Posts tagged receive

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Receive what I am.

“Occasionally when Saint Augustine handed the Eucharist to a communicant, instead of saying, “the body of Christ,” he would say:

“Receive what you are.”


Augustine had perceived, for whatever reasons, that the words of consecration, “this is my body, this is my blood” are intended more to change the people present than to change the bread and wine.

For him it was more important that the people became the real presence of God, that they became food and drink for the world, than the bread and wine did.

That is, in fact, the real task of the Eucharist: to change people, to create out of us the real presence.”  Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten Among the Lilies






…what “I am.”

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to receive what I am.