The Eucharistic Conspiracy

 In the dynamic presence of the bread and wine on the table we have symbolised just about everything that can be predicated of humanity, the earth and everything on it and in it, the universe and the cosmos itself – the past, present and future of all creation. These rich and simple elements gather up the intense agony and ecstasy of the world, its darkness and light, its failures and mistakes, its striving and hopes, its indomitable creativity.

‘I will place on my pattern, oh God, the harvest to be won by this renewal of labour. Into my chalice I shall pour all the sap which is to be pressed out this day from the earth fruits. One by one, Lord, I see and I love all those whom you have given to me to sustain and charm my life. One by one  also I number all those who make up that other beloved family which has gradually surrounded me, its unity fashioned out of the most disparate elements, with affinities of the heart, of scientific research and of thought. And again, one by one, I called before me the whole vast anonymous army of living humanity . . .

All the things in the world to which this day will bring increase; All those that will diminish; All those two that will die. This is the material of my sacrifice  . . . the offering you really want,  the offering you mysteriously need every day to appease your hunger,  to slake your thirst is nothing less than the growth of the world born ever onwards in the stream of universal becoming.’ (Teilhard de Chardin Hymn of the Universe)

 And then the eternal words of disclosure are spoken:

‘This is my Body’.

They sound around this Earth and they echo around the stars. They were whispered by our loving Mother when the terrible beauty of the fiery atoms shattered the infinite darkness of space with unimaginable flame, heat, and light. And God has waited for her creation to unfold in the power of her own love, and in that unfolding the cosmos became self-reflecting in the consciousness of humanity.

And it is this human awareness, that repeats again the words it first heard in its infancy many years before, when God spoke her creative words into the void,

‘This is my body.’

It is God-become-atom, become-galaxies, become-stars, become-universes, become-Earth, become-human that speaks these words to her own body in a human voice.

‘This is my body.’

It is a remembering, a reminding and a confirming that the divine and the human, the sacred and the secular, the holy and profane are all God’s one body by virtue of creation, first in Time but revealed later to us in the Incarnation.’

(Year of the Heart pp 134-136)

Wishing you a blessed and joy-filled Christmas!