JANUARY 2020
he or she has feasted at the Lord’s Table. Eucharist nourishes, strengthens and exhorts us to go out and become what we have received. Feasting on the Lord’s Body and Blood is what makes Catholics Catholic.
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It is no wonder that our passion for this primary sacrament can overshadow or cause us to forget the critical nature of baptism and how important it is to our life of discipleship. We are baptized to give birth; the way we give birth is through baptism.
Te hope inherent in this article is to foster a renewed sense of appreciation for this threshold sacrament that leads us into the fullness of Christian life. Te great liturgist, Aidan Kavanagh, sets forth an image of the Christian “as one who has attained a degree of maturity in faith, that is manifested in a strong sense of Christian identity . . . in which belief in Jesus Christ has become a way of living together with others…Tis living together begins and ends as an act of worship of him from whom all good comes. It is a life of style suffused with vigor which the world by itself cannot give. It lies only in the gifts of God through Jesus Christ, gifts that cannot be merely received but must be corresponded with, entered into, made one’s own.”1
In short, it is a life of deeply rooted conversion and commitment to the Lord and Savior of the world and our lives.
How then, do we make it our own as Kavanagh suggests? Tose of us baptized as infants have had very little formation when it comes to this sacrament. Most of us would define baptism as the sacrament that forgives original sin and makes us a Christian. Such a definition limits the sacrament to a personal, one-time event that has little bearing on our future life. Te sacrament is so much more and has much to do with our ongoing, lifelong discipleship.
Sacraments can be defined as God’s manifestation of self to the world. Sacraments help us notice who God is and how God acts in our world and in our lives.
e are a Eucharistic people. Eucharist is the heart of our faith. A person is not fully initiated, not fully Catholic, until
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