The day of recollection was on "Seeing Jesus with my Eyes and Heart." Here are the two conferences I gave.
Blessed are the eyes that see!
It all started with Juliana, a Norbertine nun who lives in Belgium at the end of the twelfth century. When she was five years old both of her parents died and she and her sister Agnes went to live at the Mont-Cornillon convent, where the Augustinian nuns took care of the lepers.
She grew up in the convent and loved, even as a little child, to sit there in Church and stare at the little red light by the tabernacle for hours on in. At the age of sixteen she had a vision of Christ, calling her to lead others to him in the Blessed Sacrament. It was a vision she would keep secret for the next twenty years.
When she had reached the ripe old age of 54, the Bishop established the feast of Corpus Christi, for which she had so long prayed, would be celebrated once a year. It spread from there to Germany, Bohemia, Moravia and, eventually, to the entire Church.
Before she died, the great Domincan Scholar, Saint Thomas Aquinas, ahile living in the Italian hill town of Orvieto, composed prayers and hymns for use on this feast, including an old favorite of ours, the Pange Lingua, beginnign with the words: Sing my tongue!
Pange, lingua, gloriósi
Córporis mystérium,
Sanguinísque pretiósi,
Quem in mundi prétium
Fructus ventris generósi
Rex effúdit géntium.
Perhaps the most familair verse of that hymn is the fith one, which we have been singing at benediction since we were little kids:
Tantum ergo sacramentum
Venerémur cérnui:
Et antíquum documéntum
Novo cedat rítui:
Præstet fides suppleméntum
Sénsuum defectui.
Now, I know the Little Sisters of the Poor, the residents of this holy house and certainly my brothers and sisters from Malta, could each translate the Tantum ergo with no help from me….but just in case there are any strangers among us, let’s take a look at the last two lines of that fifth verse:
Præstet fides suppleméntum
Sénsuum deféctui.
Sénsuum deféctui: What the senses can’t perceive
Præstet fides suppleméntum: Let faith make up for
In other words, what we can’t see with our eyes, we see by faith.
In just a few moments, I will raise the consecrated host and chalice of wine and declare: Behold the Lamb of God! And we will respond, looking at the consecrated bread and wine with the words: Lord, I am not worthy…but say the word and I will be healed! We will recognize Jesus in those elements of bread and wine and, like the Centurion, profess both our unworthiness and our faith in the presence and the power of CHrist.
And how do we recognize Christ in the breaking of the bread? Like the disciples on the way to Emmaus, we recognize him with our eyes informed by our faith in what we see.
The Eucharist, then, teaches us to see rightly. Those of no faih could enter this Church and see the fancy gold safe with the little red light and think that’s where you keep your money, or the narcotic medicines. But those with the eyes of faith see their Lord, ever present present, ever caring, ever ready to heal.
Those of little faith could walk in and see in that crucifix a sign of failure, himiliation and discrace. A man condemned to die for sins against the nation, stripped, beatan and nailed to a cross to die. Deemed worthless to a world which shouts “crucify him! Crucify him!” But those with the eyes of faith see in his death the end of all dying, in his passion a lesson in how to love and in his sacrifice, the forgiveness of our sins.
Those of little faith would see in this priest, and aging out of shape man who never had children, never made very much money and always lived in someone else’s house. Some might even suspect him of propensities to molestation, while others would view him as quaint and outdated. But to the eyes of faith I, in all my littleness and anadequacy have been chosen by God to live and act in th image of his Son. His Son the eternal high priest, who consecrates with these hands, absolves with this voice and shepherds with the mind and heart of this unworthy vessel. To those with the eyes of faith, I am the chosen one of the God who writes straight with crooked lines, called to shepherd, to teach and to sanctify this world in his name.
Those of little faith would see in one of the Little Sisters of the Poor, a sweet and maybe even adorabe, if aging nun, who reminds them of a time gone back. To them she appears naive and unengaged in the big and important things of life. They are puzzled that in a world that measures success by how big and powerful and rich you are, she spends her days trying to be little I service to the weakest and poorest of the world. But to those with the eyes of faith, she is a reflection of the light a dark world needs so desperately to see, the loving touch in a world contaminated by brutality and the sign of how to be holy, gentle and true. To the eyes of faith she is a wonder, a miracle and a glimpse of the face of God: a God who is poor and true and faithful.
Those of little faith would see in the woman who has grown old, sitting there praying the rosary and defined more by her yesterdays than her tomorrows. But to the man or woman of faith, she is a font of wisdom, a testimony to love and the hope for what we can become. She is Anna in the temple, Elizabeth with her Blessed Niece and Ruth with her daughter-in-law.
Those of little faith would see in the poor man someone who has nothing worthwhile. Unlike the Greek monk in the story told by Nikos Kazantzakis. The Greek monk who saw with the eyes of faith.
All his life, we are told, the monk had desired to make a pilgrimage to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to walk three times around it, to kneel and to return home to his monastery. Having begged for over forty years, he finally saved up enough coins to make the journey. So he set off, walking out the front doors of the cloister.
But no sooner had he walked a few steps from his cell when he encountered a poor man picking at the grass for food. “Where are you going, Father?” the man asked him. “To the Holy Sepulchre,’ he replied. ‘By God’s grace I shall walk three times around it, kneel, and return home a different man from what I am.”
“How much does a trip like that cost, Father?” inquired the man. “This much,” the monk answered, as he raised up a small sack of coins. “With that small sack,” the poor man said, “I could feed my wife and hungry children for a week…Tell you what. Why don’t you give me the money, walk three times around me, then kneel and go back into your monastery.”
The sad little monk thought for a moment, remembered the Gospels he had heard throughout the years, looked at the poor man and recognized in him the face of Jesus. He handed the sack of coins to the man, walked three times around him, knelt and went back into the monastery.
He returned to his cell a new person, having recognized the beggar as Christ, who had been waiting for him for forty years; not in some glorious shrine, nor in a place far away, but as a poor man, right outside his door.
In the Eucharist, the eyes of faith see Christ. In the priest the poor man, the sister and person weighed down by the burden of their years, the eyes of faith see Christ.
And it is the Eiucharist which teaches us to see rightly with the eyes of faith, to, in the the words of Pope Francis, Pope Francis, “live the Eucharist in our daily lives, as a Church and individual Christians.”
“The Eucharist is not a mere memory of some sayings and actions of Jesus,” the Holy Father eeminds us, but rather “it is the word and gift of Christ's presence here that comes to us and nourishes us with his Word and his life.”
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Blessed is the heart that loves!
Did you notice how dark it gets by four o’clock and how the sun was barely up jus a few hours ago?! There was even frost on my windshield this morning and there are trees and twinkling lights everywhere you look.
That’s how we know that it is the season of “blessed hope and [of] the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.” It is a remarkable season, some say magical. A time of transformation and of hope. A time of waiting. Our hearts wait.
As the hearts of the prophets waited. As those in the diaspora waited. As the sacred heart of Mary waited. Our hearts ache for God, and we wait…
The heart of the addict in the alley waits: for a God who will come and remove all that enslaves him...
The heart of the single mother waits: for a day when she no longer has to work 54 hours, a night when she can sleep eight, a life when she’ll finally know the kids will be ok.
The hearts of the family in Raqqa waits: for a morning when there are no more explosions, and every sound is not feared as the precursor to an assault, and you don’t have to bury your child or your brother or your friend;
The heart of the old man all alone at home waits: for the day he will no longer be all by himself, when pain will no longer be his only constant companion, and when he can once again rest in the embrace of her whom he loved.
Hearts waiting…Not waiting in dread fear, like the Psalmist who cries through the night, “on the brink of the grave…” But hearts waiting with persistence.
‘As one who waits for God as though he were coming every evening…Waits all his life for the God who is always coming…the God who does not show himself to satisfy your curiosity, but who instead unveils himself before your faithfulness and your humility.
As one who waits in joyful hope, as one who waits with a joyful, hopeful heart!
There’s a little line from Paul’s letter to Titus that we pray everyday as a kind of bridge to the minor doxology which concludes the embolism at the end of the Lord’s Prayer. Paul writes that we are expectantes beatam spem et adventum gloriae magni Dei et salvatoris nostri Iesu Christi.
awaiting the blessed hope
and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Waiting in joyful hope, with baited breath, as we gaze toward the Eastern skies in expectation of the one who rises with healing in his wings…
It’s like the Collect for this coming Sunday, at least 1100 years old and first used as an Advent post communion prayer in the old Gelasian Sacramentary
Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God, the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming, so that, gathered at his right hand, they may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom.
The prayer is in two acts, each inspired by Jesus’ words in Matthew 25.
Act one is the wise and foolish virgins, who “took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.” This story was so popular in the early days of the Church that it was painted on the walls of a Baptistry in a remote Roman outpost in Syria in the late second century. We see the virgins with their lamps lit (they were the ones who brought the extra flasks of oil) going out to meet the bridegroom.
Several hundred years later, the Church adopts today’s prayer which asks the Father to give us to resolve to run fourth (occurentes) to meet the Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus, when he returns to his Bride, the Church to judge the living and the dead.
The second part of the prayer is also inspired by the story of what will happen at the end of the world. The Lord will return in glory upon a cloud, accompanied by his angels, and the dead will rise. We will stand before the Lord and be separated based on the way we have lived our lives, separated as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. The sheep will be gathered at his right hand and the goats at his left.
“Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’”
This is what the Collect is describing for when it asks that we be “gathered at his right hand, [that we] may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom.”
What helped me to understand this ancient prayer was recalling an experience I had when I was in second grade.
It was the day on which I got the only gold star on a paper that I ever received. I think I felt prouder that day than I have at any graduation or the reception of any reward or honor since.
I ran home to show my mother, who kissed me and put the blue lined yellow paper with the gold star on the refrigerator. But I ripped it down and ran out to the couch and knelt there with my nose against the window as I waited fro my Father to return from work. I watched and watched for him for what seemed like seventeen years! Then finally, I saw his old red truck coming down the dirt road and I heard the sound of it coming up the gravel driveway.
I ran out that screen door like a shot and, ,y heart beating a mile a minute, I smiled from ear to ear. Then I waved my gold-starred paper before him to show him how wonderful his son really was! And you know what, he laughed and smiled and swooped me up into his arms and told me I was just as wonderful as I thought I was. And we went in and had a wonderful supper.
That’s what the prayer’s about: about a world that needs to be confident in its righteous deeds and in the love of a merciful Savior. And when he comes, they need not hide under the couch in fear that he will find out about this or that! No. They gather up all their righteous deeds and run out to meet him!
Our hearts wait in joyful hope for him to come in glory, who first came in a manger. Luke said it best and the Contemporary English Version in its her-simplicity, translates Luke’s Kenotic message most closely:
And while they were there, she gave birth to her first-born son. She dressed him in baby clothes and laid him in a feed-box, because there was no room for them in the inn. (Luke 2:6)
The only Son of the Living God came into the world robed in baby clothes and reigning from a feed-box, because there was no room for him in the inn.
This total self-emptying ….And for all its distress and evasion of love, our culture loves “the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (2 Cor 10:1) that is born in a manger.
Which is what Saint Bernard of Clairvaux meant by the ”coming [that] lies between the other two.” “In the first, Christ was our redemption; in the last, he will appear as our life; in this middle coming, he is our rest and consolation.”
So our work this Advent, in meekness and kenotic Paschal love is to prepare a manger for the Christ Child. For, in the end, your heart is the only manger worthy of the Son of God. A manger not of straw, but of flesh and blood, your struggles and your sacrifices and the offering of your life.
All your little crosses form the cross bars of his crib, bound by the iron nails forged in the fiery trials which have come your way. Your loneliness and confusion are the straw upon which he rests his head, while your faithfulness and devotion are the swaddling clothes that keep him warm.
