Continuing to Climb Towards Theosis – Communion with God

Rev. Christopher T. Metropulos
April 14, 2013

Book Reference
With Burning Hearts
A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life
By Henri J. M. Nouwen

Opening thoughts and basis for discussion

Reflect on the journey to Emmaus

Essence of Life in the Giving of Bread. The Eucharist is a simple human gesture. 

The Eucharist is an opportunity to welcome Christ into our home. Jesus is so human, yet so Divine,so familiar, yet so mysterious, so close, yet so revealing.

The Eucharist is the story of a God who wants to come close to us, so close that we can see him with our own eyes, hear him with our own ears, touch him with our own hands, so close that there is nothing between us and him.

Jesus Christ is God for us, God with us, God within us

“My heart is restless until I may rest in you, my beloved Creation.” St. Augustine. God wants to be with us if we will allow Him to do so.

God wants communion with us!

“I created you, I gave you all my love, I guided you, offered you my support, promised you the fulfillment of your hearts’ desires: where are you, where is your response, where is your love?  What else must I do to make you love me? I won’t give up, I will keep trying. One day, you will discover how I long for your love!” Nouwen

The receiving of the Eucharist has been for all time the realization that we are taking Christ into us. We are made with a heart that only God can fully satisfy. We know that people today are chasing many things and still remain unfulfilled. It is not secret as to why this is happening. They are chasing the wrong thing. We see people looking for the splendor of nature, the excitement of history, and the attractiveness of people.

Communion, becoming one with Christ, leads us to a new realm of being. It ushers us into the Kingdom. There the old distinctions between happiness and sadness, success and failure, praise and blame, health and sickness, life and death, no longer exist. In the Eucharist we no longer belong to the world that keeps dividing us, judging, separating and evaluating. Here we belong to Christ and Christ to us and of course with Christ we belong to God.

Communion creates community. A gathering of faithful seeking communion and or the Eucharist is in a position higher than most are able to conceive.

Communion though is not the end. Mission is. For to receive Christ and keep Him to yourself is not the way God intended His son to be represented or lived. We must make a sacrifice and let go of our selfishness and make known to all that Christ is the salvation of our souls.

This begins however in the home. This is the most difficult part since those in our home know when we miss the mark. We receive the Eucharist and then we miss the mark of living out our lives as Christians.  Our families are all too quick to pick this up but that is not the reason to avoid trying to live a Christian life. It can cause some to say why live the life of a Christian, why receive Holy Communion when we see your impatience, your jealousies, our resentments and our little games. The answer is we live as Christians and as Christ taught us to do because it is right and the end is our ultimate salvation. It doesn’t mean that we are perfect and that we will not fall along the way. We must as families and as a community realize that people will disappoint us but God never will.

Conclusion

We have a mission to fulfill. We are sent out to teach, to inspire, and to offer hope to the world–not as an exercise of our unique skill, but as the expression of our faith that all we have to give comes from him who brought us together.

Life lived Eucharistically is always a life of mission. Our world is troubled by so many things that people can become discouraged by all of these situations. Yet we are called to bring healing where there is pain. Maybe it is impossible to change what has happened to you, but you are still free to choose how to live it.

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