ROCKFORD—Bishop David Malloy celebrated the Mass of the Lord’s Supper at the Cathedral of St. Peter with Jesus’ great gift of the Eucharist in mind.

 

“We have the privilege, and it is a privilege, of being here,” he said in his homily. 

 

“We think about and remember that Last Supper, and what a world-changing and eternity-changing event that was as Christ for the last time before His suffering and death, meets, and talks to, and instructs, and entrusts what we are doing here to the apostles.”

 

He called the Eucharist a “living connection to the faith,” and added that “we should be full to overflowing tonight because of the faith that the Church should have in the Eucharist, celebrating its origin, celebrating once again the specialness of this night, going back to Holy Thursday.”

 

He encouraged those present “to offer back to God our faith in accepting that great gift of the Eucharist, of offering thanks ... of offering adoration to God for ourselves and for the whole world.”

 

The whole world includes, he said, people who are suffering from persecution, lack of health, lack of access to Mass, lack of priests, or who cannot come because of age or complications of life. 

 

“We offer thanks and adoration back to God not only for ourselves but for them,” Bishop Malloy said, mentioning also those missing because of indifference and “those not here because of sin (that) somehow has changed their lives.” 

 

Our adoration can be offered, he said, “for the hope of their salvation, for the hope of their being united to everything that is a part of the Eucharist.”

 

The bishop also called the congregation to “blow those embers into flame again in our own hearts, because it is so easy to take this for granted ... so easy to fall into the trap that Pope Emeritus Benedict wrote about last week, that the Eucharist becomes simply a gesture ... of friendship, of hospitality. 

 

But, he continued, “It is everything that we’ve heard about at the Last Supper, in Christ giving His body and His blood to the world as it will be given tomorrow (Good Friday) on the cross. Somehow those two are made one and united.”

 

Referring to the evening’s first reading about Passover, and animal sacrifices, he said the centuries of the blood of lambs offered was, “to say we are sorry, to say ‘God, we want to do better.’ But that’s all that it could say.”

 

But with the Eucharist, “it’s no longer the blood that will say I am sorry. It is the blood that will say, ‘You are free.’”

 

After his homily, Bishop Malloy washed the feet of a dozen young people. The Mass  ended with a procession with the Blessed Sacrament to an altar created in the Cathedral’s Fellowship Hall for a time of prayer and adoration.