Dear All,
Another big feast tomorrow – Corpus Christi or the Feast of the Body & Blood of Christ. We are attaching two reflections on Eucharist & hope you may find some inspiration from them.
As always we end with a blessing – this time John Rutter’s Clare blessing – written by him in memory of his son, Christopher, who was killed in a road accident whilst studying at Clare College in Cambridge.
May the Lord show His mercy upon you;
May the light of His presence be your guide:
May He guard you and uphold you;
May His spirit be ever by your side.
When you sleep, may His angels watch over you;
When you wake, may He fill you with His grace.
May you love Him and serve Him all your days,
Then in heaven may you see His face
May the Lord show His mercy upon you;
May the light of His presence be your guide:
May He guard you and uphold you;
May His spirit be ever by your side.
When you sleep, may His angels watch over you;
When you wake, may He fill you with His grace.
May you love Him and serve Him all your days,
Then in heaven may you see His face.
With our love & prayer.
Extracts from Hugh O’Donnell’s ‘Eucharist & the Living Earth’
As Christians, we believe that the gift of creation and the gift of the Eucharist are inseparable. When the Eucharist becomes detached from its matrix within the created world, it can easily become a ritual without roots. The story of the universe needs to
become our sacred story not just at an intellectual level but in the way that we worship. In essence, this means not only coming to terms with the profound meaning of Eucharist as ‘the washing of the feet’ of the poorest, but of extending that gesture to every living being. In this way, the Christian assembly becomes a community of hope on behalf of all creation.
Real hope is related to the joy and privilege we feel to live in a world that is stupendous. It is not a longing for the ‘next’ world as an escape, but commits us to care for this one. So one community will design an eco building, another will stand by their trees. Others again will commit themselves to a thousand local initiatives in food-production, seed-saving, water-management, waste-reduction, eco-education, seasonal-rituals and fund-raising.
The Eucharist will shine forth in all its radiant mystery not simply when the rubrics are fully observed but when the Eucharist is understood in its widest significance, namely, as expressing Christ’s intention to offer his nourishing presence to the whole of creation, from the fireball event of beginnings to this present. threatened moment of existence.
‘In the Eucharist’, writes Walter Kasper, ‘the world becomes one in praise of the Creator; the world becomes whole’. For him, the Eucharist is always ‘the liturgy of the world’. As Earth cannot stand apart from its atmosphere, its sun and moon and galaxy, it seems entirely correct, if somewhat audacious, to speak of a liturgy of the Milky Way or the Mass of the universe!
By offering up bread and wine, the human community takes the earth in its hands in a gesture of thanksgiving. This ‘gathering into one’ of all reality recalls how Jesus tore down the dividing wall of enmity and established peace; how he removed the old distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free, men and women; how all creation will be renewed in Christ (Eph 1:10).
Liturgy is essentially theatre in which the narrative movement of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is brought into play. That is why Eucharist is necessary. It holds the memory for us of who we are and what we are called to be. In the transformation that happens around the altar-table, we and all creation with us, are made whole.
Our presence enlivens the eucharistic play. Our being-in-communion-with-all-creation is addressed. The phrase, ‘take and eat, this is my body given for you’, is intended to resonate, to have multiple meanings as mother love, earth love, Spirit love – love in language, love as sacrament, love in action. Eucharist is dramatic in the way in which the Spirit of world-refreshing, new life is announced and the creation responds.
AND ARE THE BREAD AND WINE YOUR BODY, LORD?
And are the bread and wine your body, Lord,
blessed and transformed to food which feeds the soul,
so that, substantially, we’re one with you
and broken lives, in union, are made whole?
Come, Holy Spirit, sanctify this tryst
and enter in to make us one with Christ.
And is the total universe held here
– clasped in a web of sacrificial love
whose pulses weave the atom and the sphere
into one tapestry, here and above?
Come, Holy Spirit, sanctify this tryst
and enter in to make us one with Christ.
So frail the symbols, yet in them we see –
through fruit of human labour, bread and wine –
in Christ’s own being, ours in mystery,
bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh entwine:
Come, Holy Spirit, sanctify this tryst
and enter in to make us one with Christ.
Thus we need live no longer to ourselves:
indwelling grace gives power beyond our own;
gifts are unleashed to change the universe
that it attain its end through you alone:
Come, Holy Spirit, sanctify this tryst
and enter in to make us one with Christ.
Ian M. Fraser