The Mass and the Eucharist

1.  PRAYER

Short Visit to the Blessed Sacrament By Blessed John Henry Newman

I place myself in the presence of Him, in whose Incarnate Presence I am before I place myself there.

I adore You, O my Savior, present here as God and Man, in Soul and Body, in true Flesh and Blood.

I acknowledge and confess that I kneel before the Sacred Humanity, which was conceived in Mary’s womb, and lay in Mary’s bosom; which grew up to man’s estate, and by the Sea of Galilee called the Twelve, wrought miracles, and spoke words of wisdom and peace; which in due season hung on the Cross, lay in the tomb, rose from the dead, and now reigns in Heaven.

I praise and bless, and give myself wholly to Him, Who is the true Bread of my soul, and my everlasting joy.

2.  MEDITATION

https://youtu.be/-9KLB2HI9BI?si=u73t20f78S2MKNec

3.  SONG

https://youtu.be/gADDeVUH4uc?si=7KPH5xr3eZc18j07

4.  NARRATIVE

Father Richard Rohr views the Mass and the Eucharist as a bodily, participatory, and unitive mystery rather than an abstract concept or a mere ritual to be observed. 

Key Themes of Rohr's Teachings on the Mass & Eucharist

Moving from Thought to Embodiment: Rohr emphasizes that Jesus did not tell us to simply think about or stare at the Eucharist, but to "Eat this!" The sacrament moves faith from the rational or intellectual level down to the physical, cellular, and unitive level. 
"I Really Am What I Eat": Through consuming the Eucharist, believers realize they are absorbing the Body of Christ and, in turn, recognizing that same divine presence and dignity within themselves and all other people. 
The Cosmic Christ: In works like The Universal Christ, Rohr broadens the meaning of "This is my body" to encompass the entire physical, material universe infused with the divine. The Incarnation means God entered physical reality and chose to become food. 
The Posture of Surrender: Rohr teaches that the prerequisite for receiving the Eucharist is simply hunger and a need for grace, rather than ego, perfection, or human worthiness. 
Local Parish Homilies: For years, Rohr delivered short, conversational homilies during Mass at Holy Family Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which are preserved through the Center for Action and Contemplation podcast network. 
3 min read
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Jun 26, 2015

The following is an adapted extract taken from a talk given by Richard Rohr in 2000.




I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from Heaven so that one may eat it and not die.
(John 6:58)

I am the living bread that came down from Heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.
(John 6:51)

The mystery of Eucharist clarifies and delineates Christianity from the other religions of the world. We have many things in common, but Christianity is the only religion that says that God became a human body; God became flesh, as John’s Gospel puts it, (1:14). Our fancy theological word for that is the Incarnation, the enfleshment. It seems that it is much easier for God to convince bread of what it is than for God to convince us. Incarnation is scandalous, shocking — cannibalistic, intimate, sexual!

He did not say, “Think about this,” “Fight about this,” “Stare at this;” but He said “Eat this!”

A dynamic, interactive event that makes one out of two.

If we did not have the Eucharist, we would have to create it; sometimes it seems that outsiders can appreciate it more than Christians.

As Gandhi said, “There are so many hungry people in the world that God could only come into the world in the form of food.”

It is marvellous, that God would enter our lives not just in the form of sermons or Bibles, but in food.

God comes to feed us more than just teach us. Lovers understand that.”

When we start making the Eucharistic meal something to define membership instead of to proclaim grace and gift, we always get in trouble; that’s been the temptation of every denomination that has the Eucharist.

Too often we use Eucharist to separate who’s in from who’s out, who’s worthy from who’s unworthy, instead of to declare that all of us are radically unworthy, and that worthiness is not even the issue. If worthiness is the issue, who can stand before God?

Are those who receive actually saying they are “worthy”? I hope not. It is an ego statement to begin with.

The issue is not worthiness; the issue is trust and surrender or, as Thérèse of Lisieux said, “It all comes down to confidence and gratitude.”

I think that explains the joyous character with which we so often celebrate the Eucharist. We are pulled into immense gratitude and joy for such constant and unearned grace.

It doesn’t get any better than this! All we can do at Eucharist is kneel in gratitude and then stand in confidence. (Actually, St. Augustine said that the proper Christian posture for prayer was standing, because we no longer had to grovel before such a God or fear any God that is like Jesus.)













Christ is the bread, awaiting hunger.
(Saint Augustine)

Eucharist is presence encountering presence — mutuality, vulnerability. There is nothing to prove, to protect, or to sell. It feels so empty, naked, and harmless, that all you can do is be present.

The Eucharist is telling us that God is the food and all we have to do is provide the hunger.

Somehow we have to make sure that each day we are hungry, that there’s room inside of us for another presence.

If you are filled with your own opinions, ideas, righteousness, superiority, or sufficiency, you are a world unto yourself and there is no room for “another.

Despite all our attempts to define who is worthy and who is not worthy to receive communion, our only ticket or prerequisite for coming to Eucharist is hunger. And most often sinners are much more hungry than the “saints.”




5.  MEDITATION

https://youtu.be/dWYTLEY5Lzo?si=XwS2BBU4aP3sheW3











6. SHARING




7.  PRAYER AND INTENTIONS

Before the Blessed Sacrament Prayer from the Fátima Children

O most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I adore You profoundly. I offer You the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifferences by which He is offended. By the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg the conversion of sinners.



8.  SONG
https://youtu.be/crgIRDh6IaA?si=H9Ihu6XSLgyS5B18

Mary

1.  PRAYER

“Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.”

2.  MEDITATION

https://youtu.be/uu5IGkadBYE?si=5DQC8SERF4jXqsGu

3.  SONG

 https://youtu.be/UvRcGnMX3jU?si=KzOdZsMlsyhpVNtS

4.  NARRATIVE

Franciscan priest Richard Rohr views Mary as the ultimate model of human receptivity and a symbol for humanity's cooperative "yes" to the divine. [1, 2, 3]

Key Aspects of Richard Rohr's View on Mary

The Corporate Personality: Rohr describes Mary as a stand-in or exemplar for all of humanity rather than an untouchable figure. Her free, trusting "yes" at the Annunciation mirrors the choice offered to every person. [1, 2]
The First Incarnation: Rohr connects Mary to creation and "Mother Earth," framing her as a symbol of the First Incarnation. In this view, she represents the physical matrix where matter and spirit first unite before the birth of Jesus (the Second Incarnation). [1, 2]
A Model of Reciprocity: Rohr emphasizes that God chooses not to enter the world uninvited. Mary represents the first fully conscious human willingness to receive and host the divine presence, making her an icon of grace available to all. [1, 2, 3]
Moving Past Dogmatic Distance: By reframing traditional concepts like the Immaculate Conception, Rohr shifts Mary from an unattainable standard of sinlessness to an approachable symbol of ordinary human life permeated by grace. [1, 2]

Mary, a Feminine Face of God

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Father Richard recognizes in Mary a feminine symbol or archetype for the divine presence in creation:  

Although Jesus was a man, the Christ is beyond gender, so it should be expected that Christian Tradition would have found feminine ways, consciously or unconsciously, to symbolize the full divine incarnation and to give God a more feminine character—as the Bible itself often does.  

Why did Christianity, in both the East and West, fall head over heels in love with this seemingly ordinary woman Mary, who is a minor figure in the New Testament? We gave her names like Theotokos, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, Notre Dame, the Virgin of this or that, Nuestra Señora, Our Mother of Sorrows, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, and Our Lady of just about every village or shrine in Europe. We are clearly dealing not just with a single woman here but a foundational symbol—or, to borrow the language of Carl Jung, an “archetype”—an image that constellates a whole host of meanings that cannot be communicated logically but is grounded in our collective unconscious.  

In the mythic imagination, I think Mary intuitively symbolizes the first incarnation—or Mother Earth, if you will allow me. (I am not saying that Mary is the first incarnation, only that she became the natural archetype and symbol for it, particularly in art.) I believe that Mary is the major feminine archetype for the Christ mystery. This archetype had already shown herself as Sophia or Holy Wisdom (see Proverbs 8:1–3; Wisdom 7:7–14), and again in the Book of Revelation (12:1–17) in the cosmic symbol of “a woman clothed with the sun and standing on the moon.” Neither Sophia nor the woman of Revelation is precisely Mary of Nazareth, yet in so many ways, both are—and each broadens our understanding of the divine feminine.  

Jung believed that humans produce in art the inner images the soul needs in order to see itself and to allow its own transformation. Try to count how many paintings in art museums, churches, and homes show a wonderfully dressed woman offering for your admiration—and hers—an often-naked baby boy. What is the very ubiquity of this image saying on the soul level? I think it looks something like this:  

The first incarnation (creation) is symbolized by Sophia-Incarnate, a beautiful, feminine, multicolored, graceful Mary.  

She is invariably offering us Jesus, God incarnated into vulnerability and nakedness.  

Mary became the symbol of the first universal incarnation.  

She then hands the second incarnation on to us, while remaining in the background; the focus is always on the child.  

Earth Mother presenting Spiritual Son, the two first stages of the incarnation.  

Feminine Receptivity, handing on the fruit of her yes.  

And inviting us to offer our own yes.  

Reference:  
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope for, and Believe (Convergent, 2019, 2021), 122–124.  

5.  MEDITATION

https://youtu.be/tN2dpw0kGas?si=toZC5mIeMe-a6yhE

6.  SHARING

https://youtu.be/_z-1fTlSDF0?si=NHpkLNjtefu0chHY

7.  PRAYER

The Memorare

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary,
that never was it known 
that anyone who fled to thy protection, 
implored thy help, 
or sought thy intercession, 
was left unaided. 
Inspired by this confidence 
I fly unto thee, 
O Virgin of virgins, my Mother. 
To thee do I come, 
before thee I stand, 
sinful and sorrowful. 
O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
despise not my petitions, 
but in thy mercy hear and answer me. 
Amen.

8.  SONG

https://youtu.be/i-oTl8sBcjs?si=VUDtOY4IdsS3WTfA