Ave Maria Meditations
With each sacramental communion Jesus writes afresh the new law on our hearts. Here we touch upon an important point for the celebration of the Eucharist…To participate in the Eucharist, to communicate with the body and blood of Christ, demands the liturgy of our life, a sharing in the passion of the Servant of God. In this participation our sufferings become “sacrifice” and so we can complete “in [our] flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col. 1:24).
It seems to me that this aspect of Eucharistic devotion has been somewhat obscured in the liturgical movement and that we ought to recover it. In the communion of suffering, sacramental communion is actualized; we enter into the riches of the Lord’s mercy, and from this compassion springs up anew the capacity to be merciful from which come the vocations which make mercy their aim and which are lacking today in the Church.
One final observation. If we have at length interpreted the connection between Supper and Cross, we have in fact all the time been speaking also of the Resurrection. Not only are Supper and Cross inseparable: Supper, Cross and Resurrection form the one indivisible Paschal Mystery. The theology of the Cross is the Resurrection; therefore the Resurrection is the divine response and the divine interpretation of the Cross. The theology of the Cross is a paschal theology, a theology of joyous victory even in this valley of tears. We have shown that the Last Supper was the anticipation of the violent death of Jesus, and that the Cross without the Supper, the Supper without the reality of the Cross, would remain void. Now we have to add that the Last Supper also anticipates the Resurrection, the certainty that love is stronger than death. This act of love to the last is the transubstantiation of death, its radical transformation, the power of the Resurrection already present in the shadow of death.
The Supper without the Cross, the Cross without the Supper, would be void, but the two without the Resurrection would be the wreck of hope. The image of the pierced side, fount of water and blood, is also the image of the Resurrection, of love stronger than death. In the Eucharist we receive this love – we receive the medicine of immortality. The Eucharist guides us to the fount of true life, of invincible life, and shows us where and how true life is to be found – not in riches, not in having. Only if we follow Jesus on the way of His Cross do we find ourselves on the road to life.
Pope Benedict XVI: Journey to Easter
