The gift of Himself

Wednesday afternoon

The great gift of Christ - the gift of himself
On the wall of Mother Teresa's sacristy ' Priest of God, celebrate this Mass as if it was your first Mass, your last Mass, your only Mass.'
Don't say the words of the Mass, pray the words of the Mass - switch off the automatic pilot and focus.

4 central actions of the Mass - taking, blessing, breaking, giving.
Christ's life a mirror of the parable of the Prodigal Son, but the story of the faithful Son sent into the world.
God took Christ and sent him, blessed him in the Jordan and at the Transfiguration, and then surely allowed Him to be broken open by entering into the human reality as one of us.  
Opening of Gaudium et Spes - there is nothing human that does not find an echo in our hears.
Broken again on the Cross, a man of sorrows, but what He gained by them is immeasurable.
And it was the breaking of Christ that enabled him to be given as Eucharist.

God took us too, and blessed us with all the joys and sorrows of our lives, called us by name as His daughters and sons, every now and then we glimpse how great that Love is.  Then, if we allow ourselves, He breaks us open by living alongside other people and sharing the joys, hope, fears and anxieties of others.  We lose control, but the loss, however difficult, is Grace filled.
By this we can be given to others as Eucharist, we feed people with Christ by our lives.

Pope John Paul II said he had celebrated Mass in many places, it gave him a powerful experience of the cosmic nature of the Mass because it is always in some way celebrated on the altar of the whole world.  In it Christ gives back the whole of creation to His Father, but now redeemed.