The Mass - Something Greater is Happening Here

From The Magnificat September 13, 2010

Saint John Chrysostom was born in Antioch about the year 349. After an extensive education he embraced a life of asceticism. He was ordained a priest and distinguished himself by his preaching which achieved great spiritual results among his hearers. He was elected bishop of Constantinople in 397 and proved himself a capable pastor, committed to reform- ing the life of the clergy and the faithful. Twice he was forced into exile by the hatred of the imperial court and the envy of his enemies. After he had completed his difficult labours, he died at Comana in Pontus on September 14, 407. His preaching and writing explained Catholic doctrine and presented the ideal Christian life. For this reason he is called Chrysostom, or Golden Mouth.

The liturgical service takes place on earth, but it belongs to the realm of heavenly realities. In fact it was not instituted by a human being or an angel, but by the Spirit himself, so that those who are still living in the flesh should think of performing the service of angels.

O what mercy, O what love of God for human beings! Christ who is seated with the Father in highest heaven is at that moment grasped by the hands of all and does not hesitate to give himself to anyone who wants to embrace him and be bound to him.

He whom the eyes of faith perceive is possessed by everyone. You remember how Elijah was surrounded by a great crowd and had in front of him the victim for sacrifice placed on the stone (see 1 K 18). Everyone stood stock still. The silence was complete. Only the prophet raised a prayer. Suddenly from heaven came down fire on the victim. It was a marvellous spectacle that filled everyone with amazement.

Here, however, something much more than a marvellous spectacle is unfolded. Something is happening that is greater than any marvel. Here the priest draws down not fire but the Holy Spirit himself.

Theology:
SAINT JOHN CHRYSOSTOM Saint John Chrysostom († 407) was a famed preacher and commentator on Scripture.

Now let us add anthropology to this reading:
René Girard René Girard scrutinizes the human condition from creation to apocalypse.

(René Girard) began to see the Bible as "anti-myth"—a description of humankind's long climb up from barbarity. Violence, retaliation and a vengeful God evolve over centuries into themes of forgiveness, repentance and the revelation that the scapegoat is innocent, culminating in the Crucifixion.

Read more HERE!
"Something is happening that is greater than any marvel. Here the priest draws down not fire (the mob's violence) but the Holy Spirit himself."

St Bernard - Eat and be eaten to make the union complete

tip to Father Mark @ Vultus Christi

Saint Bernard teaches that it is not enough for us to take and eat the Bread from Heaven. We must also offer ourselves to be eaten. Holy Communion is a wondrous exchange in which we become the bread of Christ. Listen to Saint Bernard:

My penitence, my salvation are His food.
I myself am His food.
I am chewed as I am reproved by Him;
I am swallowed by Him as I am taught;
I am digested by Him as I am changed;
I am assimilated as I am transformed;
I am made one with Him as I am conformed to Him.
He feeds upon us and is fed by us
that we may be the more loosely bound to Him.

Saint Bernard, ever the poet, uses images of eating and assimilation to describe how Christ unites us to Himself. Our Lord becomes our food that we might become His...

Saint Bernard says, "Christ eats me that He may have me in Himself, and Christ in turn is eaten by me that He may be in me, and the bond between us will be strong and the union complete." What awaits you in Holy Communion exceeds all that you can desire. Eat, then, and offer yourself to be eaten. Receive the Bread of God and become the bread of God.

I couldn't let a Franciscan Feast Day go by without a post

September 23rd was our memorial of a simple friar and Saint - Padre Pio. I know of no better way to give tribute than to share this great post by By Monsignor Arthur Burton Calkins Padre Pio Priest and Victim. Thank you Father Mark for posting this great and thoughtful Catholic insight and vision.

Incensing the Altar to Alleviate Anxiety

tip from Michael at Annunciations

From ScienceDaily (May 20, 2008) — Religious leaders have contended for millennia that burning incense is good for the soul. Now, biologists have learned that it is good for our brains too. An international team of scientists, including researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, describe how burning frankincense (resin from the Boswellia plant) activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression. This suggests that an entirely new class of depression and anxiety drugs might be right under our noses.

Continue reading

Catholic Church is the extension of Christ’s Life on earth

Meditation of the Day

If this Man were man only, however perfect and sublime, how is it that his sanctity appears to run by other lines than those of other saints? Other perfect men as they approached perfection were most conscious of imperfection; other saints as they were nearer God lamented their distance from him; other teachers of the spiritual life pointed always away from themselves and their shortcomings to that Eternal Law to which they too aspired.

Yet with this Man all seems reversed. He, as he stood before the world called on men to imitate him; not as others leaders have done, to avoid his sins: this Man, so far from pointing forward and up, pointed to himself as the Way to the Father; so far from adoring a Truth to which he strove, named himself its very incarnation; so far from describing a Life to which he too one day hoped to rise, bade his hearers look on himself who was their Life; so far from deploring to his friends the sins under which he labored challenged his enemies to find within him any sin at all. There is an extraordinary Self-consciousness in him that has in it nothing of “self’ as usually understood…

The Catholic Church is the extension of Christ’s Life on earth; the Catholic Church, therefore, that strange mingling of mystery and commonsense, that union of earth and heaven, of clay and fire, can alone be understood by him who accepts her as both Divine and Human, since she is nothing else but the mystical presentiment, in human terms, of him who, though the Infinite God and Eternal Creator, was found in the form of a servant, of him who, dwelling always in the Bosom of the Father, for our sakes came down from heaven.

- Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson (+ 1914) was a British convert to Catholicism who is best known for his novels about the faith.

h/t Doctors of the Catholic Church and Magnificat

Speaking of the Sword of Eternal Truth

(h/t to Athos at Chronicles of Atlantis)

Rich Leonardi from the Seditious Catechist blog quotes PETER BRONSON at The Enquirer who notes something that a small group of us converts observed this past Monday at a funeral of one of our priests, Father Dacian. Peter Bronson writes,

...somewhere during the funerals for two fallen firefighters April 9, I thought: Nobody does this better than the Catholic Church. When an uncertain world cruelly reminds us how fragile life can be, the magic, tradition, ritual and beauty of a mass soothes the aching heart. It speaks of eternal truth.

He goes on in the article:

This pope is a spiritual warrior against moral relativism.

"He believes there are clear truths in the world. That human dignity and human rights are rooted in faith," Fernandes said. "He wants us to get back to basics."

Benedict is a fierce defender of traditional marriage, which he calls the basic "cell" of society's body, where we learn justice, peace and love - eros and agape.

"One of the fundamental truths is that families are at risk and we need to fight for families," Fernandes said. "If the family is constantly under attack, if society is collapsing due to the collapse of the family, how can we expect peace to take root?"

If eternal truth is a two-edged sword, it cuts deep into the decay of moral relativism. That's painful for people who prefer bendable, harmless, Nerf truth. It's easier to just ignore eternal truth. Or distort it. Or attack it.

"The Catholic Church seems to be one of the last institutions standing up for marriage, the unborn, the rights of the elderly and the downtrodden," Fernandes said.

Pope Benedict won't back down from that tradition. That's why his visit means so much in this uncertain world.

Cardinal Arinze on Language of Liturgy

I was privileged to hear Cardinal Francis Arinze speak at Christendom College two years back. Here he offers light and substance to the use of language in liturgy.

"What's in a Picture?" Ask Amy Welborn

Amy Welborn @ Charlotte was Both has a couple posts on the picture above. May I suggest you take a look them.

The first post, Necessary Conversations started a chain reaction in the blog world, which she mentions in this post, What a picture is worth..., where I found the comments at Thrown Back particularly interesting. Anyone here have any comments?

Two responses/comments I liked:

1) Romulus, who wrote of the picture:

I see a man offering a sacrifice. The man has a cross on his back.

and 2) from Amy, herself:

As I’ve said before, my big ah-ha moment over the past couple of years has been the realization that most of us - myself included - have been formed to think of the Mass as a prayer meeting. A highly structured prayer meeting, but a prayer meeting nonetheless, one which emphasizes community and who we are in the here and now, a prayer meeting which should somehow be expressive of who we are as individuals and a community.

Prayer meetings are good. But that’s not what the Mass is.