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Vigils Reading – St Teresa Benedict
August 9
THE EUCHARIST
AS A MEANS OF SALVATION
From an essay by St Edith Stein1
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Christ’s suffering and death are continued in His mystical Body and in
each of His members. Everyone must suffer and die. But if that person is a
living member of the Body of Christ, their suffering and death will receive
redemptive power from the divinity of the Head. This is the objective reason
why all the saints have desired to suffer. This is not a pathological pleasure in
suffering. It is true, to natural reason it appears as a perversion. But in the light
of the mystery of salvation it shows itself to be highly reasonable. And thus, the
one who is united to Christ will remain unmoved even in the dark night of
feeling estranged from, and abandoned by God. Perhaps divine providence is
using his agony to deliver another, who is truly a prisoner cut off from God.
Therefore, we will say: “Thy will be done” even, and particularly so, in the
darkest night… For God has come to redeem us, to unite us to Himself and to
each other, to conform our will to His. He knows our nature. He reckons with
it, and has therefore given us every help necessary to reach our goal…
The Savior, knowing that we are and remainA men who have daily to
struggle with our weaknesses, aids our humanity in a manner truly divine. Just
as our earthly body needs its daily bread, so the divine life in us must be
constantly fed. “This is the living bread that came down from heaven”. If we
make it truly our daily bread, the mystery of Christmas, the Incarnation of the
Word, will daily be re-enacted in us. And this, it seems, is the surest way to
remain in constant union with God, and to grow every day more securely and
more deeply into the mystical Body of Christ…13
Is it really demanding too much to make room in our life for the
Eucharistic Savior, so that He may transform our life into His own? We have
time for so many useless things: we read senseless rubbish in books, periodicals
and newspapers… All these are distractions by which one wastes time and
strength…
Thus, being a child of God means to become small and at the same time
to become great. Living eucharistically means quite naturally to leave the
narrowness of one’s own life and to grow into the breadth of the Christ life…
Who could assist at the Holy Sacrifice with a receptive mind and heart and not
be filled with the sacrificial spirit, burning with the desire that his own small
personal life should be merged into the great work of the Savior?