Posted May 13, 2009
For the next few weeks, I plan on posting excerpts from Father Hampsch’s book “The Healing Power of the Eucharist.” I am in the process of reading the book now and find it well worth sharing with all of you.
Bob S.
….Consequently, the Eucharist transcends any other source of grace, and as St. Thomas Aquinas asserts, it is the ultimate focal point of all the other sacraments.
Jesus instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper, which was the first Mass. He consecrated the bread and the wine and said, “This is my body …. This is my blood,” and mandated that this ritual be continued through the ages: “Do this in remembrance of me” (see Luke 22:19-20). The key element here is that receiving Jesus puts us in contact not just with grace but with the very Author of Grace in the re-enactment of his redemptive sacrifice, referred to in Hebrew’s 2:10 (NAB): “For it was fitting that he, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the leader to their salvation perfect through suffering.”
The Healing Power of the Eucharist by Father John Hampsch, C.M.F. – Servant Books