SW News: The Catholic bishops of Scotland are encouraging all the faithful to center their lives around the celebration of the Eucharist. This exhortation was given in the pastoral letter by the Bishops Conference of Scotland to be read or distributed on June 18-19, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi).

The prelates began the letter with a quote by St Paul from the First Epistle to the Corinthians that says: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a communion with the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion in the body of Christ? As there is one bread, so we, though many, are one body for we all share in the one bread.” They explain that the apostle was talking about the Eucharist, which is the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and how it symbolizes unity and also brings about unity.

In the wake of the pandemic which separated everybody from the celebration of the Mass, the bishops expressed a need for everyone “to come together again and recover our ‘communion in the body of Christ.’”

On the feast of Corpus Christi, the Scottish bishops said they “want to proclaim the truth, goodness and beauty of the Eucharist.”

In the letter, the prelates re-iterated the advice shared by Pope St John Paul II at the memorable liturgy in Bellahouston Park on June 1, 1982, which says: “Be faithful to your daily prayers, to the Holy Mass and the Sacrament of Penance, meeting regularly with Jesus as a loving and merciful Savior.”

They also explained why “the Eucharist is a mystery to be believed, to be celebrated and to be lived.”

The Eucharist was instituted at the Lord’s Last Supper and given by him to his disciples to celebrate in his memory. “The Eucharist is the summit and source, the heart and center of our Christian Life,” said the bishops. They also made use of the analogy of the oxygenation of the blood by the heart to explain how “Eucharistic worship draws our own lives into God’s heart and fills them with the Holy Spirit.”

The bishops said, “In the Rite of Communion, we pray for forgiveness and peace and find ourselves at the Table of the Lord, called to his Supper. The risen Lord himself, the true Passover Lamb, comes to feed us with himself. Even if we cannot receive him sacramentally, we are never deprived of his blessing. Finally, in the blessing and dismissal, we are sent out to live what we have shared.”

The prelates said that there was no corner of our humanity and our Christian life which the Eucharist could not enter, purify and raise to a new level. They said, “Thanks to the joy of the Eucharist, the “medicine of immortality,” even death loses its power, as we experience at a Funeral Mass.”

The bishops concluded by revealing their “desire that Christ’s great Eucharistic gift be continually acknowledged in faith, celebrated in prayer and lived out in love.” The prelates prayed that the Eucharist may amaze us more and more, “as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”