Where Love Is Still Being Given

1 Corinthians 11:23–26

Phrases that spoke to me today:
• “This is my body that is for you”
• “Do this in remembrance of me”
• “This cup is the new covenant in my blood”
• “you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes”

Applying the Word to my Life:
Every year in June, we put on a fundraiser for homeless veterans in central Iowa with food, music, and fireworks. I love that part of it. There is joy in seeing people come together on a summer night. Growing up in a Polish community in Nebraska, I was used to Saturday dances where everybody gathered, and our fundraiser still carries some of that same feel for me now. But the night is not really held together by the fun. It is held together by the fact that there are people who sacrificed for us, and some of them are still carrying the weight of that sacrifice in very concrete ways.

That is part of why we keep doing it. The point is not just to think back for an evening and then move on. It is to keep their sacrifice from becoming dead history. It is to keep our gratitude from going thin. It is to let memory become something living enough to renew a community and call something out of us in the present. We gather to enjoy the night, yes, but also to remember who paid a cost for others and to let that remembrance keep making a claim on us now.

Jesus knows us well. He knows how easily even His Passion can start to feel far away to us if we are not drawn back to it again and again. He gave us the continual gift of the Eucharist so that the Church could be built on the living foundation of His sacrifice. When He says, “Do this in remembrance of me,” He is not asking the Church for a sentimental glance backward. He is not telling us to keep a fond spiritual memory alive. He is handing on a way of returning again and again to the sacrifice that gave us life, so that it does not stay locked in the past and we do not drift away from what made us.

At our fundraiser, we remember people who sacrificed for us and we let that remembrance renew our responsibility in the present. And after what we heard yesterday, the Eucharist is even more than that. In the Eucharist, Jesus is not only the one we are remembering. He is truly present. We are not just honoring a gift from long ago. We are being renewed in the presence of the One who gave Himself for us.

That changes everything. This is not memory from a distance. This is not a sacred anniversary meal. Christ does not stay safely in history while we think about Him once more. He gathers His people around His self-gift and keeps renewing us in it. His sacrifice is not dead, and He is still present. The Church keeps returning to the altar because He is still here and His sacrifice continues in the Mass, one and the same, differing only in the manner of offering. In other words, the Cross is not left behind in history. That very same sacrifice is made present to us here in the form of the bread and the wine.

This kind of remembrance pushes back against entitlement, because it is too easy to stop receiving the Eucharist as gift and start acting as though it is simply there for us, on our terms, whenever we please. Paul will not let us do that comfortably. The words of institution keep bringing us back to the truth: this cost something. More than that, this cost Someone. And the One who gave Himself is still giving Himself.

There is identity in that too. The Eucharist does not just help me remember Jesus privately. It gathers us as a people. We are not just individuals trying to stay spiritual on our own. We are a Church being renewed together in the sacrifice that made us. We come back to the altar not only because we need grace, but because we need to be reminded who we are: people who live by a gift we did not create, cannot control, and do not deserve. That is why this remembrance feels so different from ordinary remembering. It does not just help us look back. It gathers us back into who we are, and into the place where love is still being given.

Maybe remembrance is most alive when it does not just help us think about love once more, but returns us to the place where love is still being given.

My Response for Today:
Today I will go back to Mass, prayer, or adoration with the intention of receiving again what I did not create and do not deserve.