Catholicism is unlike every other Christian religion, for one very important reason, at the heart of our Catholic life is the Eucharist: not a symbol, not merely a memory, but a real, intimate union with Jesus Christ. In Communion we take into our body, His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. We enter a living encounter, Christ abiding in us as we abide in Him. This is not abstract theology; it is a tangible, transforming reality that feeds the soul and shapes our connection to the one true, living God.
If you are Catholic, you are charged in this core belief. Why then, do so many of our brothers and sisters, only go to Mass for Christmas and Easter?
Baptism, as with many Christian faiths, brings us into Christ’s Church, but the Eucharist makes us grow in that life. Drawing on the wisdom of Jesus, the Apostles, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, we understand that receiving the Eucharist is a participation in the divine life itself. Jesus said clearly, “If you do not eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you will have no life in you.” It is the mystery of mutual indwelling: He who eats me will live because of Me. This is not poetic language but the promise of real transformation, our humanity drawn into the life of the Father, through the Son, and in the Spirit.
Like our protestant brothers and sisters, we too understand that scripture is vital, its proclamation forms and nourishes us, but by Jesus’ own example, scripture alone is not the whole of Christian life. Catholicism holds both Word and Sacrament: the Word is proclaimed, and then Christ is consumed. In the breaking of the bread on the road to Emmaus, eyes were opened, every Mass repeats that revelation. The Eucharist completes baptismal insertion and makes us companions at the table of the Lord, sharing bread that unites us with Him and with one another.
Too many of our brothers and sisters treat the Eucharist like a seasonal ornament, attending only at High Holy Masses and they assume that the cultural peaks suffice. That minimalism starves the soul. Sunday Mass, while an obligation, is the heart of uniting our life with our Savior and the ordinary means by which grace is poured into us for our daily spreading of the Good News. Neglect of the Eucharist weakens our soul’s capacity to love as Jesus loved, to suffer as Jesus did, and to serve as a living example of Christ. Without the Eucharist we are “out of Communion” with our Lord and Savior.
After this year’s Christmas Mass, bring your family to the manger, it points us to a deeper truth: God-with-us, now in us. The Eucharist is the conjugal love of Christ, the sacrament par excellence of encounter. It calls us to be faith-full, every day and every week, not as legalism but as a path to glory. Let us kneel, receive, and live united. Let our lives be shaped by the taste, touch, and sight of Christ given for us. As the ancient teachers remind us, observed knowledge of God completes speculation; eating His flesh is the way to eternal life.
Brothers and sisters, as we enter the New Year, commit to reclaiming this genius on a weekly basis. Let the Eucharist forge an intimate bond with Christ that joins us amid life’s trials. Move from seasonal sentiment to steady devotion. Allow weekly Communion to be the engine of your spiritual life, transforming, sustaining, and sending you forth to love the world as He loved it.
If this is my last post, I want all to know, there was only one purpose for all that I have written; to have made a positive difference in the lives of others.
Anthony “Tony” Boquet, Certified Professional Business Coach, Solutionary, and the author of “The Bloodline of Wisdom, The Awakening of a Modern Solutionary” and “The Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, A Devotional Timeline”
