Thought for the Week, June 22, 2025

 

            In the book of Deuteronomy, we find Moses at the twilight of his life.  He had been chosen by God to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt through the desert into the  Promised Land.  He had led the people to its precincts.  But he was not going to set his foot on the land.  Before he died, he addressed the people in a speech that was meant to be a recapitulation of the history of their nation.

           

Many times in that speech, Moses urged the people to remember: “Remember how for forty years now the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert . . .” 

 

 “Remember, the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery . . .” 

 

All that Moses was saying to the people the book of Deuteronomy could be summed up in the following words: “You are about to enter into the land God has promised you, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land of material prosperity.  But as you live on that land, and as you enjoy its good things, forget not your God; forget not that it was through his saving act that you arrived on this land of abundance.” 

                       

Forget not your God.  The word of God exhorts us to remember God’s presence and God’s saving act to his people, to us.  And in biblical language, remembrance has a special meaning.  To remember is not simply to recall the past.  Rather, to remember is to bring the past into the  present in an effective and dynamic way.  To remember is to actualise the past in the present in view of the future.  It is to bring the past, the present, and the future into an active now.  It is to make the past and the future present in the present.

                       

Forgetfulness could be tragic.  When things are so beautiful around us, and when we seem to be getting all that we want, there is the danger of forgetting that all we that we have comes not from our ingenuity but from God.  When we eat our daily bread and still have some excess, or when we seem to be sure of having our daily bread, we run the risk of forgetting the one to whom we pray when we say: “Give us this day our daily bread.” And because a people that forgets its past fraternises with tragedy, because a nation that forgets that her many blessings come from God runs the risk of losing the blessings, tragedy began to strike the Israelite nation when the people began to forget God and his saving act in bringing them out of Egypt.

                       

The experience of living in a beautiful home, the experience of living in the midst of abundance communicates a message to us.  God has a way of teaching us through the experience of beauty and of abundance.  If we listen carefully we can hear God say to us: “Remember! Remember that it is through my generosity that you have these beautiful things in abundance.  That is what we must not leave out of our understanding of the Eucharist.  For in the Eucharist we remember, we give thanks, and we celebrate.  We remember what we God has done for us in Jesus; we remember his friendship, his love, his mercy.  We remember the most eloquent expression of that love on the cross.  For he himself has said: “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for the sake of one’s friends.”

                       

“Take and eat, this is my body”.  “Take and drink from it, this is the cup of my blood . . .”.  “Do this in remembrance of me”.  At every Mass we hear those words.  And at every Mass, the past, the present and the future are brought together, because the effectiveness of our Lord’s saving act on the cross is made real in the present; and that brings us hope that one day we shall fully experience this salvation.

                       

But we who remember and celebrate that saving act on the cross must become what we remember, we must become what we celebrate in the Eucharist.  Each of us must become  a sign, a sacrament of generosity in the Church and in the world, in the family and in the society.  Then our celebration of the Eucharist will become a celebration of what we ourselves have become.  But we must be careful not to think of generosity only in terms of the money we give.  Rather we must be generous in giving our lives.  Jesus did not save us with money, Jesus gave us his life so that we might live and so that we might give life.  And in the Eucharist we celebrate he continues to give us life.  “I myself am the living bread come down from heaven,” he said.  “If anyone eats this bread he shall live forever; the bread I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”  With those words, Jesus is telling us that every time we come to this altar he gives us his own life.  And he gives us his own life so that we might live, and so that we might live for others.  It takes a man and a woman who are willing to give their lives to each other in a permanent relationship for a marriage to survive and succeed.  It takes generous young men and women who are willing to give their lives to the Christian community, without counting the cost, to have priests and religious in a local Church.  Yet it is possible to give the whole of my life savings to the Church without giving my life. 

                       

It is important to bear this in mind because the way we understand the Eucharist is reflected in the way we live our Christian lives.  The Eucharist is what we receive very often.  For that reason, we must bear in mind the saying: “Too much familiarity breeds contempt.”  It is quite possible to receive the Eucharist so often as to forget that it is sacred.  And so each time we come forward to receive the Eucharist, let us bear in mind the words of the sequence of today’s Mass: “we , in accordance with his holy directions, consecrate bread and wine to be our saving Victim.  Christ’s followers know by faith that bread is changed into his flesh and wine into his blood.

                       

“None can understand this, nor perceive it; but a lively faith affirms that the change, which is outside the natural course of things.  Under the different species, which are now signs only and not their own reality, their lie hid wonderful realities.  His body is our food, his blood our drink.”

           

Fr. Anthony A. Akinwale, O.P.