My favorite movie trope has always been the montage. It’s the primary reason I love boxing movies, even if they are objectively terrible. You can always count on three minutes of watching someone hitting the heavy bag, jumping rope, and taping their hands while inspirational 80’s music plays in the background. I’m pumped up just thinking about it.
 
Close behind the montage is when things come full circle. It’s deeply satisfying to see characters succeed in the end where once they had struggled and failed. It gives us hope as flawed human beings to see people grow and become a better person, closer to the ideal which God has in mind for each of us. I believe that one of the reasons why people enjoy seeing things come full circle and gaining closure is because it is written into our very souls as adopted sons and daughters of God. God’s plan in creation was never to simply send us out into the cold, dark void; the plan was always to call us back to himself. In Latin, this is referred to as exitus et reditus: the going forth and the coming back.
 
Similarly, this reality is mirrored in the Sacraments. God provides us with real graces through visible signs so that we can be strengthened, purified, and healed. All of these graces in turn help us to love and worship God more fully, as well as serve our brothers and sisters in drawing them closer to Him and His Love. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the Eucharist. Today’s Gospel gives us a beautiful segment of the Bread of Life discourse, when Jesus tells His followers (and those who were vaguely interested in Him) that His Flesh is true food and His Blood is true drink, and whoever partakes of them will remain in Jesus, and Jesus will remain in them. Jesus gives us Himself so that we in turn can give Jesus to others.
 
Pope St. John Paul II wrote extensively of this reality in his encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, Church of the Eucharist. In it he says that through the frequent worthy reception of the Eucharist, we become, as a Church, a “sacrament for humanity, a sign and instrument of the salvation achieved by Christ, the light of the world and the salt of the earth.” By receiving and praying before the Blessed Sacrament we are drawing our strength from Jesus (as the source) so that we can go out to the world and bring people to Jesus (the summit).
 
As I write all this, I know that many people in the region are in different places in their faith life and their relationship with Jesus. There are some who make Adoration and daily Mass part of their prayer life, and there are others who probably don’t fully understand why the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist as the Real Presence, the actual Body and Blood of Jesus Christ made present to us under sacramental signs, is so important. Regardless of where you are as an individual, or where we are as a parish region, every single one of us can afford to grow in our love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
 
As we journey through this beautiful portion of the Gospel, I pray that each one of us finds a way to draw closer to Jesus in the Eucharist. Perhaps that means sneaking out at lunch to visit a Church and say hello to Jesus. Or maybe it just means finding one’s way back to confession for the first time in a while in order to get rid of any obstacles that stand in the way of the grace that Jesus wants us to have. My prayer for all of you, now and always, is that nothing stands between us and Jesus Christ, present to us in the Eucharist as the Source and Summit of our Faith.
 
Prayers always,
Fr. McCullough