For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.

Imagine if we were to walk into our very last class, just before graduation, and the professor says: ‘Forget everything you have ever learned, forget everything you know, and be filled with grace.’

Today, and every Sunday (and in reality every day), we are asked to do that, to surrender our intellectualism, our self-assured knowledge, and enter into the mystery of faith. We are asked to turn ourselves over to the Holy Spirit and to allow ourselves to be filled with the grace God offers us so that we can do much good in His name.

Our friends and close compatriots in the Orthodox Church have beautiful liturgies that call to mind both the majesty and mystery of God presence among us. Their tradition, unlike western tradition, does not rely on over thinking the mystery of God, with attempts to analyze and explain every nuance of God’s presence in our lives, but rather to worship and live trusting in the gift of faith handed down through God’s Word and Church Tradition.

We are in the midst of the Octave of Corpus Christi, eight days set aside to reflect on the mystery of the Body and Blood of Jesus in our lives, this wondrous gift that provides the grace through which we become more and more into the image of Christ.

As we have studied over the past few months, the Holy Mass is the occasion in which we encounter the full reality of Jesus among us. That reality is fully present in the Eucharistic action of the priest and the Christian people. In the Eucharistic action of ‘remembrance’ we live fully present at the Last Supper, at the foot of the Cross, the resurrection and ascension, and finally in Christ’s coming again. We are there with Him, present to Him, He is with us, and we are filled with His grace and tremendous love.

Our reception of the Eucharist in Holy Communion continues the mystery of Jesus in our life as Christians. In Communion we are joined as one. I could be receiving Communion on the moon, you here in Schenectady, each receiving the fullness of Jesus, each joined together as one body in Him. We are not separate and apart, alone in our communion, but together as one.

In these special eight days, and every day, let us forget what we think we know and actively be filled with grace, the glorious mystery of what we become in His Body and Blood.