This is my first letter to you since returning from the Holy Land. I am so grateful for all your prayers and support. So many of you have asked about our pilgrimage and mentioned how you were remembering us in prayer. Thank you! You can be sure we remembered you in our prayers as well. I look forward to sharing bits of wisdom and insight from the trip over the next weeks and months.

 

Thank you also to everyone who shared in the beautiful send off for Deacon Ron and Eileen Meyers. It was a wonderful celebration of our time together, worshiping God and loving our neighbor, building up the Body of Christ right here in Maple Shade. While we cannot replace them, we do need to work towards filling the space they leave vacant with other members, who share a desire to follow the Lord and invite others.

 

The church throughout America has begun a special time of Eucharistic Revival. Over this past year, the focus has been at the Diocesan level. Now for the coming year, we at the local parish will have the chance to spend time reviving our love for the Eucharist and deepening our understanding of what it means to receive the Real Presence of Christ Jesus into ourselves. I could not think of a better weekend to begin to focus our attention on the Holy Eucharist than this weekend, when many of our young people will receive Jesus, the Living Bread, for the first time.

 

Jesus teaches, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world” (Jn 6:51). That line - living bread - will be our focus over the next few weeks leading up to Corpus Christi.

 

The Holy Eucharist is very unique nourishment. It is alive with the presence of the Second Person of the Trinity. Jesus gives us Himself to unite us to Him, to knit us together into the Body of Christ, to sustain us on life’s pilgrimage, but also to transform us, to make us holy. The Eucharist is the one food that does not become part of us as we consume it; rather, we become part of it. The goal of worthy reception of Our Lord is to become more Christ-like. Some Greek authors will even use the term Christified or divinized. The process of becoming more and more converted to the Lord is called Christification or Deification. Saint Athanasius wrote, “The Son of God became man so that we might become gods.” An ancient thought worth bringing forward into our day. We Christians have a high and lofty calling, to become holy, to become other Christs in the world, to perpetuate the presence of Christ as lights in the darkness. We receive grace for this mission above all through worthy reception of the Sacrament of Sacraments, the Holy Eucharist.

 

My prayer this weekend is that each of us - but especially those receiving the Eucharist for the first time - will be transformed by their holy and devout reception of this august Sacrament. 

 

This weekend we are having a Marian Procession to honor Mary as we begin the month of May. We shall also orchestrate a Eucharistic Procession on June 11th, Corpus Christi. Processions are public displays of our shared faith. They are moments to evangelize our neighbor, to share with the world what we believe. I hope you can plan to join us for the Eucharistic Procession. And I look forward to sharing my love for the Eucharist with you.