We need Christ

Our God is a God of life and history. He is a God who speaks to us through circumstances and events. Everything which occurs is always “in code.” It is something which God wants to teach us. The Christian should always respond to the question: What does God want to tell me with what is happening or with what I am experiencing?

It is a painful experience to discover what man is: a being in which greatness and misery are mixed…..the ability for good and bad…..to live in truth or lies…..to love and to hate…..to erect and to destroy. We are capable of the best and of the worst.

The situation we are living in the world today is also a painful experience. We confirm in our own flesh and blood what we are capable of. We confirm the limits of our human possibilities. We feel the frailty of the purely human solutions. We see how plans are made, leadership is changed, and nevertheless we cannot get out of the swamp.

More than ever, we feel the need for Someone who can save us. We feel the need for a new light and a new strength. They definitely come from beyond, from God.

“If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and do not drink his blood, you have no life in you.” The bread we need, the only one which can give is life, is the Living Bread which has “come down from Heaven.” It is Christ himself, it is the Man-God. Only God can give us the light and the strength to build a great nation of brothers and sisters where there is work, respect, love and joy.

The presence of Christ, Son of God, in the Eucharist, is an awesome mystery. We only have access to Him according to the measure of our faith. The efficacy of the Eucharistic Bread we receive depends on the measure of faith with which we receive it. That Bread which we eat always transforms us more into the image of Christ: we receive His sentiments and attitudes, He makes us participate, mysteriously but truly, in the Divine Life.

“He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, abides in me and I in him.” This is the mystery of the new Christian man. It is about a divinized man who lives in Christ and Christ lives in him. Communion unites us personally with Jesus. Our soul and our body are closely united with Him. In each Eucharist, He wants to come down anew to earth and become incarnate in each one of us. Thus we become, flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood.

In Christ we are children of God our Heavenly Father and thus we are all brothers and sisters. The Eucharistic Bread is the bread of unity and brotherliness. Therefore, Father Joseph Kentenich, Founder of the Apostolic Schoenstatt Movement, says in a personal prayer to Jesus: “You are a clear source of peace, the bond which unites all peoples, the power which conquers all disagreements, the light which brings warmth and clarity.”

Great remedies for great ills. What do the present circumstances show us today? They show us the relativity of all solutions and human systems if they do not support themselves, if they are not nourished by the Bread of Life. In addition, they show us that difficulties are tasks. We must seek with new zeal, to the ultimate consequences, that “source of peace,” that “bond,” that “power,” and that “light” which comes from above….. which comes from Christ.

Dear brothers and sisters, in each Eucharist, Christ invites us to join ourselves to Him, to identify with Him so that in that way His Will can become our will…..so that His intelligence and His affectations may imbibe us…..until some day we can say with St. Paul: “It is no longer I who lives, it is Christ who lives in me.”

Questions for reflection

1. Are difficulties tasks for me?

2. Am I discouraged by the weight of the difficulties?

3. Am I conscious of the power of the Eucharist?

By : Fr. Nicolas Schwizer

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