REFLECTION
EUCHARIST AND THE SYNOD ON THE FAMILY
Pablo Cirujeda
2014 has come to an end, but the Synod on the Family initiated
this past year in the Catholic Church is still going on and bridges into 2015. A major Church gathering in October will bring
that process to completion, while considering questions regarding our families
under the theme “The vocation and mission of the family in the Church and in
the contemporary world.”
As we prepare for that event, I have come to remember
the writings of Meister Eckhart (1260–1328), a medieval German-born
Dominican preacher, who authored the famous “Counsels on Discernment,”
which have been published in different languages. One of “counsels” deals with the
benefits of receiving sacramental Communion, and how he was encouraging the
people of his time to do so.
It is difficult not to note the similarities between
this Dominican scholar and Pope Francis, who in his letter The Joy of the Gospel reminded us that “the Eucharist is not a
prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”
Meister Eckhart’s counsel, written some 700 years earlier, speaks for itself:
Counsel
20: Of the body of our Lord: how one should often receive it,
and with
what manner and devotion:
Do not let people talk and preach you away from your God; the oftener,
the better, and the dearer to God. For it is our Lord’s delight to dwell in man
and with him.
Now you may say: “Alas, sir, I know how empty and cold
and inert I am, and that is why I dare not go to our Lord!”
But what I say is, all the more reason for you to go to your God; for it
is in him that you will be warmed and kindled, and in him you will be made
holy…
Now you may say: “Alas, sir, I can find nothing better
than poverty in myself. How could I dare go to him?”
Be sure of this, if you want all your poverty to be changed, then go to
that abundant treasury of all immeasurable riches, and so you will be rich…
“Alas, sir, I have committed so many sins that I cannot
atone for them!”
Go to him for this, for he has made fitting atonement for all guilt.
In short, if you want all your sins to be wholly taken from you and to
be clothed in virtues and graces, if you want to be led back joyfully to the
source and to be guided by every virtue and grace, see to it that you are able
to receive that sacrament worthily and often; so you will become one with him
and be ennobled through his Body.
Thank you, very interesting!
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