This Sunday's gospel passage reminds us once again of God's unconditional love for us. "When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, and he cured their sick" (Matthew 14: 14). In essence, Christianity is an on-going love story. It is a love story about God's unconditional love for you and me.
"Taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds" (Matthew 14: 19). However, the miracle of the loaves and fishes directs our attention to the miracle of the Eucharist. Jesus' miracle is a foretaste of the greatest of all miracles, the miracle of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the sacrament of love. The Eucharist allows us to experience his unconditional love. He loves us so much, that he cannot leave us.
When Jesus ascended to the Father, it would have been very simple for him merely to leave us with a record of all that he had said and done; however, he could not contain his love within the confines of time and space. Because of his unconditional love, he had to remain with us. The Eucharist is not a symbol, it is a reality. Jesus is truly with us.
The Eucharist is the most perfect of the seven sacraments. God dispenses sanctifying grace through the sacraments. Moreover, not only is the Eucharist an aqueduct of divine life, the Eucharist is God himself!
In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really and substantially contained. (Catechism of the Catholic Church #1374).
Transubstantiation means "change of substance", or "change of reality." When the priest repeats the words that Jesus spoke at the Last Supper, the bread is no longer bread, and the wine is no longer wine. Instead, the entire substance of the bread and the entire substance of the wine have been changed into the substance of The Body and Blood of Christ.
Look at the tabernacle. Our Lord is truly there. He looks at you and cries out: "All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; Come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk! Why spend your money for what is not bread; your wages for what fails to satisfy?" (Isaiah 55: 1-2)
"It is highly fitting that Christ should have wanted to remain present to his Church in this unique way. Since Christ was about to take his departure from his own in his visible form, he wanted to give us his sacramental presence; since he was about to offer himself on the cross to save us, he wanted us to have the memorial of the love with which he loved us 'to the end', even to the giving of his life. In his Eucharistic presence he remains mysteriously in our midst as the one who loved us and gave himself up for us, and he remains under signs that express and communicate this love" (Catechism of the Catholic Church #1380).
