Luke 22:19 "And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them saying 'This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'"

These are words I hear every time I go to Mass and yet how often do I really reflect on them? In fact, I often find the consecration is the time of Mass when I am most likely to be distracted, even after telling myself not to be! How I can let my attention be pulled away from the miracle that is happening right in front of me, I do not know, but I am grateful for the opportunity today to sit with these words and reflect on them.

Jesus took bread. He takes the works of our hands (shout out to yesterday!) that we offer to Him and does amazing things with them, things we could never do on our own. He does not do everything for us - we have to do a lot on our own. We have to plant the wheat, tend it, harvest it, grind it, make the bread, and offer it to Him. We can sometimes feel like we are being asked to do more work in this relationship than seems fair, but then look at what He is doing! He takes what we have given Him and turns our bread, made with the wheat and the talents with which He has blessed us, and which would sustain us for maybe one day, into the bread of life, bread that will sustain us eternally! He completes this miracle by dying on the Cross for us!  There are a couple lessons here for me, one is to look at the work I am asked to do through the lens of what Jesus has done for me and realize how little, really, He asks of me. Another is to stop trying to do others' work for them, which I often do in an effort to "help." I have to let people make their own bread, so they have something to offer Him, as well.

After taking the bread, Jesus gives thanks before doing anything else. I have written before about how I marvel at His ability to be in the moment! His death is looming over Him, and He knows it, yet He is completely composed in this time and place. He is about to give his apostles, and the whole world, the sacrament that will sustain us through this vale of tears, yet He stops first and thanks His Father. Jesus recognizes, even as all eyes are on Him in this pivotal moment, that the gift of bread and the gift of His body come from the Father, and it is the Father's will that allows Jesus to make the bread into His body and feed His sheep. How often do I take the ordinary food I have for granted, and fail to thank God for it? Yet here is Jesus about to institute the Eucharist and then go to His Passion, but He stops and gives all honor and thanks to the One who makes it all possible. The lesson for me here is mindfulness aimed at God - to see and praise God in every thing and every moment.

Jesus then breaks the bread before giving it to his apostles, as His body will be broken, but also as a seed is broken so that the life within it can grow. The bread and His body must be broken in order to plant and nourish the new life He wants to give all of us. The lesson for me is to see the times I feel broken as times when God's grace is flowing into places in my life that I had previously closed to Him.

Everything is a gift from God, from our everyday bread, to the grace we receive in our suffering, to the ultimate gift of the Eucharist itself. God steps into our world and feeds us daily with His body and blood! How amazing is that?! There is nothing I should pay more attention to and be more grateful for than this.