Some people seem to have the odd idea that the Christian Faith has very little to do with one’s ordinary life, and that what one does in church on Sundays is completely separate from what one does outside church on weekdays.

No one could say that of the Eucharist, for the Eucharist has everything to do with our everyday life.  We have already seen that at the Offertory the bread and wine represent our life and work, what we are and what we do.  When the bread and wine on the altar are offered to God, we also offer ourselves, what we are and what we do and all our life of the week that is to come.  Then, at the Consecration – the very centre of the Eucharist – we offer our Saviour himself, veiled beneath the form of that same Bread and Wine.  And Our Saviour in his own Person brings us to his Father and presents us with him in his own glorious, sinless Self as his People for whom he was born and whom he died to save.  And in the Communion he gives himself to us completely in the Blessed Sacrament to renew us in his own likeness.  And finally God sends us back from his Throne into the world to be his faithful soldiers and servants.

For at the Sunday Eucharist we step out of our daily life and come with Our Lord before the very Throne of God himself, into the innermost citadel of his Kingdom in Heaven.  And then, when the Eucharist is over, we go back again to serve in our own particular outpost of God’s Kingdom in this world.