It’s all about our relationships!

Lent is a great time to examine them
 
God loves us. This is a never-ending and everlasting truth no matter what. God is always trying to bring us closer to him and inviting us to live united to him, live in communion with him. Through him we also find the primary and best path to be closer to one another. The bottom line from God, it’s all about our relationships.
 
Friendships and loving communion born out of freedom and never forced imposed or demanded.
 
Lent is a great time to pause, and if you have been so blessed with some extra time, to even come to a full stop from our daily rushing around and examine the state of these relationships. How we deal with our relationships says something about us.
 
Beginning from the book of Genesis and all through the Bible to the book of Revelation, we find the story of God’s love and his never-ending quest to reach out to us and establish, or renew, a loving relationship with us.
 
The special moments in humanity’s ongoing relationship with God are known as divine covenants. When that relationship goes well there’s a good chance that all other relationships will go well too. The Eucharist is our celebration of Jesus’ fulfillment and realization of the new covenant.
 
The new covenant of love – realized by Jesus’ passion, death, resurrection and ascension, the Easter or Paschal Mysteries – is continually celebrated at every Eucharist because Jesus asked us to, “Do this in memory of me.”
To better understand and appreciate this new covenant, and the Lord’s loving presence in the Eucharist, a look at the previous covenants celebrated in the Old Testament can be very helpful.
 
A look at the divine covenant between God and Abraham will help us better understand what happened on Good Friday and what was advanced to us on Holy Thursday, the Last Supper and our first Eucharist.
 
The key text is found in Genesis 22: 1-19, The Testing of Abraham. I invite you to open your Bible to pray and reflect on this passage. See why we refer to Abraham as our father in the faith; see his loving obedience and his hope in God. See the father that so values and cherishes the relationship between God and humanity that, after having his son carry wood up the hill, he is willing to sacrifice him and shed his blood, to keep the loving relationship, covenant, going.
 
The ending is beautiful. God provides Abraham with a ram for the sacrifice. Many years later God will provide his own son, Jesus, who atop a hill will shed his blood, and sacrifice himself for the sake of the new and everlasting covenant. A covenant anticipated for us on Holy Thursday when, for the first time, Jesus took bread and wine and gave us his body and blood.
 
Divine covenants bring us closer to God, and through the Eucharist, our celebration of the new and final covenant, our loving relationship with God is strengthened, renewed and reaffirmed.
 
The Eucharist, the most perfect of all the divine covenants, is the summit and fount of our daily Christian existence. The Eucharist makes us who we are, members of the Body of Christ, united and in communion with God and one another through Christ’s real and life-giving presence. The Eucharist makes the Church!
 
It’s all about the relationships and it will never get any better for us, here on earth, than by our full participation in each and every Eucharist. Yes, we can find signs of the Eucharist in the Old Testament.
 
Visit Jesus in the tabernacle and thank him for this beautiful gift of the new covenant and his real presence.
“Lord Jesus, thank you for this new covenant you gave us with your very life. Thank you for your real presence here in the Eucharist. Thank you for the beautiful friendship you offer all of us and how, through you, we are one Church. Help me to fulfill my part of the covenant responsibilities and thank you for having fulfilled yours. Amen.”