“Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.”
                                              1 Corinthians 10:16-17

The mystery of the Eucharist carries in it the very mystery of the Incarnation—God becoming a human being, sharing our life, our history, our joy and pain—all that makes up human existence, except sin.

The bread and wine that we offer, through the action of the Holy Spirit and the words of the priest, who is conformed to Jesus through ordination, become the body and blood of the Messiah, the Christ, God Incarnate, in the flesh. At every Mass we witness again the total, unconditional love God has for us. The One who is outside the bounds of time and space, the Creator—enters time, is begotten in the womb of young teenage virgin, grows and learns, works and plays, and finally suffers, dies, and is buried—but rises again on the third day.

Why does God do this? So that we might be one with God, who is love! So that death no longer has dominion over us! So that we are no longer separated from God and each other by sin, but are made one in Jesus, and through Jesus, made one with the Father. On the night before he died he prayed for us, asking that “all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.” [John 17:21]

The Eucharist is the sacrifice of love, and that love is so complete that it binds all who share in that Love in perfect union, in communion. Our Holy Father Benedict said it best in his homily at the closing Mass of World Youth Day in Cologne:

Jesus can distribute his Body, because he truly gives himself. This first fundamental transformation of violence into love, of death into life, brings other changes in its wake. Bread and wine become his Body and Blood. But it must not stop there; on the contrary, the process of transformation must now gather momentum. The Body and Blood of Christ are given to us so that we ourselves will be transformed in our turn. We are to become the Body of Christ, his own Flesh and Blood. We all eat the one bread, and this means that we ourselves become one. In this way, adoration…becomes union. God no longer simply stands before us as the One who is totally Other. He is within us, and we are in him.

What does it take for us to experience this glorious reality of the Eucharist? Only the desire and willingness to accept God’s invitation…to surrender to love! In startlingly intimate terms Benedict told the young people of the world in a language they can grasp and feel: “The Latin word for adoration is ad-oratio—mouth-to-mouth contact, a kiss, an embrace, and hence, ultimately love. Submission becomes union, because he to whom we submit is Love.”

With this knowledge how can we possibly find the Mass boring? How can we hesitate to participate fully? How can we not be captured in absolute ecstasy each time we receive the host and the cup or worship the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle? Well, quite easily actually. Because while the kingdom of God is present among us, it is present in the state of potentiality—the kingdom is here, but not yet. We still are ordinary, sinful human beings, whose minds wander, who take Jesus in our hands and eat his flesh or sit in the Real Presence without thinking about the miracle happening right in front of our eyes. We need to work hard at Mass (liturgy means “work of the people”)—but we also need to pray for God’s help, as Jesse Manibusan has taught us to sing: “Open my eyes, Lord, help me to see.”