Christmas and the Gift of the Eucharist

This is an excerpt from Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell's column in The Catholic Mirror for December 2012.

Emmanuel - God is with us - happens every day at every Mass. The Son of God, the son of Mary, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word made flesh, the one born in Bethlehem, the child who grew up in Nazareth, the man who proclaimed the Good News throughout Galilee and Judea, the Savior who died in Jerusalem and rose from the dead to live eternally at the right hand of the Father, Jesus Christ is with me - and you - every time we receive Communion. He is as real in the Eucharist as he was at the Nativity, body and blood, soul and divinity.

If Christmas is meaningful because Jesus came once for all in Bethlehem, how much more meaningful is it that Jesus continues to come to each one who receives Communion? We might say that Emmanuel - God is with us - happened not simply that first Christmas, but rather God yearns to be with us constantly through His ongoing gift of Himself in the Eucharist.

You've heard of the gift that keeps on giving. What more so than God's gift of Himself to us? Not simply at Christmas, but at every Mass.