Core of Catholic faith: Resides in Eucharist

		Living the Scriptures  with St. Paul University  Catholic Center  Marshall Cook

The day St. Raphael's Cathedral burned, Fr. Randy Timmerman struggled to get through the noon Mass at his home church, St. Paul's Catholic Center. Choking back his tears, he described the sight of our mother church, its roof caved in, the beautiful new steeple in danger of toppling from its compromised foundation.

He tried to describe his feelings as the brave firemen battled their way into the sacristy - to save the consecrated hosts.

I have no idea how many - if any - of these firemen are Catholic, but they obviously understood the feelings of those of us who are. This was no mere bread they were saving; it was the sacred Body of our Lord.

Most Holy Body, Blood of Christ (May 29, 2005) Dt 8:2-3, 14b-16a Ps 147:12-13, 14-15, 19-20 1 Cor 10:16-17 Jn 6:51-58

Their bravery made me appreciate all the more the centrality of the Eucharist to our faith. Nothing more clearly defines us as Catholics as our belief in transubstantiation, the literal metamorphosis of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of the Christ.

Bread has always played a huge role in our faith journey.

Directed by God, Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. But it took him 40 years to do it, and the people grew hungry and impatient.

Some even said they would have preferred slavery and a full belly to freedom and gnawing hunger. So God rained down bread from heaven, and the people had only to gather it up at dawn and eat their fill.

Soon they grew tired of bread and started complaining because they wanted meat. Despite their grumbling, God kept His promise, giving to Joshua the privilege of leading his people on the final leg of the journey into the Promised Land.

We were again rejecting God's gifts and ignoring our part of the Covenant when Jesus came to dwell among us. God again offered bread. But this time the bread was Jesus Himself.

When the Jews asked Jesus to explain how a man could give them his flesh to eat, Jesus told them that they must eat of His flesh and drink of His blood in order to have life.

By not answering directly - certainly not the only time our Lord slipped a question - He left us with a great mystery and a great stumbling block between Catholics and those Christians who don't believe in transubstantiation.

So, how do we, as Catholics, explain this great mystery?

You might just as soon try to "explain" the mystery of life itself, the force that stirs throughout all of God's creation.

The great mystery of the Body and Blood of Christ, so central to our faith as a Eucharistic people, can't be explained. We must live it.

	Reflection question • How are you living out your belief in the Eucharist as the Body and Blood of Christ?

Christ didn't come to show us The Way; Christ is The Way, and The Truth, and The Life. Christ didn't explain Eucharist. He is Eucharist.

Father Randy says it this way: "Jesus the Christ didn't come to change anybody. He came to love us. And because of his love, people changed."

Marshall Cook, a member of St. Paul University Catholic Center, is a professor of liberal studies and arts in the Division of Continuing Studies at the UW-Madison.

St. Paul's Web site is www.stpaulscc.org

The call for mercy: Not just to the 'in-crowd'

		Living the Scriptures  with St. Paul University  Catholic Center  Tom Lyons

We all know someone who has fallen away from the faith, a person who may have lost touch with their relationship with God, or perhaps has been historically unchurched. To these people, and the countless others who are not in God's friendship, Christ is saying, "Follow me," in the Gospel reading this week.

For my reflection this Sunday, my first inclination was to write about the challenge that the sinner has to invite Christ into his or her life. Most of us have heard this before, and it's certainly a message worth repeating.

Christ knocks at the door of our hearts, we invite Him in, we receive healing, we grow, and repeat the process over the course of our lives. One can't overstate the importance and beauty of that very message.

10th Sunday in Ordinary Time (June 5, 2005) Hos 6:3-6 Ps 50:1, 8, 12-13,   14-15 Rom 4:18-25 Mt 9:9-13

Sharing this message, however, would be too easy. It may be a message you don't need me to explain, as a certain degree of receptivity to the faith is generally found in those who read the Catholic Herald anyway. Additionally, there's an equally important, equally beautiful message found in this week's Gospel.

That message from Christ to the Pharisees was to those who were already in the "in-crowd" of the Jewish faith. To them, Jesus says, "'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' I did not come to call the righteous but sinners."

The sinner, the one on the outside of faith looking in, doesn't need this message. No, this saying is for those who took their faith seriously and earnestly sought to change their lives. And, to them, Jesus implores a spirit of mercy and receptivity on behalf of those who would call themselves His disciples.

To quote Pope Paul VI, "[The Church] exists in order to evangelize ... in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God," (Evangelii Nuntiandi, p. 14). As members of this Church, we're not here solely for our own gain. We too must share in calling not only the righteous, but sinners.

How open are we to this call? Are we turned off by the plight of sinners? Are we like the Pharisees, looking down on those not in our own "in-crowd"?

While these feelings may be an understandable predicament of the human condition, they are nonetheless contrary to our call as Christians. God is more moved by the mercy we show the lost than the sacrifices we make alone.

Hosea speaks of this in the first reading: "It is love that I desire, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than holocausts." The acts that we do with our lives - our sacrifices, or holocausts - are important both for our own growth and the faith of our neighbor. To place ourselves on a pedestal from those around us because of them, however, is scolded in our readings this week.

	Reflection questions • How might I share the gift of faith with those who are searching for a relationship with God? • Do I model the kind of faith-filled life that will draw sinners to God?

We are here as church to reconcile sinners with God. This is a very outwardly-directed goal, geared toward the "sinners and tax collectors" of our day.

We must drop our Pharisee-esque tendencies. Let us be merciful in addition to our sacrifice, as we become "the channel of the gift of grace."

Tom Lyons is a University of Wisconsin-Madison grad (class of 2002). He just finished a year volunteering as a dorm missionary at St. Paul University Catholic Center. He and his wife, Athena, live in Mt. Horeb with their new baby daughter.

St. Paul's Web site is www.stpaulscc.org

Faith Alive!

In a Nutshell Time never is boring when life is lived with a sense of purpose. Life is rooted in a different dimension of time than one measured by clocks. Theologians have called it "paschal time." The goal of interrupting our busy-ness to pray at regular intervals is to break the hold life's surface can have and to immerse ourselves in life's depths. Catholic News Service 3211 Fourth St NE Washington DC 20017 202.541.3250 cns@catholicnews.com	Food for Thought   People speak often of time. --They want to manage time well. --A common worry is expressed: that time gets lost. People don't know where it goes. --There is talk about creating time -- making time for this or that. full story   How to have the "time" of your life! By Sister Genevieve Glen, OSB Catholic News Service If you entertain the happy illusion that people in monasteries have time to burn, I have bad news. Monastery clocks register 24 hours in the day, all full to overflowing. One nun in her 80s, upon hearing someone ask if nuns get bored with all the time on their hands, wrinkled her brow in puzzlement and said: "Bored? I don't think I know what that is." Life is never boring if it is lived with a sense of purpose. full story  Time flies! Or does it? By Father Richard Rice, SJ Catholic News Service Time has become the new millennium's currency. Most of us would rather part with our wallets or purses than with 12 hours. We seem to have so much to do! full story  The busy pope with time to pray By Father Gerald O'Collins, SJ Catholic News Service "Her life was committed totally to the poor and wrapped in prayer." That was how Pope John Paul II summed up Mother Teresa of Calcutta's life. Listening to those words during her October 2003 beatification, I thought, "The pope could be talking about himself." It is hard to imagine a busier life than the one John Paul II led during more than 26 years of his pontificate. He completed 104 pastoral visits outside Italy and 146 within Italy. As bishop of Rome he visited 317 of its 333 parishes. No other pope ever encountered as many individuals as John Paul II did. full story
	Faith in the Marketplace   This Week's Discussion Point: Did you ever feel you simply had to regain control of your time? How did you do it?     Selected Response From Readers:
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