Every year on Super Bowl Sunday two American Football teams compete for the same Vince Lombardi Trophy. They play their hearts out. The clock runs out. Another NFL season ends, and only one team stands victorious. As fireworks burst in the air, there is joyful celebration. Champagne flies everywhere. Players dance with each other, with their wives and children, and each one of them repeat expressions of gratitude and praise. As they leave the field together, a transformation takes place. It changes the way they are seen by others. They become champions. And for the rest of their lives they wear this title with their skin.
Every year on this day friends and families attend Super Bowl parties in homes and bars across the country, no matter if we are fans of the teams involved. We watch it together, and we celebrate more than the game itself. As the party ends, and on the days that follow, we see fans and players celebrating their Super Bowl win. There are feasts in their city, 
commemorative hats, rally’s, maybe even a parade. The pursuit of an NFL Championship is a billion dollar industry that attracts the lifetime interest of millions — fans, players, analysts, commentators, coaches, marketers, and manufacturers, even taxpayers. We watch all of them celebrate and benefit in ways particular to the parts they played in it. We see the joy it gives them, and we want to feel it too.
But the truth is we all are part of a championship far greater than any pro-football team can deliver. It is a prize Jesus won for us on the cross when he became the champion of death. It is eternal happiness, the party that never ends. And it is for all mankind. He wants us to receive it from him every day, and he wants to show us how. He gives us his example, he gives us guidelines and prescriptions, he even gives us his own body. But like a good coach or teammate, Jesus does not want to play the whole game by himself. He wants to share it with others. He lets us choose to use the gifts he gives us. We are free to be members of his team. He gives us tickets to his Super Bowl, but he does not make us attend.
Just as an NFL franchise subscribes to a plan to reach the Super Bowl, Christians everywhere subscribe to a plan of life in Jesus. It is a plan for his church as a whole, and a plan tailored to suit the needs of every individual member. His plan includes The Word, The Ten Commandments, The Seven Sacraments, prayer and spiritual reading, acts of charity, humility, and more. It is a plan we fulfill with him, in him, and through him, together at Holy Mass. Our participation in the Holy Mass is the Super Bowl of the Christian life, for it is truly a glimpse of heaven as it appears on earth (John Paul II, Ecclesia De Eucharistia).
Mass calls us to participate in the body and blood of Christ. It is not a mystery we enter only at Holy Communion. For our participation to be full, we seek it throughout the day, between masses, every moment of our Christian lives. We live the mass. We are changed, not just into trophies and rings. Much more than symbols of the championship, we are called to become the body and blood of the champion himself, to become the flesh we receive and wear his title with our skin.
When a team owner raises the Vince Lombardi Trophy, he raises it for football fans everywhere, he raises it for the entire city in which his team plays, he raises it for those who helped them get there, he raises it for the opponent, and for all those who wish they could raise it themselves. When he does this he maximizes the value of the championship. It becomes much larger than himself and his team. It becomes a championship shared by all.
In a similar way, we get more out of the mass by giving more of the mass to others. This is my body, says the Lord, …given up for you (Mk 26:26). And then he says, do this in memory of me (Lk 22:19). And how do we do this ? We love. The mass sends us into the world to love because God is love, and all who live in love, live in God (1Jn 4). Love is what we become when we love. It is how we express God’s invisible reality to others, the only expression of God there is. Like a champion raising his trophy for all to see, we raise the body of our Lord Jesus Christ by laying down our life for a friend (Jn 15:13) , by loving another as he loves us, with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind (Mt 22:37 ).
When the Indianapolis Colts won Super Bowl XLI in 2007, the trophy went on tour, displayed in a glass case at specific locations throughout the State of Indiana. For months it attracted lines of adorers, sometimes up to an hour long. In a similar way, we are given an opportunity each day to adore our championship in the tabernacle of every Catholic Church. We are invited to come as often as we like, to discern his real presence in the Eucharist, and to catch a glimpse of our victory in heaven, where we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is (1 Jn 3:2).
