Relationship




His wounded Sacred Heart must love regardless of our inconstancy.

Is He not therefore, deeply wounded by our want of love?  Is He not bitterly disappointed by our infidelity? Is He not sorely distressed by our inconstance?  But He still abides with us, feeding us daily, bearing with our fickleness and our thoughtlessness.  He is constant in His love for us despite our fitful changes.  He is “the same, yesterday today, and forever” (Heb 13:8)—ever kind, ever gracious, ever long-suffering, ever merciful. (Transforming Your Life Through the Eucharist, Kane, 11)



Christ in the Eucharist is the deepest, most intense relationship.

In the fourth Gospel [John], the Word is made flesh, so as to become not only the way and the truth, but also the life. Through the waters of Baptism and the Holy Spirit, he gives human beings a new birth. By the food and drink of the Eucharist and the consequent gift of his own person, he nurtures and develops this new supernatural life. … [T]he role of the Eucharist in John can be put in terms of spiritual relationship.

The Word comes to unite God to humanity by the mutual indwelling of Jesus and his brethren. This reciprocal abiding is initiated by the divine gifts of faith and love, and…by the observance of his commandments. But a more intimate and more intensely real form of this same relationship is achieved through the Eucharist. (The Holy Eucharist, Nichols, 19)



True community with each other comes first through a real union with Christ at Communion.

Although the Corinthian Christians are many, by partaking of the Eucharist loaf, they become one body. This unity, however, is not constituted horizontally by the relation of Christians to each other. Rather, it comes about vertically, for the Eucharist offers Koinonia, literally commonness, a common share, common participation in the body of Christ.

The relationship thus achieved is not simply a moral one, as if Christians were united only by faith in, and love of, the same object, namely Christ. More than this, it is an ontological relationship where they share in the very reality of Christ’s own life through feeding on him as a sacrificial victim. (The Holy Eucharist, Nichols, 31)



God makes His presence known to those who love Him.

[G]od can make His presence known in the heart of the one who loves Him by giving gentle inspirations to lead us to love Him more. The more the soul grows in love for God, the more docile it becomes to these inspirations of the Indwelling guest.

This relational presence of God as the Beloved in the temple of a loving heart admits of unlimited degrees, according to the degrees of charity. By nourishing us with charity, therefore, the Eucharist nourishes the indwelling of the Trinity in the soul. (Eucharist, Feingold, 511)



The Eucharist is a personal relationship with Christ.

The transformation of bread and wine can be understood better in terms of being-as-gift, of which relation is an inseparable part.  In terms of creation theology, the being of an existing thing is to be defined as gift.  Bread and wine, fruits of human work, are God’s gifts to us, and they become the Body and Blood of his Son, gifts of Christ’s presence for us.

Christ’s presence should consequently be thought of as personal, not as a thing.  The grace that is given to us in the sacrament of the Eucharist is Christ as He laid down His life for us.  Christ is not present in the Eucharistic gifts as a natural thing but, rather, “in a personal way and in relation to persons”. (My Body Given for You, Hoping, 428-9)


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