21 February 2012
On the Eucharist
The word "Eucharist" means literally "thanksgiving." A Eucharistic life is one lived in gratitude. The story, which is also our story, of the two friends walking to Emmaus has shown that gratitude is not an obvious attitude toward life. Gratitude needs to be discovered and to be lived with great inner attentiveness. Our losses, our experiences of rejection and abandonment, and our many moments of disillusionment keep pulling us into anger, bitterness, and resentment. When we simply let the "facts" speak, there will always be enough facts to convince us that life, in the end, leads to nothing and that every attempt to beat that fate is only a sign of profound naiveté.
Jesus gave us the Eucharist to enable us to choose gratitude. It is a choice we, ourselves, have to make. Nobody can make it for us. But the Eucharist prompts us to cry out to God for mercy, to listen to the words of Jesus, to invite him into our home, to enter into communion with him and proclaim good news to the world; it opens the possibility of gradually letting go of our many resentments and choosing to be grateful. The Eucharistic celebration keeps inviting us to that attitude. In our daily lives we have countless opportunities to be grateful instead of resentful. At first, we might not recognize these opportunities. Before we fully realized, we have already said: "This is too much for me. I have no choice but to be angry and to let my anger show. Life isn't fair, and I can't act as if it is," However, there is always the voice that, ever and again, suggests that we are blinded by our own understanding and pull ourselves and each other into a hole. It is the voice that calls us "foolish," the voice that asks us to have a completely new look at our lives, a look not from below, where we count our losses, but from above, where God offers us his glory.
Eucharist-thanksgiving-in the end, comes from above. It is the gift that we cannot fabricate for ourselves. It is to be received. It is freely offered and asks to be freely received. That is where the choice is! We can choose to let the stranger continue his journey and so remain a stranger. But we can also invite him into our inner lives, let him touch every part of our being and then transform our resentments into gratitude. We don't have to do this. In fact, most people don't. But as often as we make that choice, everything, even the most trivial things, become new. Our little lives become great - part of the mysterious work of God's salvation. Once that happens, nothing is accidental, casual, or futile any more. Even the most insignificant event speaks the language of faith, hope, and, above all, love.
That's the Eucharistic life, the life in which everything becomes a way of saying "Thank you" to him who joined us on the road.
Henri J. M. Nouwen, With Burning Hearts, pp. 124-126
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