Intimacy
There is a meal that offers us a sacred intimacy with God.
And with our neighbors.
And with those we have never even met before.
How amazing it is that during this season of Lent, we are free to feast with God any time that we wish.
We do not have to measure our participation in the meal.
We do not have to question what is being served.
We are free to accept all that the altar-table offers us.
It is a meal with Jesus.
And a meal of Jesus.
And a meal that graces us with his blessing.
We are the ones who are blessed.
The Eucharist is our time machine.
It carries us all the way back to the Last Supper.
The Meal that we all participate in when we come to the rail.
We receive Jesus’s hand reaching out to us.
We receive his teaching.
We receive the grace to participate in his Passion.
As one who belongs to him.
In this Meal, Jesus lets us know that he, in return, belongs to us.
That we can carry him in us wherever we go.
The Sacred Intimacy is there in his offering of himself to us.
As though we were worthy.
We can consume him. Make him a part of our body.
We can use his body and blood to cleanse our souls.
To fuel our spiritual life.
To make us whole after we have been broken apart by the world.
In Lent we fast.
We do our best to give up certain habits.
Or assume new disciplines.
That show our commitment to letting God know that we are serious
about our lives,
and the way we treat ourselves and others.
That we are serious about our willingness to forgive.
To confess
and to repent.
At the table of Jesus we are released from all that seriousness.
We are free to be ourselves
just the way we are.
We are free to love
the man next to us,
the woman still in the pew behind us,
the homeless person curled up in the shadow of the church.
We are free to love
God
without any holding back.
Without shame
or remorse
or anger.
We can accept the gift of reconciliation
that Jesus so generously offers us.
We can accept the love of God.