Jesus is alive! But we don’t really treat him like he is.
How often do we relegate him simply to a memory in our minds, to a faint and ghostly touch in our wills, or to a half-life in our hearts?
If we are honest with ourselves, we can probably recognize two opposing movements in our own souls:
Perhaps the clearest example of this is how we receive the Eucharist.
In his Wednesday General Audience on February 18, Pope Leo XIV continued his catechesis on Lumen Gentium. He quoted from Chapter VII, which, at face value, might seem like a list of facts we all know. But in it we find how this very tension is being called to resolution in the Eucharist. Consider these words carefully:
“Rising from the dead (cf. Rom 6:9) He sent His life-giving Spirit upon His disciples and through Him has established His Body which is the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation. Sitting at the right hand of the Father, He is continually active in the world that He might lead men to the Church and through it join them to Himself and that He might make them partakers of His glorious life by nourishing them with His own Body and Blood" (no. 48).
Maybe as you read this you might be catching something that you hadn’t considered before, or maybe you’re nodding, thinking, “Yeah, I know, amazing. We have an awesome faith.” Either way, you’d be right! But there is still far deeper to go.
Take a moment to consider these questions honestly, each one corresponding to a section of the quote from Lumen Gentium:
When you receive Jesus in the Eucharist, do you believe that he has come to you with tenderness, joy, and strength? Do you believe that he is drawing you closer to himself, to see with his eyes, to think with his mind, and to love with his heart? Do you allow this to change how you live in gratitude, how you understand your place in the Church, and how you serve the lost?
When you receive Jesus in the Eucharist, does the experience of a less-than-ideal liturgy make you believe that he only “half showed up?” Does the experience of a glorious liturgy leave you feeling that he showed up? Or are you fully convicted of his True Presence, powerfully with you in the midst of anything?
When you receive Jesus in the Eucharist, do you recognize you are receiving the One who calls to repentance and forgives sins? Do you pray and respond accordingly? Even in the parking lot after Mass?
When you receive Jesus in the Eucharist, do you believe that you have welcomed into your very being the One who is living and active in the world, whose mission it is to bring salvation, and whose commission to you in your Baptism is to go and share with others the faith you have received? Do you pray and serve accordingly?
When you have received Jesus in the Eucharist, do you lean on the grace of this gift throughout the rest of the week as you live mundane realities, tense conflicts, great victories, or personal sufferings? Do you lean into him, present in your life and welcoming you into his own life, as a reality that extends through time and into eternity, towards the fullness of life with the Trinity in Heaven?
Jesus isn’t “sitting back on his laurels in the Eucharist,” so to speak, as if after finishing his life on earth and achieving victory over sin and death he had finished everything he had come to earth to accomplish. No. He is alive and active! He is alive because he rose from the dead – death couldn’t stop him, and neither can we derail his power to redeem and save! He is active because he continues to unfold his mission in us—we who are his living tabernacles and members of his own Body, the brothers and sisters he loves, and the Bride he has redeemed—and that mission is to save humanity.
We receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist from Jesus through the ministry of those who have followed him before us in the Church, who themselves continue to be sanctified as they proclaim and gift him to others. As we, in our turn, believe in and receive him in the Eucharist, he enters us in the most unique and powerful way, both to sanctify us and to reach out to others through us, drawing them, in turn, into his Church.
We never receive Jesus in the Eucharist alone. Even in the profound intimacy of this moment, it is never truly just ‘me and Jesus.’ We receive him from others, into ourselves, and towards others. When we receive Holy Communion, we are drawn into communion with God, who commissions us to foster communion with one another, to draw others into communion with him too.
This may not all unfold directly around the Eucharistic table. But it does all start there…it all comes back there again and again… and it all culminates there, too.
So, can I ask you –
Where do you struggle to live like he’s alive, or to act like he is active?
Have you relegated our Eucharistic Lord to a memory in your mind, to a faint and ghostly touch in your will, or to a half-life in your heart?
Are you willing to receive the Eucharist as someone all-in? To allow Jesus to work the fullness of transformation he longs to work in you? Will you accept all of that gift, and all that it demands?
May we ask the Lord’s grace to truly live the mystery of Christ alive and active in us today.
Sr. Orianne Pietra René was born and raised in Canada, and was working as a teacher when the Lord interrupted her with a call to religious life. She entered the Daughters of St. Paul, a congregation dedicated to evangelizing through media and praying in reparation for sins committed through media, making her first profession of vows in 2021. She is the author of the Christopher Award-winning devotional Dive Deep: 40 Days with God at Sea, which inspired a Salt and Light Media video miniseries. Sr. Orianne is currently serving in Alexandria, Virginia.
