Sacraments of God’s presence
Today is a significant
day. It is Maundy Thursday. And here we are surrounded by the signs and symbols
of our Lord’s life and ministry – wine, bread, water, candles, basins, towels,
palms (as a reminder of our own fickle nature) and, yes, here we are as well,
present and gathered at the altar.
I just said all these are signs and
symbols. But, in fact, all of them are more than signs and symbols – They are
sacraments of God’s presence.
A sign or a symbol carry their own
significance. However, a sacrament transmits and effects transformation.
Wine becomes blood, which in turn,
quenches our spiritual thirst. Bread becomes the Body which in turn becomes the
Bread of Life which will nourish and strengthen us in our journey. Water – the
Water of Life which Jesus promised is also the water by which we were
incorporated into the Body of Christ, but which today will become the Seal of
the Servant.
A lit candle is more than a
decoration or a liturgical artifact. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world” – Light is another sacrament of God’s
presence in our midst.
And even ourselves. If Jesus is the
Sacrament of God’s presence in this world we, in turn, by Christ’s love, mercy,
and grace, have been transformed into the Body of Christ, the sacrament of
God’s presence in this world. We are
the Body of Christ.
As St Teresa said, we are God’s
hands and God’s eyes in this world. We are the legs which God uses to move
around to heal, reconcile, and lift up. In a letter written to a certain Diogneto,
about eighteen hundred years ago, a Christian Greek apologist described Christians “as the soul to the world.”[1]
However, he felt short. For indeed, we are even more – we are God’s soul for
this world. Through us God’s shares the suffering of the poor, the oppressed,
the sick and the exploited, the alienated and the discarded of our world. When
we cry for innocent victims, we shed God’s tears. When we hunger for justice,
our pangs are God’s pangs. We are
the Body of Christ.
Today, I invite you to affirm God’s
presence in you and through you. For, as St Paul writes,
“It
is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body
by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
Fr Gustavo
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