Read
The seventy returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!’ He said to them, ‘I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.’

At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’

Then turning to the disciples, Jesus said to them privately, ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.’
Luke 10:17-24

Reflect
As soon as our first daughter was old enough to ingest solid food we began allowing her to receive Communion (and her sisters as they came along).  A wafer, dipped ever so lightly into the chalice, and she was participating in the Eucharist.  She does not remember a time that she has not been able to participate in that weekly community meal at the altar.  I once heard someone make the charge that small children were too young to “fully understand” what was happening at the Eucharist and should not be permitted to receive until they could “understand it”.

I am not sure that, at forty-nine, I “fully understand” all that happens at the Eucharist!  I have been well educated and formed but it is a Holy Mystery and I am quite sure that the moment I think I “understand” it, I am limiting both the love and the capacity of the Divine.  Besides, my husband and I feel strongly that it is better for our children to be invited to the Table instead of excluding them because they don’t know all the etiquette.  At the Table is where one learns.

When our oldest was about two years old we began to notice something about the way she received a toy, or a cookie or anything handed to her.  She would place her little hands together, as she did to receive the bread at the altar rail each Sunday morning.  Everything she received during the week she received in the same way she engaged that Holy Mystery at church.  Open, trusting, grateful and willing.

As I watched this happen as a practice, it made me wonder what my week might be like if I too received everything I was handed in the same way I received the bread and the wine.  Open, trusting, grateful and willing….the goodies and the mess.  What might happen if I, like my toddler, “lived the Eucharist” the other six days of the week.  If everything I was handed… every situation, every relationship, every mundane task was a gift that God was handing to me and a reminder that I was “sent out to do the work I was given us to do, to love and serve”.

“At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spiritand said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”

My daughter, “too young to understand”, had in turn helped me to understand a call to Eucharistic living that all my well intentioned education and formal formation had not.  Simply and repeatedly, right in the palm of her little hand.

Respond
– Remember a time when you received Communion that was especially meaningful to you.  What images, smells, sensations and emotions come to your awareness as you recall this experience.

– How do you live “Eucharistically” during your daily life?

– Consider three ways you might carry the prayers, presence and practices of receiving Communion on Sunday into your everyday life.

-Susan McDonald