How to Benefit from the Holy Liturgy - Pope Kirillos Scientific Family

Look to the Lord's invitation in His words, "Eat of it you all
and drink of it you all." He wants all to accept the mystery
of partaking from His blessed Body and Blood on one
condition, that they repent of all sins, and this condition of
repentance and confession, before Communion, is clear in
the virtue of the washing of the feet which the Lord fulfilled
before the institution of the Sacrament of Eucharist. He
washed the feet of His disciples, not for the purpose of
cleaning physical dirt, but as a symbol of purification of the
body, soul and spirit from the dirt before approaching the
Holy Sacraments. So when Peter objected saying, "You
shall never wash my feet," Jesus warned him, "If I do not
wash you, you have no part with Me." He would have
prevented Peter from partaking in the Sacrament of unity
with His Body and Blood, as his sin would have still existed.
The priest motions towards the Body and the Chalice saying,
"For every time you shall eat of this Bread and drink of
this Cup, you preach My Death, confess My Resurrection
and remember Me until I come." Here the Lord Jesus
gives us the responsibility of preaching His death, His
resurrection from the dead, and His awesome Second
Coming which will be full of glory. We should remember
this every time we celebrate the Holy Mass.
I think this confirmation and mission and continual
remembrance of the Lord Jesus comes when we enter into a
holy covenant with God by receiving the Sacraments of the
New Covenant, feeling that our sins are forgiven and that we
abide in Him. Then we cannot keep quiet but proceed to
preach the excellence of the One who called us from the
darkness to the true light (1 John 2:9) and tell everyone
around us how much the Lord has done for us and had
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