Dear Parishioners and Friends of St. Mary’s of the Lake: 

Below is first part of Pope Francis’ homily on the Solemnity of the Most Body and Blood of The Lord  June 3, 2018:

The Gospel we just heard speaks of the Last Supper, but surprisingly, pays more attention to the preparations than to the dinner itself. We keep hearing the word ‘prepare’. For example, the disciples ask: ‘Where do you want us to go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?’ (Mk 14:12). Jesus sends them off with clear instructions to make the necessary preparations and they find ‘a large room… furnished and ready.’ The disciples went off to prepare, but the Lord had already made his own preparations. 

Something similar occurs after the Resurrection, when Jesus appears to the disciples for the third time. While they are fishing, he waits for them on the shore, where he has already prepared bread & fish for them. Even so, he tells the disciples to bring some of the fish that they have just caught, which he had shown them how to catch (cf. Jn 21:6.9-10). Jesus has already made preparations and he asks his disciples to cooperate. Once again, just before the Passover meal, Jesus tells the disciples: ‘I go to prepare a place for you… so that where I am, there you may be also’ (Jn 14:2.3). Jesus is the one who prepares, yet before his own Passover he also asks us urgently, with exhortations and parables, to be prepared, to remain ever ready (cf. Mt 24:44; Lk 12:40). 

Jesus, then, prepares for us and asks us to be prepared. What does Jesus prepare for us? He prepares a place and a meal. A place much more worthy than the ‘large furnished room’ of the Gospel. It is our spacious and vast home here below, the Church, where there is, and must be, room for everyone. But he has also reserved a place for us on high, in heaven, so that we can be with him and with one another for ever. In addition to a place, he prepares a meal, the Bread in which He gives Himself: ‘Take; this is my body’ (Mk 14:22). These two gifts, a place and a meal, are what we need to live. They are our ultimate ‘room and board’. Both are bestowed upon us in the Eucharist. A place and a meal. 

Jesus prepares a place for us here below, because the Eucharist is the beating heart of the Church. It gives her birth and rebirth; it gathers her together and gives her strength. But the Eucharist also prepares for us a place on high, in eternity, for it is the Bread of heaven. It comes down from heaven – it is the only matter on earth that savours of eternity. It is the bread of things to come; even now, it grants us a foretaste of a future infinitely greater than all we can hope for or imagine. It is the bread that sates our greatest expectations and feeds our finest dreams. It is, in a word, the pledge of eternal life...   (To Be Continued)