Experience the Transforming Power of Each Mass
I have had the great privilege of offering Mass several times in the many convents of the Missionaries of Charity sisters. So, I am used to seeing these words in a prominent place in the sacristy where priests prepare for Holy Mass: “Priest of Jesus Christ, celebrate this Holy Mass as if it were your first Mass, your last Mass, your only Mass.”
There is a double invitation in these words to all the faithful, particularly to the priest, if we are going to experience the powerful transforming power of each Mass. Firstly, we must prepare ourselves well for the Mass. It is not enough to just show up for the Mass without due preparation. Secondly, we must allow the Eucharistic sacrifice to transform us from the inside out. If the Mass will transform us, we cannot hold on to our selfish and self-centered ways of thinking and acting after as at before the Mass.
Let us now reflect on how we respond to this double invitation so that we experience the power of the Mass in our daily lives.
We prepare for the Mass first by deep personal prayer whereby we listen to Christ and then speak to Him from our hearts. We must pray in a way that allows the indwelling Christ to engage and transform our memory, intellect, imagination and will. Such prayer demands that we do not filter His words to us and we do not try to hide anything from Him.
Such a prayer will surely deepen our faith and hunger for our Eucharistic Lord. Jesus’ lengthy but enlightening conversation with the crowd at Capernaum brought them to desire the mysterious bread that He was offering to them, “Sir, give us this bread always.”(Jn 6:33) How can the Eucharist transform us when we receive Jesus as a complete stranger and with little or no desire for deeper communion with Him? Through sincere prayer, we allow Jesus to set our hearts on fire with love for the Eucharist as He did to the two disciples in Emmaus, “Where not our hearts burning within us while He spoke to us on the way?”(Lk 24:32)
