MALTA RETREAT
Behold the Lamb of God!
Embracing the Source and Summit of our Lives
FRIDAY, September 20th
Memorial of Sts. Andrew Kim Tae-gǒn, Priest,
and Paul Chǒng Ha-song, and Companions, Martyrs
Homily
Father Andrew was twenty-five years old when he was tortured and beheaded along with thousands of other lay Catholics in the first days of the Korean Church.
Shortly before he died, he wrote:
This is my last hour of life, listen to me attentively: It is for God that I die. My immortal life is on the point of beginning. Become Christians if you wish to be happy after death, because God has eternal chastisements in store for those who have refused to know Him.
Every time I read those words of that young priest as he was about to die, I think of those at whose death beds I have been privileged to stand. And for the best of them, surrounded by their family and friends, they are very much aware that their immortal life is about to begin and that they are merely passing through a thin veil, a swinging door…on one side of which stand those who love them in this life, and on the other side of which stands Christ, with his angels and Saints and all their heavenly friends.
And for the best of them, as they receive their last Communion, Holy Viaticum, they are consoled by the words the priest says:
May the Lord Jesus Christ protect you
and lead you to eternal life. Amen.
And then they receive the Lord in Holy Communion. The Body and Blood of the same Lord who said, “he who eats my Body and drinks my Blood will never really die…but I will raise him up on the last day.”
For it is our blessed faith in the Lord who taught us how to love by his Paschal dying and rising and who nourishes us with the bread of angels that sustains us in the hour of our death, just as it sustained the young Father Andrew in his final hours.
May we understand as he does, the words we proclaim at every Mass: How Blessed are we to be called to the Supper of the Lamb!
Conference I
I begin with a story about Matthew.
It was a tough week for Matthew, between the problems at work and the challenges he and Betsy have been facing paying for College for three kids at the same time. He’s got a good job, but it’s only the extra they both make from second part time jobs on the weekend that makes ends meet.
But that’s not the tough part. The touch part is Betsy’s parents, who despite all kinds of health challenges refuse to consider assisted care living, insisting that he and Betsy drive over there almost every day and sometimes in the middle of the night, like when Betsy’s father heard something in the back yard. Matthew finds himself waking up in the middle of the night worried about the two of them, pretty much in a panic about what to do.
In fact, it was all he and Betsy could think about as they sat in Church on Sunday, dozing off during the sermon because they had another one of those middle of the night calls just five hours ago.
Matthew wants to do the best thing for Betsy’s parents, but he’s not sure where they will get the strength. But then it came to him. Something Father Steve had said a few weeks ago. Put your problems on the altar, he had said. When you can’t find the strength to do what God has asked you, put them on the altar, and God will join your sacrifices with his Son’s perfect sacrifice on the Cross. Then, from that same altar, you will receive Christ’s Body and blood to make you strong.
So, Matthew prayed with his whole heart and soul and placed it all on the altar, along with the gifts of bread and wine. And when he walked up to Communion he felt his heart beating faster and he had tears in his eyes. It was as if Father Steve could see right into his soul when he raised that little white host up and said “the Body of Christ.” Then, saying Amen, he took the Lord in his own hands, swallowed, and knew that God was now living inside of him.The the all-powerful creator of heaven and earth, the source of all strength. The way, the Truth and the Life, now living in his heart.
And while he still lacked for most of the answers, he knew he and Betsy could do what they needed to, by the power of the Perfect Sacrifice of the Cross, who now lived in him.
And in that same Communion line was seven year old Susan, who was receiving her second Holy Communion, and 97 year old Molly, who woke up worrying about Bert’s cancer. And behind her was Florence, who was trying like heck to forgive her daughter, and Al, whose wife just told him she wanted a divorce. And so many others….two by two they came to Christ, to offer their lives to Christ and to receive the Bread of Angels.
For it was for Matthew and Betsy and Susan and Molly and Bert and Florence and Al that Christ died upon the Cross.
It was for them that he gathered with his disciples in the upper room on the night before he suffered and said:
TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND EAT OF IT,
FOR THIS IS MY BODY, WHICH WILL BE GIVEN UP FOR YOU.
“He did this,” the Council fathers reminded us, “in order to perpetuate the Sacrifice of the Cross down through the centuries until he should come again, and in order to entrust until then to the Church, his beloved Spouse, the memorial of his Death and Resurrection: the sacrament of love, the sign of unity, the bond of charity, the Paschal Banquet “in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and the pledge of future glory is given to us.”
Which is why Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel that he will give us the bread which does not perish, the “true bread” which comes from the Father “and gives life to the world.” (John 6:33) Here he sets out the foundation of our eucharistic understanding. “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” (John 6:36)
In response, the crowds murmur and grumble. It is a hard saying. So he repeats it. “I am the bread of life (John 6:48)…the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.” (John 6:51) “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” (John 6:56)
Immediately after this teaching, John reports, many of his disciples abandoned him and “returned to their former way of life,” (John 6:60) complaining that “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” (John 6:61)
Down through the centuries, men and women have often grappled with this hard saying. But the Lord’s words perdure, echoing down through the centuries: “This is my Body, this is my Blood.”
Just a few decades after the books of the New Testament were written down, Saint Ignatius of Antioch lamented that the Gnostics “do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in His graciousness, raised from the dead.”
This teaching is reiterated today in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
The mode of Christ's presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as "the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend." In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained." "This presence is called 'real' - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be 'real' too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present.
Thus, at the heart of the Church’s tradition is a constant belief in “the substantial change of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord Jesus, a reality which surpasses all human understanding.”
A Timeless Reality
For, the sacrifice of the Mass is the Sacrifice of Calvary and the Heavenly Banquet which will take place at the end of time: both present on the Altar at every Mass. We stand at the foot of the Cross and partake of Christ’s glory, for we are the blessed ones who are “called to the Supper of the Lamb.”
Our Holy Communion is with Jesus in heaven, on earth, and in our hearts. The Mass is our participation in the heavenly banquet, a communion with the Church in heaven. As Pope John Paul II tells us in his encyclical letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia, “in celebrating the sacrifice of the Lamb, we are united to the heavenly ‘liturgy’ and become part of that great multitude which cries out: ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb!’ (Revelation 7:10) The Eucharist is truly a glimpse of heaven appearing on earth. It is a glorious ray of the heavenly Jerusalem which pierces the clouds of our history and lights up our journey.”
If we look all around us, we should be able to imagine what is really going on there, though unseen. Angels and Saints rejoicing and sharing in communion with Jesus. Look around you and you will see them: Grandmothers who have gone before us in faith, ancestors who intercede for us from the place of the blessed. This Church, like every celebration of the Sacred Liturgy, is crowded with our invisible friends.
We get a glimpse of that at every Mass when the priest raises the consecrated Bread and Wine and declares: “Behold the Lamb of God...How Blessed are they who are called to the Supper of the Lamb!” Not just this supper, but the heavenly supper and the supper in the upper room…for in the Holy Eucharist all time and space disappear and we are made one with Christ upon the cross and Christ in glory and Christ as he comes to us on the altar.
Participating in the Cross
Thus, as we pray in the Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer I), “we celebrate the memorial of the blessed Passion, the Resurrection from the dead, and the glorious Ascension into heaven of Christ,” offering nothing less than the pure, holy and spotless victim, “the holy Bread of eternal life and the Chalice of everlasting salvation.”
In this regard, the Council Fathers recall a venerable prayer, which is prayed over the offerings at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday and which has been prayed in the Mass for over a millennia and a half. It asks that “we may participate worthily in these mysteries, for whenever the memorial of this sacrifice is celebrated the work of our redemption is accomplished.”
That means that our memorial of the Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection is not a simple recollection or recreation of the Paschal Mystery. Rather, the Mass is a participation in the saving mysteries of our redemption.
This is the foundation upon which the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council built the entire liturgical renewal that we have experienced in our lifetimes. And this participation in Christ and with Christ, from the inside out, is both the duty and right of every individual by consequence of his or her Baptism.
For it is in Baptism we are made members of the People of God, “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people.” A lector read this text from St. Peter to the newly baptized just three weeks ago at the Easter Vigil.
The kind of participation in the Liturgy which you foster by your reverence for the Body and blood of Christ which you give to this royal priesthood, fosters a participation in the Liturgy that changes lives; those who take an active part in the Liturgy are transformed by it and go out from the liturgical assembly conscious of who they are and who they are called to be.
The Sacrifice of the Heart
For, as the Council Fathers insisted, the whole the purpose of the life of the Baptized is nothing less than participation in the Sacrifice of Christ himself.3
Echoing Saint Augustine, the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council taught us that the Liturgy is nothing less than our own sacrifice, by reason of our Baptism. All who are baptized are made priests, able to offer themselves “as a living sacrifice that is holy and acceptable to God” (Rom 12:1). Every one of us are called to make of our life a living sacrifice of praise.
PRESENTATION OF GIFTS
When Pope Benedict XVI was preparing his post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Synod on the Eucharist, many were surprised when he chose to comment on what seems to us to be a fairly ordinary part of the Mass, the Presentation of the Gifts. Yet, he pointed our there is great significance in this actions for who we are at Mass and what we are called to be.
“This humble and simple gesture is actually very significant,” he wrote, for “in the bread and wine that we bring to the altar, all creation is taken up by Christ the Redeemer to be transformed and presented to the Father. In this way we also bring to the altar all the pain and suffering of the world, in the certainty that everything has value in God's eyes.”
Indeed, in the Presentation of the gifts it becomes evident a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, are joining the sacrifices of their lives with the one and perfect sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross. When gifts of bread and wine are placed into the hands of the Priest, it is not just bread that is offered, but with those pieces of bread are mixed all the sacrifices of our lives. And with the wine in that cruet are mixed the joys and sorrows, the longings and holy desires of each member of the gathered assembly.
We place those gifts into the hands of the Priest, offering them to Christ. Then the Priest, acting in the person of Christ, places those gifts upon the altar in the same way that Christ placed his body upon the altar of the Cross in a perfect sacrifice of praise. These are the gifts that will be transformed by the great Eucharistic Prayer into the very Body and Blood of Christ, and then returned to us as our nourishment that we might have the strength to continue to join ourselves with Christ's sacrifice every day of our lives.
The French poet Paul Claudel6 once wrote of this moment: “Your prayers, and your faith, and your blood, with His in the chalice. These, like the water and wine, form the matter of his sacrifice.”
And this participation, this offering of the sacrifice of our lives, is not something we do alone. Rather we do it in communion with the whole Church, as people bring their sacrifices to Altars from Spencer to South Grafton, all joined by the same Altar, the same Christ and the same perfect Sacrifice of Praise.
That is what the priest means when he says: “Pray brethren, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Almighty Father.” My sacrifice…the sacrifice of Christ which I was ordained to offer with and for you, and your sacrifices (in the plural!). All offered on that Altar and joined to the perfect sacrifice of Christ.
Participation from the Inside Out
For our Participation in the Liturgy, is not just what we see on the outside: standing, kneeling, responding and singing. Our Participation in the liturgy is from the inside out.
Such participation is informed, internal, and profound.
It demands that when the minister of Holy Communion holds up the consecrated host and says “the Body of Christ,” that minister truly believes that they hold Jesus in their hands, in the same way that the Mother of God held the Christ child up for the adoration of the Magi.
It demands that when the Lector says, “The Word of the Lord,” he knows that God has spoken through his lips, that like Moses, he has been sent to a Chosen People, a Holy Nation to deliver the Word of the Lord.
It demands that the Altar Server carrying a cross down the aisle, knows that he is carrying the Son of God and the instrument of his salvation to a people who desperately need hope and strength.
It means that each person is profoundly focused not on the external bow, response, or gesture the Liturgy demands of them, but on the ways in which that liturgical action joins them to the Church and to their neighbor and, indeed, to Christ in his Paschal Sacrifice.
Such a participation in Christ's Paschal Death and rising on so intimate a level, transforms us, that we might become the mysteries we celebrate; transforming us into the image of him whose Body and Blood we eat and drink.
A full participation in such a mystery means a full donation of self.A conscious participation in such a mystery means a conscious dying to my own will and a rebirth to God's will for me. An active participation in such mysteries means that I actively let go of everything I have and embrace only the obedient and active love of Christ who now lives in me.
SATURDAY, September 21
Feast of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist
Morning Prayer
Conference 2
Some Thoughts on Adoring the Eucharist
It all started with Juliana, a Norbertine nun who lived 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 that 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.
And before Sr. Juliana she died, the great Dominican Scholar, Saint Thomas Aquinas, while 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, beginning 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 familiar verse of that hymn is the fifth 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 that every knight or lady of Malta could probably translate the Tantum ergo with no help from me….but just in case there are any strangers from the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre 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.
Whenever Father celebrates Mass, he raises the host which sits in that monstrance before us and says the words of John the Baptist: 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 faith 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, humiliation and disgrace. A man condemned to die for sins against the nation, stripped, beaten 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, an 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 being quaint and a little outdated. But to the eyes of faith I, in all my littleness and inadequacy have been chosen by God to live and act in the 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 the woman who has grown old, sitting there praying the rosary as someone 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 as 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 Eucharist 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 reminds 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.”
Mass and Eucharistic Adoration
homily
Votive Mass of the Holy Eucharist
GOSPEL John 6:60-69
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John.
Many of the disciples of Jesus who were listening said,
“This saying is hard; who can accept it?”
Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this,
he said to them,
“Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man
ascending to where he was before?
It is the Spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail.
The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.
But there are some of you who do not believe.”
As a result of this,
many of his disciples returned to their former way of life
and no longer walked with him.
Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe
and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Homily
Every day of our lives, from the beginning to the end, God feeds us, sustains us and calls us to himself.
On the day I made my First Communion, Saturday, June 4, 1960 my Godparents, Nora and George, gave me this little prayer book. This book, which has probably survived the last sixty-one years better than I have, taught me a very important lesson.
On page 55, there’s a picture of the Priest holding up the host, entitled “The Changing of the Bread.” Here is what it says: “This is the holiest part of the Mass. The priest first changes the bread into the living body of Jesus. He uses the same words Jesus used.”
I can still remember how. excited I was to receive Jesus in Holy Communion and to know that he would be always with me, even when I felt afraid or little.
Our beloved Pope emeritus, Benedict XVI felt the same way when he made his First Communion on a Sunday in March of 1936. “I understood,” he said, “that Jesus had entered my heart, he had actually visited me. And with Jesus, God himself was with me. And I realised that this is a gift of love that is truly worth more than all the other things that life can give”
That feeling never really goes away. As when I would take my bike home from High School. often overwhelmed with the angst of adolescence. Each day I would stop in front of Saint Brigid’s Church and sit in front of the tabernacle. Somehow, just staring at that little red light and the tabernacle beside it was enough to reassure me that I was not alone and that God would make sense of it all.
And he has. Jesus has kept his promise that “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.” The Lord has promised it, as he promised that “whoever eats* my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.”
I find myself wondering, more frequently as I grow older, what that Last Communion will be like on the day I will die. The Church calls it viaticum, the food for the journey home to the Lord who has never left me, but comes to live in my heart in Holy Communion.
As a priest, I have been frequently overwhelmed by the faith of those who receive the consecrated host a short time before they die. You can see it in their eyes, the same eyes that as a little kid gazed upon Christ’s Body the first time. There’s a trust in those eyes, and a faith that God, who has been with them at every Mass throughout their lives, will not abandon them in their final moments.
Rather, you can imagine them seeing him face-to-face whom they have received so many times at every age of their lives. Then they will see clearly, the one whom they have believed is present, Body, Blood Soul and Divinity” in each Holy Communion.
This is why the celebration of the Mass is the source and summit of the Christian life, by which we take part in the holy and living sacrifice offered by Christ upon the altar of the Cross.
For every day of our lives, from the beginning to the end, God feeds us, sustains us and calls us to himself.
How blessed we are to be called to the Supper of the Lamb!
Evening Prayer
Conference 3
The Eucharist and Life
The opening line of Pope Saint John Paul II’s landmark epistle, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, is foundational to what I am about to say today. “The Church draws her life from the Eucharist.”
The Holy Father expands on this assertion by recalling that the Fathers of the second Vatican Council saw the Eucharistic sacrifice as the source and summit of the Christian life.
For it is in the gift of his own Body and Blood that Christ gives us life. Remember his words: He who eats my body and drinks my blood will never really die.
Now it is true, that we first received life from God through that “intimate community of of life and love” which is the sacrament of marriage. Just last week I was celebrating a marriage back at Saint Cecilia’s with a bride and groom so overjoyed and overwhelmed that they were both practically jumping out of their skin.
They were overjoyed because they understood what the Church means when she says that children are the “supreme gift and ultimate crown” of marriage; that the bond they were about to enter was “established by God the Creator” through which new life comes into the world.
Which is why, in just a few short months, we will gather to celebrate the birth of another child “the Birth of a Child which is proclaimed as joyful news:
I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”
This source of great joy is the Birth of the Savior; but [as Pope Saint John Paul II reminds us] Christmas also reveals the full meaning of every human birth, and the joy which accompanies the Birth of the Messiah is thus seen to be the foundation and fulfillment of joy at every child born into the world.”
That’s why Christmas is such a magical time: not because of Santa Claus or the lights or the trees or the gifts (although they are all wonderful) what beings us true joy is when from this ambo we hear the old familiar story:
“And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”
And these words touch our hearts every time. As the miracle of the birth of every child is a sign that God has not given up on us, that miracles still happen and that another human being has come into the world.
Pope John Paul II said it best:
The newborn child gives itself to its parents by the very fact of its coming into existence. Its existence is already a gift, the first gift of the Creator to the creature…The child becomes a gift to its brothers, sisters, parents and entire family. Its life becomes a gift for the very people who were givers of life and who cannot help but feel its presence, its sharing in their life and its contribution to their common good and to that of the community of the family.
Now we have spent most of our lives, you and me, trying to convince others of what a gift children really are. And while there’s a lot of myopia about these days, we’ve have some pretty good support through the years.
I think of the words attributed to Dane Alighieri. He has been often referred to as the father of the Italian language, but he was also the father of three children: Pietro, Jácopo and Antonia. And there’s a touching line in his Paradiso, which reads:
Tre cose rimangono con noi dal paradiso:
stellae, fiori e bambini.
Three things remain with us from paradise:
stars, flowers and children.
And then there’s the brilliant young painter, Vincent Van Gogh. Did you know he was a missionary for a time? He died, of course, a suicide, after years of struggling with psychosis. Yet a few years before that, his brother Theo married and names his first child after his brother. In a letter to Theo, Vincent wrote:
If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it. I think that I see something deeper, more infinite, more eternal than the ocean in the expression of the eyes of a little baby when it wakes in the morning and coos or laughs because it sees the sun shining on its cradle.
All it takes for someone to believe the Gospel of Life is to see Christ present in the blessed Sacrament and Christ present in the eyes of a little child. For, as Pope Francis reminds us, “God does not reveal himself in strength or power, but in the weakness and fragility of a newborn babe. And as Winnie the Pooh adds, “sometimes the smallest things take up the most space in your heart.”
Such was the case when Jesus told the crowds that he was the “bread of life,” and that unless they ate his Body and drank his Blood they would have no life in them.
“I am the living bread which came down from heaven... [he told them, and] he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have eternal life.”
And do you remember what they did. John the Evangelist tell us they walked away.
“After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.”
They just could not believe it. It was incomprehensible to them.
So, do you remember what happened next? Jesus turns to his disciples and says: And what about you? “Will you also desert me?” And Peter, big impetuous Peter, does not say no. Rather he says “Lord, where else could we go?” “You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
Jesus then is the “bread of life,” the “living bread” come down from heaven.
That is why we are engaged in three years of Eucharistic Renewal, in order to reaffirm the belief in and celebration of the Holy and Living Sacrifice which is the source and summit of our lives.
And that’s why, the Order of Malta is dedicated to the sick and to the Church, and it is why the center of our work and the source of our strength must be our full, conscious and active participation in the Sacrifice of the Mass and a reverent reception of Holy Communion.
For in Holy Communion, we receive more than we could ever have hoped for. As we will pray in each of our parishes at Mass tomorrow, the gift of Christ’s Body and Blood surpasses all our “merits and the desires” to pardon what our consciences dread “and to give what prayer does not dare to ask.”
For in Holy Communion we receive the very Body and Blood of Christ. As we recall at every Mass, on the night before he died, Jesus took bread and said “This is my Body...This is my Blood.” So, while the outward appearance of the bread and wine remain unchanged, the substance of both has been changed into the Body and Blood of Christ whole and entire, God and Man. Indeed, under the appearance of bread and wine, Christ is present “in a true, real and substantial way, with his Body and his Blood, with his Soul and his Divinity.”
What’s more, he gives us his Body and Blood as our food for our journey through life, as our spiritual nourishment. Take and eat... take and drink, he commands us, for his Body and Blood is give for us, that our sins might be forgiven.
For, though we are many, we are made one body in him “we all partake of the one Bread and one Chalice.” This is what the Church means when she prays that we might be “transformed into what we consume,” that “partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, we may be gathered into one by the Holy Spirit.”
Night Prayer
Conference 4
We have our work cut out for us.
And while many lament loudly the enormity and complexity of the work, I know that those who sit before me this morning are actually trying to do something about it.
Trying to help little children and those who wish to become Catholic to understand the Eucharistic mystery.
Trying to get families and the disaffected to go to Church.
Trying to invigorate whatever embers there might be into the flames of a burning faith.
But we have our work cut out for us. So, let’s just start with a couple of facts.
First, regarding the state of Eucharistic Practice
While the number of Catholics in the United States as a percentage of the population has, for the past fifty years, remained pretty consistent at around 25%, the percentage of Catholics who go to Mass has declined precipitously in recent years.
Just over 80% of Catholics in the United States attended Mass each Sunday in the 1950s. Today that figure seldom rises above 25%, and in many of our parishes is significantly lower.
While pandemic restrictions reduced weekly attendance to as low as 17%, the General Social Survey indicates that, by the end of 2021 “just fewer than a quarter are attending Mass weekly…”
Perhaps we can be heartened that more than 40% of Catholics attend Mass at least once a month, and two-thirds attend Mass at Christmas, Easter, and on Ash Wednesday. But why do fewer people go to Church today than in previous generations?
A major factor has been the general diminishment of confidence in institutions of any sort, but most notably in churches. Between 2010 and 2016, confidence in Churches dropped more significantly than any other institution, save the banks (due, presumably to the financial crisis of 2007-2008).
Other studies have suggested that our “elevator speech” about how the Church historically and currently helps to address social problems is becoming less effective. In the eight years between 2008 and 2016, the number of Catholics who believe that religious institutions contribute at least somewhat to social problems has fallen by 16%.
Only 25% of people think that most religious leaders care about others and 17% believe you can get fair and accurate information from them or that they handle our resources responsibly.4
This lack of confidence is reflected in an even more disturbing way in regard to Catholic clergy. Just 8% of U.S. Catholics say they are “very close” to their clergy, as opposed 25% of Protestants. Similarly, fewer Catholics than Protestants trust the guidance of their religious leaders. One answer, therefore, to why Catholics do not trust “the Church” is that they often do not view the clergy as trustworthy or capable of providing them with reliable guidance.
A word on Eucharistic Belief
An equally important factor in the diminishment in Church attendance has been a lack of appreciation of what the Mass is all about.
Without a doubt, the single study which most influenced the USCCB to decision to initiate “a three-year grassroots revival of devotion and belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist” was the 2019 Pew Research Center poll which asserted that “just one-third of U.S. Catholics agree with their Church that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ.”
Shortly thereafter, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) took the Pew poll to task for the wording of their questions, noting the different results CARA reported on a similar question in its 2011 poll.
In November of 2021, The Pillar commissioned its own “Survey on Religious Attitudes and Practices” with the marketing research firm Centiment. Asking people to respond to the question “I believe the Eucharist is the Body and Blood of Christ,” they reported that approximately fifty percent of Catholics who attend Mass weekly replied in the affirmative.
Eucharistic practice and belief
The Eucharistic Revival embarked upon by our Bishops, therefore, had two purposes: to enhance Eucharistic practice and Eucharistic belief.
So let’s spend a few minutes reviewing just what this Eucharistic practice and belief is all about.
What, then, is the Mass? It is Christ’s Holy and Living Sacrifice, “an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ.” We are called to participate in the Mass by joining the sacrifices of our lives to his perfect sacrifice.
This means that the Mass is not our action, but Christ’s, who is “ever present in his Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations.” Then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said it best: “…God acts through Christ in the liturgy and we cannot act but
through him and with him.”
This presence of Christ in the Mass is manifested in four ways:
In the celebration of Mass the chief ways in which Christ is present in his Church gradually become clear. First he is present in the very assembly of the faithful, gathered together in his name; next he is present in his word, when the Scriptures are read in the Church and explained; then in the person of the minister; finally and above all, in the Eucharistic sacrament. In a way that is completely unique, the whole and entire Christ, God and man, is substantially and permanently present in the sacrament. This presence of Christ under the appearance of bread and wine “is called real, not to exclude other kinds of presence as if they were not real, but because it is real par excellence.”
Christ is Present in the Gathered Assembly
Jesus, who assured us that he is present where two or three are gathered in his name, (cf. Matthew 18:20) gathers a people made holy by Baptism to himself at Mass, a ministerial priesthood, to join the sacrifices of their lives to his perfect sacrifice. “Where two or three are gathered in my name,” he told his disciples,
“there are I am in their midst.” (Mark 18:20)
Christ is Present in the Scriptures Proclaimed
The introduction to the Lectionary for Mass is clear: “Christ is always present in his word, as he carries out the mystery of salvation, sanctifies humanity and offers the Father perfect worship.” This is why, at the end of each reading we acclaim
Christ’s presence as the Lector announces that what he has just read is “The Word of the Lord,” and the Deacon proclaims: “The Gospel of the Lord.”
Christ is Present in the Priest
The Roman Missal describes the role of the priest at Mass as “acting in the person of Christ.” For Christ “chooses men to become sharers in his sacred ministry…to renew in his name the sacrifice of human redemption” and “to strive to be conformed to the image of Christ himself and offer you a constant witness of faith and love [to God].”
But, in these years of Eucharistic Revival, we have we also embarked on an intensive reflection on the ultimate presence of Christ, described by the Council fathers as his presence par excellence: the presence of Christ in the Eucharistic species.
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Christ is Present in his Body and Blood, Received in Holy Communion
The earliest testimony to the presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine comes from the Lord himself, who in every account of the Last Supper says explicitly “this is my Body…this is my Blood.” Likewise, the great Eucharistic
discourses he tells us that “he who eats my Body and drinks my Blood will live in me and I in him.” (John 6:56)
Similarly, Saint John’s relating of Jesus’ teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum reinforces our belief in Christ’s presence in the consecrated bread. As the crowds seek out Jesus following his multiplication of the loaves and the fishes, he tells
them that they have been looking for him because they saw signs and had their fill. But he tells them “do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” (John 6:27)
Then he tells them about a bread which does not perish, the “true bread” which comes from the Father “and gives life to the world.” (John 6:33) Here he sets out the foundation of our eucharistic understanding. “I am the bread of life; whoever
comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” (John 6:36)
And nowhere have I ever heard it all better explained than in the words of the English mystic Caryll Houselander when she writes about Father O’Grady:
"Father O’Grady was on the side of life, he had no other work, no other raison d'etre but to give life, and the life he gave could not be killed. He was not outside of the world's love because he was a priest and alone, he was the heart of the world's love, its core, because the Life of the World is born every day in His hands at Mass.
“Father O'Grady made the Sign of the Cross. "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen," and bowed down under the burden of the sins of the whole world. His own sins were a heavy enough load, and now he bowed under the weight of all sin. But when he straightened himself up from the Confiteor, the burden of the whole world's sin, and his own with it, had fallen from his back, and his shoulders were strong. For it was Christ who rose up and went up to the altar-Christ who had seen evil naked, face to face, Christ who had been brought down to the ground, under the world's sin to sweat blood into the dust, and Christ who had overcome the world.
“He lifted the unconsecrated Host, light as a petal on its thin golden paten, and with it lifted the simple bread of humanity, threshed and sifted by poverty and suffering. He offered the broken fragments of their love, made into one loaf.
“He lifted the wine and water mixed in the Chalice, and with it offered the blood and the tears of his people to God.
“And God accepted the offering, the fragments of love were gathered up into the wholeness of Love and nothing was wasted.
“Slowly, exactly, Father O'Grady repeated the words of Consecration, his hands moved in Christ's hands, his voice spoke in Christ's voice, his words were Christ's words, his heart beat in Christ's heart.
“Fr. O'Grady lifted up the consecrated Host in his short, chapped hands, the server rang a little bell, the sailor, the handful of old women and the very old man bowed down whispering "My Lord and my God" and the breath of their adoration was warm on their cold fingers.
“Father O'Grady was lifting up God...
“The little server rang his silver bell. The people bowed down low. Time stopped. Fr. O'Grady was lifting up God in his large, chapped hands. Christ remained on the Cross. The blood and sweat and tears of the world were on His face. he smiled, the smile of infinite peace, the ineffable bliss of consummated love."
SUNDAY, September 22
Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mass
Homily
The disciples are debating who is the greatest, and so Jesus embraces a little child, and says “Whoever receives this child receives me.” Jesus equates himself with a child, echoing what he says in another Gospel: “Unless you become like a little child, you shall not enter the Kingdom of God.
Now I was having a problem reflecting on this a couple years ago as I was waiting for a plane in an uncomfortable chair in the Philly airport. Across from me a three old was providing the entertainment. He repeatedly waited until his exhausted father would just begin to fall asleep and then scream and jump in his lap. Then, when he had finished shrieking with malevolent laughter, he grabbed a juice box and squeezed it with such force that its juicy-juice became airborne and soaked the hat of the lady sitting behind him. Unsatisfied that his performance was being sufficiently appreciated, he broke away and ran screaming down the concourse waving his arms above his head, while his harried father scrambled behind him.
Is this the kind of child God calls us to imitate? Hardly.
But there is something about a child worthy of all imitation. Three things really: innocence, purity, and trust.
Innocence. Is there anything more innocent than a little child? And what is innocence? Innocence is the absence of guilt. It is the verdict for which the accused waits with baited breath. It is the utter amazement of the good person in the face of cruelty. It is the goodness so tangible that it cleanses you just by being near it.
There’s a beautiful painting of innocence in the Worcester Art Museum, called the peaceable kingdom. It’s based on Isaiah’s vision of the Lion and Lamb, living together in peace: the lion and the lamb, strength and innocence in peace. And this painting reveals a great secret: that innocence is the real source of strength. Or, as Mahatma Ghandi once wrote: “The greater our innocence, the greater our strength and the swifter our victory.”
The real solution to all life’s problems is returning to the the innocence of a little child. And what restores lost innocence is contrition, confession and turning away from all that eats my innocence alive.
The second quality of the child is purity. Pure is not, and never has been, the most sought after of titles. And that’s because purity is often equated with prudery, which is such a shame. Because purity is one of the fastest ways to heaven.
Purity is the absence of vices and the abundance of virtues. The opposite of purity is filthiness. My soul is either pure or it’s filthy.
When you were baptized, the priest clothed you in a white garment and said: keep this garment unstained until that day when the Lord will return to judge the living and the dead. Your soul is that white garment. And all through life you have a choice of keeping that garment clean, abstaining from filth, frequently washing it in the blood of the Lamb, or letting it get dirty, polluting it, and failing to keep it clean.
The real solution to all life’s problems is in restoring the purity of a little child way down deep inside you, in your soul, the part of you which is most really you. And what restores lost purity is contrition, confession and turning away from all that eats my purity alive.
Innocence, purity, and Trust. No one trusts more completely than a child, especially a little child cradled in his mother’s arms, trusting entirely that he will be taken care of. He trusts that there is someone bigger than he is who loves him with a love and a power beyond his imaginings. Trust means that I don’t spend much much time worrying, because I know God has it all under control.
As a wise Benedictine woman once wrote, paraphrasing the Lord: ‘Come to me all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest. Give me all your worries, your fears and yours care, and trust that I will take care of them. Let me be God and you be my child. Just rest in me’
So you want to go to heaven. It’s easy. Become a little child again, in innocence, in purity, and in trust.
