Fr. Seán ÓLaoire

Then reaching for the cup, he told them, Take this too, all of you who would aspire to Christ consciousness, for this is the cup of my blood.

It binds us together since we all share the blood of being human.

Truly, we are blood brothers and sisters.

So it is a covenant between us.

It is the final covenant.

A covenant to dissolve the illusions of separation.

a covenant that opens your eyes to the realization that we are not separate from God, that we are not separate from each other, and that we are not separate from nature.

This remembering will take away the sin of living in a state of separation.

Whenever you celebrate this ritual, remember that.

Guide, you are the ocean, bathing in the waters of your own awareness.

We are the fish, agreeing that we can feel the wetness, but demanding proof that the ocean exists.

Help us to awaken.

God, you are the lamb, gambling ecstatically in the meadow of your own mindfulness.

We are the sheep, peering jadedly through a prison pen of our own making.

Help us to awaken.

God, you are the forest, a miracle of ecological cooperation.

You are the oak tree in the forest, a miracle of individual might.

You are a single leaf on the oak tree, a miracle of intricate skin stretching.

You are a cell within that leaf, a reminder of how life was four billion years ago.

You are an atom within that cell, a reminder of how life was thirteen billion years ago.