Today is Thursday in the 5th Week of Lent.
We hear today about the ancient Roman Station, a thought from Benedict XVI, something from St. John Chrysostom, and the usual collects.
From St. John Chrysostom:
Therefore let no one be ashamed of the sacred and venerable symbols of our salvation, of the Cross which is the summit and apex of all our goods, through which we live and are who we are. Let us carry the Cross of Christ everywhere, as a crown. Everything that affects us is carried out and fulfilled through it.
Pray for Pope Francis.
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I think this can be related to John Paul II’s comments in Ecclesia De Eucharista:
47. Reading the account of the institution of the Eucharist in the Synoptic Gospels, we are struck by the simplicity and the “solemnity” with which Jesus, on the evening of the Last Supper, instituted this great sacrament. There is an episode which in some way serves as its prelude: the anointing at Bethany. A woman, whom John identifies as Mary the sister of Lazarus, pours a flask of costly ointment over Jesus’ head, which provokes from the disciples – and from Judas in particular (cf. Mt 26:8; Mk 14:4; Jn 12:4) – an indignant response, as if this act, in light of the needs of the poor, represented an intolerable “waste”. But Jesus’ own reaction is completely different. While in no way detracting from the duty of charity towards the needy, for whom the disciples must always show special care – “the poor you will always have with you” (Mt 26, 11; Mk 14:7; cf. Jn 12:8) – he looks towards his imminent death and burial, and sees this act of anointing as an anticipation of the honour which his body will continue to merit even after his death, indissolubly bound as it is to the mystery of his person…
…48. Like the woman who anointed Jesus in Bethany, the Church has feared no “extravagance”, devoting the best of her resources to expressing her wonder and adoration before the unsurpassable gift of the Eucharist. No less than the first disciples charged with preparing the “large upper room”, she has felt the need, down the centuries and in her encounters with different cultures, to celebrate the Eucharist in a setting worthy of so great a mystery. In the wake of Jesus’ own words and actions, and building upon the ritual heritage of Judaism, the Christian liturgy was born. Could there ever be an adequate means of expressing the acceptance of that self-gift which the divine Bridegroom continually makes to his Bride, the Church, by bringing the Sacrifice offered once and for all on the Cross to successive generations of believers and thus becoming nourishment for all the faithful? Though the idea of a “banquet” naturally suggests familiarity, the Church has never yielded to the temptation to trivialize this “intimacy” with her Spouse by forgetting that he is also her Lord and that the “banquet” always remains a sacrificial banquet marked by the blood shed on Golgotha. The Eucharistic Banquet is truly a “sacred” banquet, in which the simplicity of the signs conceals the unfathomable holiness of God: O sacrum convivium, in quo Christus sumitur! The bread which is broken on our altars, offered to us as wayfarers along the paths of the world, is panis angelorum, the bread of angels, which cannot be approached except with the humility of the centurion in the Gospel: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof ” (Mt 8:8; Lk 7:6).
Pope John Paul II also wrote in Ecclesia De Eucharista:
“The Apostle Paul, for his part, says that it is ‘unworthy’ of a Christian community to partake of the Lord’s Supper amid division and indifference towards the poor (cf. 1 Cor 11:17-22, 27-34).34 ”
Footnote 34 is another quoted from St. John Chrysostom:
4“Do you wish to honour the body of Christ? Do not ignore him when he is naked. Do not pay him homage in the temple clad in silk, only then to neglect him outside where he is cold and ill-clad. He who said: ‘This is my body’ is the same who said: ‘You saw me hungry and you gave me no food’, and ‘Whatever you did to the least of my brothers you did also to me’ … What good is it if the Eucharistic table is overloaded with golden chalices when your brother is dying of hunger. Start by satisfying his hunger and then with what is left you may adorn the altar as well”: Saint John Chrysostom, In Evangelium S. Matthaei
Fair enough Daniel. I see no dichotomy however. Both/and. Not, either/or.
“What good is it if the Eucharistic table is overloaded with golden chalices when your brother is dying of hunger.”
Yes, when there is gold on the altar, it implies that the food baskets for the poor ought to be overflowing, too. Still, we ought to look to our closets and garages for the most likely places to cut down consumption for the sake of our starving brothers and sisters, rather than starting in the sacristy. After all, in how many places is economy seen on the altar, but not in the garb worn in the pews or the vehicles parked in the parking lot? To have the standard of living we have and to protest the use of gold for the altar seems the equivalent of Judas protesting the extravagance of the alabaster jar, because what he truly wanted was to have room in the purse to help himself.