When I think about communion, I think about the story of the antidote (you can find the whole story here: http://www.heavensinspirations.com/clean-blood.html). In the story, a worldwide mystery flu epidemic is killing thousands of people. Doctors finally find a cure: a vaccine can be created from the blood of someone who hasn’t been infected. Everyone has to get tested, and doctors find that your young son has the right type of blood for the vaccine. Everyone is so joyful, but soon you’re told that doctors need all of your son’s blood - your son must die so that everyone else can live. Your son dies, but the vaccine created from his blood saves everyone from the flu. People decide to have a ceremony every week to honor your son. At first, people pay attention, but as the weeks go on, people stop caring as much – they fall asleep during the ceremony, pretend to care, or don’t even show up at all. You stand there, heartbroken, screaming, “My son died for you! Don’t you care?” After thinking about this, maybe now we can fully understand the scope of God’s love for us.

God loves us more than we can even imagine. He died so that we may have life, and if we eat of his Body and drink of his Blood, we may have eternal life. My youth minister would describe this as “the greatest love story ever told”: Jesus loved us so much that he died a most painful death on the cross so that you and I may have eternal life. Yet, we often take this for granted. How would we feel if we were the parents in the story? How would we feel if we watched others take this enormous sacrifice for granted? Is that how God feels? He did give us His only son so that we could live. Jesus is the only way to salvation, to God and to eternal life. Without Him, we have no hope; we need him. We seem to emphasize this during Easter time, when we remember Jesus’ life and death, but we need to remember and celebrate the importance of communion every single week. So today, we are called to remember how deep was the sacrifice Jesus made for us and are called to feel his overwhelming love every day.