Acts 8:26-40; John 6:44-51
Usually when I reflect on a simple analogy to comprehend the place and importance of the Eucharist in Christian life, especially when the Church says, “The Eucharist is the font and summit of Christian life,” I imagine the scene of driving a car. My analogy is that the human person is like a car and the Eucharist is the gasoline. Our soul – our heart – is the engine. Christ has declared that the heart is the seat of everything, that is, the engine that drives every human thought and action.
Notwithstanding the fact that with the progress of science and technology we have electric cars, and considering the same reasoning as being true even there, we drive our cars in so far as we have gasoline or power in our tank or battery. The farther we go – the longer the distance – the more gasoline we burn and the less gasoline we keep in our tanks. And without gasoline or energy in our tank the car cannot move. If we try, then we damage the engine. This is how I see the Eucharist in our life and the grace we receive there from. As font and summit of our life the Eucharist is our spiritual gasoline that keeps our souls – our spiritual engines – at work and enables us to move forward as we strive to bear witness as disciples.
Looked at from that perspective, we can but discover the importance of the Eucharist in our lives all the more. For us to live and move we need the bread of the angels, the bread that came from heaven. Just as bread is a staple of any diet and we need it to develop and sustain strength, the same is true of the Eucharist. Jesus gives us His own self as food to sustain, strengthen and deepen our faith. As we receive Him spiritually during these trying times of confinement and lockdown, let us continue to pray that He, the bread from Heaven, may always sustain us and satisfy our desire to have Him always with us.
Fr. Emery