It was so lovely to see on display the many talents and gifts of our St. Mary’s P7 children at their graduation last Thursday. It was even lovelier to hear the applause and feel the love and encouragement coming from their parents and teachers. For them, the most important gift is the children themselves, the fact that they are there and that they are theirs to love and be loved by. And I am sure that the children, too, in their own way have come to realise that the gift of their parents and of those who love them is more important than the many good things they give them. Irrespective of any other consideration, every person is a gift of God and the fruit of sheer love which is utterly free and mightily beautiful.

All that is truly good is a gift. Our beautiful world and the astonishing expanse of space are given to us out of the pure gratuity and generosity of the God of love. And that is because the nature of God Himself is gift. He is both Giver and Gift because He is both Lover and Love. The Trinity is a Furnace, an ever-flowing Fountain of ardent Love. And so, everything God is, wills and does bears the hallmark of this self-giving love. We see it in His creation, and above all in ourselves, His sons and daughters. By the fact we exist, we are gifts of love. And what does a gift do but give itself to others in love and receive others as gifts of love? The greatest act of self-giving love we can do, an act which fulfils our nature as gifts and givers, is to give ourselves completely to the Supreme Giver and Gift, to God. When husband and wife surrender themselves to one another, they are acting out the image and likeness of God in their very being. They are an epiphany of God. When God gives them children as the fruit of their self-giving love, that epiphany becomes even more glorious and eloquent. The Trinity shines through their family. The family reveals the Trinity.

Sadly, as we know, the bonds of love do not always remain firm. Sin, in one form or another, breaks them: self-giving becomes self-serving, self-sacrifice becomes self-indulgence, and so on. The tragic and painful consequences of that are all too familiar to need mentioning. But, for His part, what was the incorrigible Lover who is our Triune God supposed to do when sin appeared? Just look on? No! What else could He do but consume our sin with a new out-flaring of that Furnace of ardent Love, to restore us to love and self-giving, to rebind into one the bonds and hearts that are broken!

And so, the Father so loved the world that He gave up and poured out His only Son. The Son fulfilled the Father’s will in perfect, loving self-sacrifice on the Cross so that the Holy Spirit, the Love of God in Person, might be poured out upon us to heal our wounds, to wash the stain of guilt away, to bend the stubborn heart and will, to melt the frozen and warm the chill – so that we would once again dream dreams of true love, let fall the chains of our resentments and break the prison bars of our jealousies, hatred and lusts. So, when Jesus speaks the words on the night he was betrayed: this is my body given for you, my blood poured out for you, and when on Calvary His body and blood are separated violently in death and utter abandon, He is in fact introducing into His beautiful world the greatest gift ever known, ever possible, ever to be welcomed and adored: the gift of the Holy Eucharist, of his Most Holy Body and Blood. Do this in remembrance of me, He said, for He wanted us never more to forget the Gift or the Giver. In the Eucharist, He acts out in the world for us the love proper to His intimate relationship with the Father and the Spirit in heaven. The Eucharist reveals and communicates to those who receive it worthily and with true faith the inner life of the Trinity itself. And through us, it communicates the Risen, Divine Life of God into the cosmos. Although we are as yet mortal, we carry within the immortal. Through the Eucharist in us, heaven is on earth, life reigns over death, grace over sin. The Eucharist is the healing medicine of God which restores to humanity and to the cosmos the very capacity once again to love, to give and receive one another and God as gifts. The Eucharist transforms history and the universe. It transforms each of us and all of us in ourselves and in our relationships.

To receive Holy Communion is therefore no mere formality! It is to say Amen to God the Giver and Gift who comes to share His life with you and to empower you to love and to give, more and more. It is to say yes to the mission to bring God to the world by living like God in the world. Christ’s utter self-surrender to us in the Eucharist demands, yes, demands of us that we surrender ourselves utterly to Him, to his very Person, to His Truth, to his Grace, to His will. It demands we embrace His plan for the life He has given us and for the world He has given us to transform with the Eucharistic method of self-giving love. Human intelligence alone cannot understand the Eucharist. Only one who knows how to love can perceive the shape of its mystery. Only one who believes and adores it can begin to find words and concepts to express it, however haltingly. Only one who appreciates beauty can convey wonder and astonishment at the dazzling reality of the Eucharist. The Eucharist does not admit of merely academic analysis or of merely private devotion or consumption. It is the Sacrament of the most public act of God in space and time, namely the death and resurrection of Christ. It is Holy Communion in the life of God: that is, it binds us individually and collectively to Christ and to the Trinity and through them to each other. And its outreach and purpose are not just to make us feel good within: no, they are to proclaim the death and resurrection of Christ to the world and so to draw the world into that Holy Communion, first in the Sacrament itself, and then, through it, in the life of God. The Eucharist is life-giving, a lifestyle and a life’s mission.

To receive Holy Communion is to apply the words of Jesus to ourselves: this is my body, my blood, my soul, my mind, my will, my suffering and my love which I will give up and pour out for You and Your people. Every Mass requires us to make and renew that commitment in the most personal and deliberate of ways. Is this huge or is this huge? Yes, this is huge! Because the Eucharist is the Hugest of Huge. It is the Real and Substantial Presence of the Risen Christ who is both at the right hand of the Father and yet with us on earth to the end of time.

My sisters and brothers, we need a real Eucharistic conversion, a return to the true and beautiful faith in what and Who the Eucharist is, in frequent and generous adoration of the Real Presence, in worthy and devout reception of it, in true humility and honesty of heart. We must heed the Church’s teaching and discipline on the Eucharist and not make up our own. We receive the Eucharist from the hands of Christ through the Apostles and their Successors, the Bishops. We owe it to Christ to preserve in its integrity and unsullied purity the reality of the Eucharist as Christ intended it.

You may think that a deep Eucharistic life is not for you. Nothing could be further from the truth. Eternal life itself will be Holy Communion in and Adoration of the Son of God whose glory is concealed here below under the appearances of bread and wine. Ask Him for the grace of a renewed faith and love for this Wondrous Mystery so that you may experience its power to heal and transform your life. Individually and together, let us become living tabernacles, living monstrances, living patens and chalices, bread broken and wine poured out for others. Let our Amen in receiving the Eucharist become our Amen in living the Eucharist until we see our Beloved Face to Face.