This prayer reminds us that we are creatures of two worlds, held in harmony. The prayer begins with this world – our creation, continued existence and all the blessings of this life.  It ends with the next – with the hope of glory.

And in between the two there is, as it were, the bridge, by which we are brought from the one to the other, namely, “God’s immeasurable love in the redemption of the world by Our Lord Jesus Christ”, and “the means of grace”, that is, the Sacraments of the Church.

When one recognises the fact that one is a creature of two worlds, the one natural, the other supernatural, the world of human beings and the world of God, then one leads one’s life on both these levels.  The day by day action on the stage of this earthly life is lived out against the background of God, which is the background of the Universe.

It’s no accident, therefore, that the combination and interaction of the natural and the supernatural, the time-bound or time-limited and the timeless, the immediate and the eternal, lies at the very heart of the Eucharist, that unique and central act of thanksgiving which Our Lord himself has given us.  Indeed the word ‘Eucharist’ means ‘thanksgiving’.

In Bethlehem, Jesus became a human being, coming down to our level in order to lift us up to his.  So in the Eucharist he comes into our midst and brings us and presents us with himself to the Father in Heaven.

And as in Bethlehem he became partaker of our humanity in order that we might actually become partakers in his divinity, so in Communion, hidden under the outward forms of bread and wine, he gives to us his very self – God made man, in his now Risen and Glorified Body and Blood.

Thus as we take our part in the Eucharist and, in thanksgiving for our redemption, offer our Redeemer himself as the one eternal Sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, so then are we caught up in him and transformed from the imprisoning confines of this natural world to that supernatural world of God, the centre of all life and all reality.