Monthly Archives: July 2006

EXCERPT:
Our baptismal character remains forever, on earth, in heaven or in hell. It can never be removed. We are forever changed by this pouring or immersing with water and the Trinitarian formula. Our outward comportment and interior landscape must reflect this deepest of realities. At the moment we hear this Post communionem prayer, the Lord has deigned to allow Himself in the sacred Host to be “dipped” into what should be the pure and clean chalice of our earthly bodies. When the Host is “moistened” by us, our souls are imbued with the grace which it is: a Host does not merely symbolize Christ, it truly is Christ in itself. We must avoid that our baptismal character be, in thought, word and deed, merely “skin deep” as it were, as if the only thing being imbued was the surface of our skin. When a person or plant is parched and dying the surface and skin become terribly dry and cracked. Wetting the surface will momentarily restore it as the moisture imbues the outer part and renews it. It will however quickly dry again. The benefit passes quickly. The surface looks good for a while and then it diminishes in beauty, since the effects were only skin deep. What the organism needs is to be renewed from within so that the outward appearance can be restored and made whole and beautiful again. Our baptism imbues us with grace and makes us temples of the Triune God. This interior and invisible reality must imbue all we do from the inside out so that the dimensions of us most visible to others, and I don’t mean the way we look, are similarly beautiful, reflecting the One within us in whose image and likeness we are made. Continue reading →

What Does the Prayer Really Say? 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time
ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer … Continue reading →