The Eucharist and You: What’s at the center of your life?

“The Eucharist & You” is another ODB films production. The main character, Jimmy, is the typical “All American Kid”, and, in fact, proposes the typical “ideal life”.  Most conceptions of the ideal “American” life don’t tend to include the Eucharist, much less place it in the center as the “source and summit” – a situation that certainly needs to be remedied.

The video is rather light with a tone of a 50’s humor; still, the message it transmits is very serious. Is Christ in the Eucharist the center of your life? Is the Eucharist the center of our families, of our friendships, of our daily tasks? If not, then it’s time to take a moment and ask ourselves why.

If not, then it’s time to take a moment and ask ourselves why.

The phrase “center of our life” cannot remain simply a theoretical or utopian type of expression. Conversion to Christ requires, necessarily and urgently, a “turning back” to what is central in the lives of each and every one of us, as well as history as a whole: the event of the Incarnation. With this, the point isn’t so much that we need to “put Christ in the Center” but rather that we must “discover” him already there.

We must learn to discover that without him, our lives are unbalanced, unfocused, lacking in direction, lacking in purpose. Christ is truly with us – only in him can we find the answers that we are looking for. Have we opened our eyes and ears to see and hear him? Is he truly the source of our life? Or, merely another item on our list of activities?

This is a challenge to be undertaken both at a personal level as well as a social level. How many Catholics are rather clueless when it comes to a deeper understanding of the Eucharist? How many of our separated brothers hold false or biased conceptions of it? How many of our friends are blind or biased against such a core belief to our faith? What are we doing to change that?