A physical union accomplished through the Eucharist

By Pat Arensberg
For The Catholic Week
Many of us think about Mass as a religious obligation and we are missing the point.  The Eucharist is a love story.  It tells the story of a God who loves us into existence and sustains us in existence because He loves us.  God invites us to be united with Him at every Mass.  He, the God of the universe descends from His throne and takes on the appearance of bread and wine so that we can be fed by His own life and love.
God created us to be united with Him and all of the Saints for all eternity.  He made us for heaven.  In heaven we will be in complete unity with our God.  Our deepest desires will be fulfilled because of this unity.  This is good news, but God wants to give us more good news.
This unity that awaits us is also available now.  God is not content to leave us the way we are.  He knows our longing and He knows that only communion with Him will fill us; therefore, He designed a way for us to be united with Him now.  This unity is not just a spiritual union, but is in fact a physical union as well.  This is accomplished through the gift of the Eucharist.
Our lives can be filled with hardships, but it is imperative that we remember that no matter how difficult things are, this fact remains — God loved us into existence, and He feeds us His very self.  Could a God who loves us this much ever abandoned us?  It seems contradictory to who He is.
The Eucharist is an inexhaustible treasure and I cannot do it justice here, but I would like for us to ponder the richness of the Eucharist over the next few weeks.  The reason for the timing of this theme is the upcoming Eucharistic Congress July 17-21 in Indianapolis.  More details will be in my next column.  
You can visit:  https://www.eucharisticcongress.org/ and you can email me at [email protected] .To register visit:  https://www.mobarch.org/eucharistic-revival (we have discounted tickets.)
— Pat Arensberg is the Director of the Office for Evangelization and Family Life. Email him at [email protected]