Don´t eat alone
Eucharist calls to justice
Maybe you can remember a movie or a song that really moved you. Somehow that experience helped you understand something or someone better, or gave you an insight into your life or the life of someone else.
Each week we have the opportunity to experience something like that when we celebrate Mass in our parish. The Eucharist can change us by helping us understand ourselves better, in relationship to God and to our brothers and sisters. But the Eucharist can also change the world, because it calls us to join Jesus in transforming all creation.
By our Baptism we became members of the Body of Christ, the church. As the Body of Christ, the joys of others are also our joys, and their needs and suffering are also our needs and suffering. We cannot ignore their cry for justice, love, and peace. The Mass compels us to transform the unjust situations that millions suffer.
The Mass is not 60 minutes of “God and me time;” it is a celebration of a community. Our community is the parish, but also the entire church, all those who believe in Christ. We celebrate Mass for the sake of the entire community, whether they are sitting next to us or are thousands of miles away.
The Eucharist, from beginning to end, calls us to action and to promote justice:
• Penitential rites call us to convert, to set relationships right so that we might all create a just and loving world.
• In the Liturgy of the Word, we listen to how Jesus lived a life of service, love, and sacrifice so that we might do likewise.
• In the Liturgy of the Eucharist, we give back to God what we have received and share what we have with those who do not. We are consecrated as the Body of Christ, called to do what he did. We are all one, and like Christ, we give ourselves to others. We become Christ in the world.
• In the closing rite we ask for the Eucharist to change us, and we are then sent out to live what we have professed and experienced during the Eucharist until next Sunday.
The Eucharist is more than just those 60 minutes a week we dedicate to God. It is where we find the strength, guidance, and reason to serve others, to pour ourselves out, to break ourselves open for others as Jesus did.
Your turn
- What is Sunday Mass for you?
- How do you live it out during the week?
