We have reached our last Spiritual Pondering this month on the Eucharist and so let us continue our reflections on the Sacrament of the Eucharist. As we do this we turn to Fr. Ronald Rolheiser’s book: Our One Great Act of Fidelity: Waiting for Christ in the Eucharist because in the second part of his book, Fr. Rolheiser looks at the Eucharist from 12 different perspectives. The quotes from his book will be in bold and my personal commentary will be in the regular font.

10: The Eucharist as a Ritual to Sustain our Health
Today, unfortunately, we are misled by a number of misconceptions about prayer and liturgy. Too commonly we accept the following set of axioms as wise: Creativity and variety are always good. Every prayer-celebration should be one of high energy. Longer is better than shorter. Either you should pray with feeling or you shouldn’t pray at all. Ritual is meaningless unless we are emotionally invested in it.

Each of these axioms is overly romantic, ill thought out, anthropologically naïve, and not helpful in sustaining a life of prayer. Prayer is a relationship, a long-term one, and lives by those rules. Relating to anyone long-term has its ups and downs. Nobody can be interesting all the time, sustain high energy all the time, or fully invest himself or herself all time. Never travel with anyone who expects you to be interesting, lively, and emotionally invested all the time. Real life doesn’t work that way. Neither does prayer. What sustains a relationship over the long term is ritual, routine, a regular rhythm that incarnates the commitment.

I wish I could write a book about each of the above misconceptions but let me start simply by saying that prayer is above all about relationship with the Blessed Trinity. Sometimes my friendship with another is deepened only after we have spent a whole day together and other times it is deepened by a short fifteen minute conversation. The same can be said with my relationship with God. There are times in which I enjoy doing new things with friends like taking a trip to somewhere I have never been and there are times in which I enjoy doing the same thing over and over again with friends like play a card game. There is something nice about the Mass in which is it is always the same but yet no two Masses are ever celebrated the same way.

11: The Eucharist as a Vigil, As A Communal Rite of Waiting
We are always waiting. The Eucharist is meant to help us with that. Among other things, it is meant to be a vigil, a coming together to wait for someone or something new to happen to us. We meet Eucharist to wait with each other. The Eucharist is meant to be a vigil.

It is important to remind ourselves that we are waiting for the second coming of our Lord. We do not want to be caught off guard like the foolish virgins in Mathew 25. We also know that the Lord said “like a thief in the night” Mathew 24. It is always easier to keep guard with a partner. As a Church community we get a foretaste of heaven by receiving the Eucharist because God comes to us in this awesome and silent way.

12: The Eucharist As the Priestly Prayer of Christ
One of the things asked of us by adulthood itself, and more especially by our baptism, is that we pray for others. Like the high priests of old, we need to offer up prayer daily for the whole world.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen labeled the part of the Gospel of John where Jesus prays as the Lord’s “My Father.” Fulton Sheen went forth to write: “During the Last Supper Our Blessed Lord used the word “Father” forty-five times. Up until then, the world had only known the Supreme Being as God. He now emphasized that God is a Father, because of His intimate and paternal attitude toward men.” The Eucharist reminds us that our Heavenly Father does listen to us His adoptive Sons and Daughters. At the Eucharist we can offer up the things that matter most to us because we know if they matter to us then they matter to our heavenly Father.