At Christ­mas time we are mind­ful of our Lord, Mas­ter and Son of our Cre­ator. Once more the sea­son of love, faith, for­give­ness and ex­change re­in­forces the need for to­geth­er­ness, for all peo­ples. We are re­mind­ed not on­ly of our sense of pur­pose, rev­er­ence and truth but of our im­puni­ty. Man has three pri­or­i­ties in life: to pu­ri­fy his soul, to rec­on­cile with his mas­ter and to share in his do­main for­ev­er. It is in­deed a pil­grim­age jour­ney to "heav­en­ly home­land." Ac­cord­ing to Pope John Paul II, the cer­e­mo­ni­al cel­e­bra­tion of the Eu­charist sac­ri­fice is the on­ly crown­ing es­sen­tial act that could se­cure a place of spir­i­tu­al ful­fil­ment in im­mor­tal­i­ty.

Hu­man com­mu­ni­ty is for­ti­fied by de­vot­ed and con­stant ac­cep­tance of the Eu­charist as the mys­te­ri­ous but sym­bol­ic el­e­ment of sal­va­tion for all peo­ple. The pope spoke of this supreme gift of Christ, who, through his pas­sion, death and long ded­i­ca­tion in his work for all mankind, be­comes the "cen­tral event" of sal­va­tion. He refers to this Eu­charist sac­ri­fice as a mys­tery of mer­cy. Christ of­fered his body and blood, in the form of wine and bread. This bears in­ti­mate co­he­sive af­fil­i­a­tion to the cross. By his teach­ing and by his love and sac­ri­fice to all mankind, Christ has ful­filled an obe­di­ent act through his fa­ther. And be­ing in­volved in Eu­cha-ris­tic sac­ri­fice, the Chris­t­ian faith­ful makes an of­fer­ing of the Son of God to­geth­er with their par­tic­i­pa­tion si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Such an act of faith is gov­erned by the com­plete ac­cep­tance of its im­por­tance and mean­ing, and we can­not ques­tion its au­then­tic­i­ty, fac­tu­al rel­e­vance in terms of one's own un­der­stand­ing. Sim­ply be­cause through our Lord's words, he had said that the bread and wine were his body and blood and the tran­sub­stan­ti­a­tion of these phys­i­cal ob­jects re­futes all hu­man rea­son­ing. Catholic faith there­fore must up­hold the firm be­lief that af­ter con­se­cra­tion, the bread and wine be­come Christ-"the sacra­men­tal species of these ob­jects."Ac­cord­ing to Pope John Paul II, he refers to Saint Igna-tius of An­ti­och, who de­fined the Eu­charis­tic bread as a med­i­cine of im­mor­tal­i­ty and an an­ti­dote to death.

Willi Chen

San Fer­nan­do