Daily Archives: 9 July 2006

EXCERPT:
When I hear a phrase like ut numquam cessemus a laude tua, which is a result (ut with the subjunctive), my mind quickly sorts through the reasons for the result. We have just been given a share and foretaste of the heavenly life being extended to us by God. A gift as great as that, the bread of angels become the our spiritual and even physical nourishment, undeserved as it is on our part, demands from us who receive it a response that encompasses our whole person, body and soul. In heaven, certainly, we will “never cease or leave off from the praise” of God, whom we shall see face to face. But we are not in heaven now. We are still here on earth. Holy Communion requires a response of praise here and now. How can we praise God in response to the divine gifts He gives us? As the priest would quote (cf. Ps 116) before his own Communion at Mass, “What shall I give back to the Lord for all the things He gives to me?” We must praise Him. And not in words or thoughts only, but also in outward, concrete deeds as well, even if, especially when, it also means taking up the chalice He offers daily. Continue reading →

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EXCERPT:
Catholics are called to shape and transform the passing world around us, each and every passing day, each according to our vocations, making present here and now the Kingdom of Heaven by our words and deeds. Our membership in Christ’s Church bears us along in triumphant glory already, even while we remain for now in this veil of tears where this world’s “prince”, the enemy of our souls, attacks us and plays on our wounded nature. How are we to be who we must be authentically? How do we attain that unfading crown awaiting us? We need the sustaining and forming aid given to us by the action of the High Priest in His Church. We want the real content of the prayers Holy Church gives us. We do not want any longer to be held back or cheated of our right through the building of churches that smack of the secular, music reminiscent of elevator tunes, sacred ministers who behave like game show hosts, or dumbed-down translations which leave us without inspiration or food for thought. Continue reading →

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EXCERPT:
Our Collect offers us an image material creation like an enervated body, wounded and weakened by sin, lying in the dust from whence it came. In the sin of our first parents all creation was wounded and, as we see everyday, the harmony that there ought to have been between the rest of material creation and man its steward has been damaged. It is almost as if creation, including us, is bound and captive by an enemy who has beaten him down to the ground and enslaved him. God then comes as liberator. He rouses us from being prone upon the ground. He grasps us, pulling us upward out of sin and death. He aims us again toward the joys possible in this world first and then definitively in the next, if only we can get back to our feet. Our Savior, the Son, came in humility to rescue us in our wretchedness. We have seen before in our prayers the pattern of descent and ascent, of exit and return. Before the Resurrection there is the Passion. Before exaltation there is humiliation. The descent, exit, Passion and humiliation bring an even more exalted joy which will embrace the entirety of man in both soul and body, the interior and the outward human person. Continue reading →

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