Daily Retreat 09/20/09
2009 Sep 20 SUN:TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Wis 2: 12. 17-20/ Ps 53(54): 3-4. 5. 6-8 (6b)/ Jas 3: 16 – 4: 3/ Mk 9: 30-37
From today’s readings: “The wicked say: Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us.... Behold, God is my helper; the Lord sustains my life.... The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace.... The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill Him, and three days after His death, the Son of Man will rise....”
A Crucial Connection
This year, it seems autumn fell with a thud: suddenly, we wake up, and, instead of sweltering, there’s a nip in the air, a less-than-gentle breeze rising, and more than a hint of color in the treetops. The suddenness of it all can make one long to turn back the calendar to the long, lazy days of August.
And, reading and listening attentively, perhaps you have also noticed a similar cooling trend in the Gospel readings. During the summer, weren’t our hearts inflamed with Eucharistic tinder during the incomparable Bread of Life discourse, when our Lord repeated over and over, “My flesh is Real food, My Blood is Real Drink - I Myself Am the Living Bread come down from Heaven - and he who eats of this Bread will have Eternal Life!” Eternal life, a share in the Lord’s bodily Resurrection - if those thoughts don’t warm your heart, my friend, you must already be dead! All those succulent words of comfort from chapter six of the Gospel of St. John, and every Christian should be intimately familiar with those words of life from chapter six of John’s Gospel.
Yet the sweet aroma of those words seems now to have been blown away by the chilling wind of a new Gospel theme: beginning with the feast of the Triumph of the Cross, continuing through these last weeks, Jesus turns His gaze and our focus to His passion, the Cross, the Cross, the Cross! Why this chilly shift? Like the suddenness of Autumn blowing away our summer, our comfort from chewing on the idea of the Lord’s Real Presence with us in the Eucharist dissipates as He Himself, having tested the wind, begins to speak insistently about the cold reality of the cross...
And yet, my friends, the true surprise, the real shock, comes not from our musing on how different are these two themes (last month’s appealing invitation to the Eucharistic banquet, this month’s numbing prophecy of the passionate crucifixion), but rather, in the Lord’s gradual yet integral explanation that they are the same! Yes, the Lord’s gift of Himself under the appearance of Bread and Wine is one and the same with His gift of Himself immolated on the Holy Cross. For this reason, we speak rightly of that act, that great drama of our Sunday worship, as “The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.” For Our Lord Himself, in the Eucharistic discourse (chapter six of St. John’s Gospel), AND at the Last Supper, insisted, “The Bread I will give is My Flesh, offered for the life of the World - Take and eat, for this is My Body, Which will be given up for you!”
The Eucharist, then, truly “re-presents” the Crucifixion, yanking that holy event from the snare of time and space constraints, and making that event present at that privileged moment in your life, in my life, making us present at that singular moment in the Lord’s life. Ponder, then, nothing earthly minded, for as we worship, you and I stand at the foot of Calvalry, sorrowful for our sins, and though we are not worthy, we place our hope in the Lord, Who even now says the Word, heals our soul, and deigns to dwell within us, as Our Eucharistic Lord! And now, doesn’t that just blow you away?
Wis 2: 12. 17-20/ Ps 53(54): 3-4. 5. 6-8 (6b)/ Jas 3: 16 – 4: 3/ Mk 9: 30-37
From today’s readings: “The wicked say: Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us.... Behold, God is my helper; the Lord sustains my life.... The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace.... The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill Him, and three days after His death, the Son of Man will rise....”
A Crucial Connection
This year, it seems autumn fell with a thud: suddenly, we wake up, and, instead of sweltering, there’s a nip in the air, a less-than-gentle breeze rising, and more than a hint of color in the treetops. The suddenness of it all can make one long to turn back the calendar to the long, lazy days of August.
And, reading and listening attentively, perhaps you have also noticed a similar cooling trend in the Gospel readings. During the summer, weren’t our hearts inflamed with Eucharistic tinder during the incomparable Bread of Life discourse, when our Lord repeated over and over, “My flesh is Real food, My Blood is Real Drink - I Myself Am the Living Bread come down from Heaven - and he who eats of this Bread will have Eternal Life!” Eternal life, a share in the Lord’s bodily Resurrection - if those thoughts don’t warm your heart, my friend, you must already be dead! All those succulent words of comfort from chapter six of the Gospel of St. John, and every Christian should be intimately familiar with those words of life from chapter six of John’s Gospel.
Yet the sweet aroma of those words seems now to have been blown away by the chilling wind of a new Gospel theme: beginning with the feast of the Triumph of the Cross, continuing through these last weeks, Jesus turns His gaze and our focus to His passion, the Cross, the Cross, the Cross! Why this chilly shift? Like the suddenness of Autumn blowing away our summer, our comfort from chewing on the idea of the Lord’s Real Presence with us in the Eucharist dissipates as He Himself, having tested the wind, begins to speak insistently about the cold reality of the cross...
And yet, my friends, the true surprise, the real shock, comes not from our musing on how different are these two themes (last month’s appealing invitation to the Eucharistic banquet, this month’s numbing prophecy of the passionate crucifixion), but rather, in the Lord’s gradual yet integral explanation that they are the same! Yes, the Lord’s gift of Himself under the appearance of Bread and Wine is one and the same with His gift of Himself immolated on the Holy Cross. For this reason, we speak rightly of that act, that great drama of our Sunday worship, as “The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.” For Our Lord Himself, in the Eucharistic discourse (chapter six of St. John’s Gospel), AND at the Last Supper, insisted, “The Bread I will give is My Flesh, offered for the life of the World - Take and eat, for this is My Body, Which will be given up for you!”
The Eucharist, then, truly “re-presents” the Crucifixion, yanking that holy event from the snare of time and space constraints, and making that event present at that privileged moment in your life, in my life, making us present at that singular moment in the Lord’s life. Ponder, then, nothing earthly minded, for as we worship, you and I stand at the foot of Calvalry, sorrowful for our sins, and though we are not worthy, we place our hope in the Lord, Who even now says the Word, heals our soul, and deigns to dwell within us, as Our Eucharistic Lord! And now, doesn’t that just blow you away?
posted by FrPitstick | 9/17/2009
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