The Eucharist becomes our ongoing touchstone through the Christian journey, a place we must keep going to in order to find our face, our name, our absolute identity, who we are in Christ, and thus who we are forever.
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
"Eucharist"
"Jesus in Me and Me in Jesus"
Tuesday, 23 September 2014
At the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, the priest holds up the bread and the cup and says those three prepositions: “through him, with him, and in him.” Once when I was holding up Jesus as bread and wine, I had a realization: I don’t know how to talk to you, God. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know how to look for your face. But don’t look at me. Just look at your Son. I’m with him. He is my badge of honor. He is my defense. He is my identity. This is my solidarity. This is my communion. This is my participation. He is praying through me, with me, in me, and as me!
The Father only and forever loves the Cosmic Christ, and it is Jesus in you that God eternally looks upon with respect and eternal desire. The Father cannot not love “the Son,” but the only trouble is that we defined the Son of God in an exclusive way, whereas the whole point was that Jesus came to include all of us in on the same deal! To the degree that you can trust and allow this, you become an “adopted daughter” or an “adopted son,” to use Paul’s language. You are even physically grafted to the vine, it seems, which is why the Eucharist must be physical and not just mental. You are not separate from God as body or as soul (1 Corinthians 6:15).
When Jesus says he’s giving himself to you as the Bread of Life, and if you eat this bread you will live forever, he’s saying, “Find your self in me.” Be reflected truthfully before the perfect mirror that is Jesus (St. Clare’s metaphor), and you will be free from the revolving hall of mirrors of the people and culture around you. Don’t let other people’s responses and expectations determine who you are and how you feel about yourself. Eat this food as your primary nutrition, and you are indestructible, because you then live in your True Self—which is who you are in God.
And who you are in God is who you are! In fact, that’s all you are. Everything else is passing away. The Eucharist becomes our ongoing touchstone through the Christian journey, a place we must keep going to in order to find our face, our name, our absolute identity, who we are in Christ, and thus who we are forever.
Adapted from The Divine Dance: Exploring the Mystery of Trinity, disc 3 (CD, MP3 download), and Eucharist as Touchstone (CD, MP3 download)
Gateway to Silence:
I am present to Presence.
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