Wednesday in the Third Week of Lent
Distance and closeness appear to be opposites, yet God is both. God is absolute distant from us – as far as the heavens are above the earth so far are my ways from your ways. There is a flaming sword maintaining the distance.
And yet, in today’s reading from Deuteronomy we hear, “what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God, is to us?” Jesus came to fulfill this law of closeness. Not only is God close to those who call on him but in Jesus we form a oneness with God. Jesus prayed asking the Father that the love with which you loved me may be in them as I in them – I in them and you in me that they may be completely one.
Every day at the Eucharist the law of closeness experienced in Israel is completed and fulfilled. The image of this union is expressed in the prayer as a drop of water is put into the chalice of wine: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity”. Once the drop of water is in the wine it becomes wine. It cannot be separated ever. At the consecration the wine becomes the blood of Christ which we receive at communion. His blood and our blood cannot be separated.
The transformation of the Eucharist is the transformation we are undergoing each day of our lives until, as Jesus promised, he comes to take us to himself.