread That Is Broken)