Dear Friends,
Today we celebrate the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time. Peter’s defining moment, this one utterance that “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” merits him a special place in the Gospels and sets him apart from the rest of the crowd. When Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” many came up with answers that were off the mark, but Peter got it right. Isn’t that what each and everyone of us is invited to discover for ourselves? The question remains the same, and we are each called to ponder it and proclaim for ourselves with the profound humility of Peter: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Let us pray that we come to know this truth in our hearts to profess Jesus as our Lord and Savior, and savor the sweetness of living as his intimate disciples.
We began our 54-Day Rosary Novena on 15 August, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I am happy to know that so many of you are on board with it. Please continue to pray the Rosary with us and do not give up!
I urge our parents to please register your children for the Religious Education Program which is now open and on the home page of our website at www.stjohnviera.org. With the many challenges facing our families, continued participation in the celebration of the Mass and formation in our faith is essential, now more than ever.
Have a Blessed Week!
With love,
Fr. John
Ecclesia De Eucharistia
For this week, we shall reflect on paragraphs 16 and 17 of the encyclical “Ecclesia De Eucharistia” (The Church draws her life from the Eucharist) by St. John Paul II on the vital role the Eucharist plays in the life of the Church:
- The saving efficacy of the sacrifice is fully realized when the Lord's body and blood are received in communion. The Eucharistic Sacrifice is intrinsically directed to the inward union of the faithful with Christ through communion; we receive the very One who offered himself for us, we receive his body which he gave up for us on the Cross and his blood which he “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Mt 26:28). We are reminded of his words: “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me” (Jn 6:57). Jesus himself reassures us that this union, which he compares to that of the life of the Trinity, is truly realized. The Eucharist is a true banquet, in which Christ offers himself as our nourishment. When for the first time Jesus spoke of this food, his listeners were astonished and bewildered, which forced the Master to emphasize the objective truth of his words: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life within you” (Jn 6:53). This is no metaphorical food: “My flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed” (Jn 6:55).
- Through our communion in his body and blood, Christ also grants us his Spirit. Saint Ephrem writes: “He called the bread his living body and he filled it with himself and his ..
He who eats it with faith, eats Fire and Spirit... Take and eat this, all of you, and eat with it the Holy Spirit. For it is truly my body and whoever eats it will have eternal life” (Sermo IV in Hebdomadam Sanctam: CSCO 413/ Syr. 182, 55). The Church implores this divine Gift, the source of every other gift, in the Eucharistic epiclesis. In the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, for example, we find the prayer: “We beseech, implore and beg you: send your Holy Spirit upon us all and upon these gifts... that those who partake of them may be purified in soul, receive the forgiveness of their sins, and share in the Holy Spirit” (Anaphora). And in the Roman Missal the celebrant prays: “grant that we who are nourished by his body and blood may be filled with his Holy Spirit, and become one body, one spirit in Christ” (Eucharistic Prayer III). Thus by the gift of his body and blood Christ increases within us the gift of his Spirit, already poured out in Baptism and bestowed as a “seal” in the sacrament of Confirmation.