From Archbishop Donoghue

Dear Friends in Christ,

As Catholics, we are so accustomed to depending on the grace we receive from the Holy Eucharist, that I think we often forget, the truth that is at the center of this most precious gift of our Lord, created during the last few hours of His life on earth.

We are a people devoted to the Body of our Lord, in belief and in practice, and this sets us apart from so many other people of Faith. We cannot get away Ð we do not wish to get away from the literal impact of our Lord's words - "This is MY body - this is MY blood." We stand, captured and amazed in the eternal echo of those words down through the ages - they reverberate in our ears, invest our minds, penetrate our hearts, and demand that we come to this holy place, that we join our sincerest desires to the power of the priest, that we fall to our knees - fall to our knees, before the presence of our God who comes among us, and with swelling hearts, consume Ð consume, in order to live, that which has been given for us - the Body and Blood of our Lord. And we know, that as we return to our homes, to our duties, to our work, we have been fortified with a grace unlike that given to any others - for such is the truth of the True Presence, that it stands apart, and stands us apart, as we travel though this world.

But on this night, we must remember that what Christ did was not done to give us a happy life - He did not tell us to eat His Body and drink His Blood so that we would not have any problems, with the world and with one another - and He did not prepare Himself for death and then suffer its darkness so that our lives might be blissful and without strife or pain. On this night, we must remember that our Lord offered this sacrifice, and signed this contract with His blood for one supreme reason - that His love for us might win back what had been lost in Eden - our worth in the eyes of Almighty God, and the gift - not the right, but the gift of eternal life. In the middle of the Psalm of this Mass, is the key to understanding the mysteries of the Last Supper, where it says:

Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones.

ÒThe death of his faithful ones.Ó St. Paul said, "For me, living is Christ, and dying is gain." And St. Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower, with her usual blunt honesty wrote in her journal: "I want to see God, and in order to see Him, I must die."

That is why our Lord offered this Sacrifice - that is why He gave us, for all time, His Body and Blood to eat and drink - that one day, we might see God, and dwell with Him for eternity. God does not grant this because of anything we do, no matter how holy, no matter how worthy. God grants us this possibility, the possibility of life in Heaven, because His Son died, and He died for us Ð and because He died for us, we try to be good, we try to be holy Ð and if we do not try, then we are not worthy of the gift. GodÕs goodness comes first Ð then ours.

And so, we must follow the course of our days, and in that passage, encounter all that life entails - joy and happiness in their portion, of course. But also, difficulty, challenge, pain, sickness, frustration, and sometimes, failure - failure to achieve what we seek, and failure to keep the commandments of God. The Eucharist sustains us through these battles, it lifts us up from our failures, with its power to turn us once again and as many times as necessary, toward our end, toward the heavenly prize.

But we are human, and we do suffer. What shall we do to bear up under the weight of what life brings upon us - how are we to deal with the difficulties, the pain and sickness, the frustration, and the grief that we must all encounter, being as we are creatures who can hurt?

The Gospel of this Holy Night teaches us what we are to do - Our Lord teaches us what we are to do Ð He teaches us to rise from the table of our joy and happiness, the table where we have received His Body and Blood, to put on the apron of service, and to wash one another's feet. There must be no barriers to our charity - there must be no restraints on the willingness of our love for one another. This is what is meant by what Christ did - that we are to get down on our knees, take up the water of kindness, and wash away, for one another, the stain of selfishness, and the dust of indifference. We must be involved with one another's pain, with one another's suffering, with one another's failure. Christ did not save us to walk alone, but to walk together. He cleanses us from sin - but we cleanse one another of the burden of unshared pain. Life is bearable, and joy attainable, only because of charity - only by walking together, with love, do we finally come to the gate opened by Christ's sacrifice, the gate of sweet death, where the Lord will come to meet us, and give us what He so bravely won, by dying on the Cross. This is the sum total of the mystery of this night - this is what St. Paul means, when he declares:

For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.

Tomorrow, our Lord died Ð and dying He made all His promises binding, for to back them, He put up the worth of His own life Ð the perfect worth of the Son of God. We cannot do what He did Ð why would we want to, since it was done all for us? But we can strive to be like Him Ð we can work to make our lives a procession of good acts, of acts conceived in love Ð and we can always remember, that our own worth, like His, will not be judged, until the moment of our own death arrives, and God measures in us, the quantity of JesusÕ love, that we have embraced through good works, and that we have imbibed, by receiving, as much as possible, as often as possible, His Body and Blood.

We die with Him Ð we rise with Him Ð and we proclaim His death, until the day of our rising shall appear, the day when we will share, in Heaven, this Supper, the Last again, but the Last for all eternity.

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