Thursday of the Twenty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

The Responsorial (Psalm 150) is a response to what we experience in Communion: “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!”  

Colossians 3:12-17 describes, as well as anything, the thoughts, feelings, and desires we experience if we just “rest in the Lord” after receiving Communion.  

“You are God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved…” Feel that. Doesn’t it follow that we want to “clothe ourselves” in “kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience”?  

Aren’t we, at this moment, moved to “Bear with one another and… forgive as the Lord has forgiven you”?  

“Christ’s peace must reign in your hearts.” Haven’t we just expressed our desire for that in the Sign of Peace? And our faith that Jesus will, at his coming, overcome all that divides us, no matter how impossible that seems, and bring us all into harmony in the “peace and unity” of his kingdom? We are experiencing it in preview already, having all shared, “as members of the one body,” in the “one Bread” that is present within us all.   

Isn’t this the literal realization of Jesus’ prayer:  

I ask… that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us…. I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one (John 17:20-23).  

Is this not enough to make us “dedicate ourselves to thankfulness”? And with “gratitude in our hearts” express it at Mass by “singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God”?   

Doesn’t what we experience in Communion inspire us to “let the word of Christ, in all its richness, dwell in us”? We have just received the “bread of life” in two ways: from the “one table of the word of God and the Body of Christ.” As we adore the gift of Christ within us, we are conscious that “the Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the Body of the Lord.” Communion makes us hunger for his word, and his word makes us hunger for Communion (Vatican II on Revelation—Dei Verbum—no. 21). 

“Over all these virtues, put on love, which binds the rest together and makes them perfect.” Eucharist is “the sacrament of Love.” Because we have “become Christ,” it follows that “whatever we do, whether in speech or in action,” we will let him express his love through us, “doing everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.”  

In Luke 6:27-38, Jesus spells out love:  

Do good to those who hate you.  

• Give to everyone who begs from you. 

• If anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.  

• Do to others as you would have them do to you.  

• Love your enemies.  

• Lend, expecting nothing in return.  

• Be merciful as your Father is merciful.  

• Do not judge.  

• Do not condemn.  

• Forgive.  

• Give….  

Radical. But is it more far-fetched than receiving God himself in Communion?  

Action: Absorb the mystery of Communion. Live the mystery of Communion

— Fr. David M. Knight

View today’s Mass readings, Lectionary #440, on the USCCB website here

Fr. David M. Knight (1931-2021) was a priest of the Diocese of Memphis in Tennessee, a prolific writer, and a highly sought after confessor, spiritual director, and retreat master. He authored more than 40 books and hundreds of articles that focus primarily on lay spirituality and life-long spiritual growth.