These Hearts of Ours as Food for the World

Today, Holy Thursday, we commemorate the Last Supper when Jesus instituted the Eucharist. The following quote from St. Maria of Paris expands on the prayer of oblation that we hear at the Divine Liturgy, "Thine own of thine own we offer unto Thee on behalf of all and for all."   

​"If...this sacrificial and self-giving love stands at the center of the Church's life, what then are its boundaries, its limits? In this sense one can speak of the whole of Christianity as of an eternal offering of a Divine Liturgy beyond church walls.... It means that we must offer the bloodless sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-offering love not only in a specific place, on the one altar of only one temple but that the whole world, in this sense, becomes the one altar of the one Temple--and that we must offer our hearts under the species of bread and wine, so that they may be transformed into Christ's love, that he may abide in them, that they may become hearts of Godmanhood, and that he would give these hearts of ours as food for the world, that he would commune the whole world with these sacrificed hearts of ours, in order that we would be one with him, that we not live but Christ would live in us, incarnate in our flesh."

Let us go forth in peace in the name of the Lord as we offer ourselves unto Him on behalf of all and for all.