Vigils Reading

WHOEVER RECEIVES ME

A Meditation on the Gospel of John by Adrienne von Speyr5

When the Lord wanted to institute his Eucharist in the form of a meal, he had to take hunger and satiation into consideration. They are very simple concepts, taken from everyday life, to which the Lord, in his self-giving, imparts a new, infinite, spiritual sense. He wants to express his whole relationship to us in these two concepts. Hunger, then, would be everything that we have to bring to him, and satiation, everything that he gives us. In the end, everyone experiences hunger in one way or another, and one cannot say from the outset that the bad experience either more or less hunger than the good. And, likewise, everyone is sated, for his sacrifice exists not only for a few elect individuals, but for all… Even the one who betrays him… Thus, the hunger of the world and its satiation by the Lord complement each other.

Food is expected to fulfill its purpose of stilling mankind’s hunger. This applies also to the Eucharist, except that in its case no limits can be given to satiation. Nor can one say when satiety from one Communion ends and hunger for a new Communion begins, for both are simultaneous. Both… bring the receiver nearer to the Lord. From him stem both desire and its satisfaction. The kind of satiation varies… But the Eucharist, as related either to hunger or to satiation, is always an expression of a still greater love…

Whoever receives me, receives him who sent me. One can receive the Lord as Martha and Mary received him: as the human friend and master, who then gradually reveals himself as our divine Lord. One can also receive him in the sacramental form of the Eucharist, which the Lord himself has predetermined and to which we must adapt ourselves…

Whoever receives the Lord in one of these forms, receives God. It is not possible to stop at one of these forms, to be content with the Lord’s humanity without going further to God. Whether one is Martha or Mary, whether one receives the Lord in the Eucharist or in faith, one always receives something greater than one was prepared to receive or capable of receiving on one’s own. No one knows what he receives when he receives the Lord. He cannot imagine the infinitude that visits him, for it will always be God whom he receives, and God will always be the transcendent One. Our mission in life will always be greater than our life itself. This is because he whom we receive and who sends us grows beyond himself into the Father, and through his humanity introduces his divinity, and thus the Father, into us