Eucharist means..."thanksgiving"
Michael Dubruiel wrote a book to help people deepen their experience of the Mass. He titled it, How to Get the Most Out of the Eucharist. You can read about it here.
Michael Dubruiel wrote a book to help people deepen their experience of the Mass. He titled it, How to Get the Most Out of the Eucharist. You can read about it here.
Excerpt
W H E N Y
O U R M I N D WA N D E R S
One of the most
frequent complaints that people who genuinely want to get more out of the
Eucharist raise is that they find that their mind wanders at Mass. The cause of
their distraction may be as simple a question as “Did I turn off the car
lights?” or as weighty a concern as “I wonder how I’m going to pay the mortgage
or rent this month?” It is understandable, given the hectic pace of life, that
when we try to quiet ourselves in the presence of God we often find that our
minds are cluttered with many distracting thoughts.
H ELP FROM THE FATHERS
OF THE C HURCH
For often in the very sacrifice of praise urgent thoughts
press themselves upon us, that they should have force to carry off or pollute
what we are sacrificing in ourselves to God with weeping eyes. Whence when
Abraham at sunset was offering up the sacrifice, he was troubled by birds of
prey sweeping down on the carcasses, but he diligently drove them off,so that
they might not carry off the sacrifice being offered up (cf. Gen. 15:11). So
let us, when we offer a holocaust to God upon the altar of our hearts, keep it
from birds of
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prey that the evil spirits and bad thoughts may not seize
upon that which our mind hopes it is offering up to God to a good end.
— S T. G REGORY THE G
REAT
When Jesus
came to visit the two sisters of Lazarus, the sister named Mary sat at Jesus’s
feet and listened to him while the other sister, Martha, feverously worked in
the kitchen to entertain their houseguest. Finally Martha came to Jesus and
complained about the fact that Mary wasn’t helping her. Wandering minds,
worriers, and a host of others don’t like what Jesus told Martha: “Martha,
Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is
needful.Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from
her” (Luke 10:41–42).
I was
discussing the topic of this book with a priest and he told me that in his many
years of presiding at the Eucharist in churches around the world he thought
that the organist was the most distracted member of almost every parish,
“always fiddling with the music for the next piece, kind of a visual mind
wandering.” It is easy to be caught up in worrying about doing a good job to
the point that we forget why we are doing the job. Jesus tells the Martha in all
of us, “One thing is needful.”
When we come
to the Eucharist, are we adoring God, or worshipping something else?
