Our Sacred Banquet

Corpus Christi – June 26, 2011 – St. John’s

This feast enables us to spend a few moments reflecting on the central element of our Catholic faith and life, the mystery of the Body and Blood of the Lord. For that purpose, I would like to make use of a traditional Latin eucharistic hymn, written in the 13th century by St. Thomas Aquinas as part of the liturgy for today’s feast. It is a wonderfully concise and poetic evocation of the theology of the Holy Eucharist that St. Thomas developed at length in his great work, the Summa theologica. Here is how it goes: O sacrum convivium in quo Christus sumitur, recolitur memoria passionis ejus, mens impletur gratia, et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur. “Oh sacred banquet in which Christ is received, the memory of his passion is renewed, the soul is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us.”
This is, first of all, a sacred banquet, a convivium,

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Trinity Sunday

Feast of the Most Holy Trinity – June 19, 2011 – St. John’s

Every Sunday, if you think about it, is Trinity Sunday. We always begin and end our worship “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Whatever their particular themes may be, all of the Scriptural texts we hear Sunday after Sunday are in the service of the good news we heard stated so succinctly today: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son… God did not send his Son into the world in order to judge the world but that the world might be saved by him.” In every Mass we celebrate and enjoy “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.”
These NT texts are the Christian expansion of the self-revelation by God that began with experiences like that of Moses on Mt. Sinai, when God revealed his name.

Cuttings and plantings

Pentecost Sunday – June 12, 2011 – St. John’s

This great feast is an end and a beginning. Pentecost brings the Easter season to its climax as we celebrate the risen Lord’s gift of the life and power of his Holy Spirit. At the same time it inaugurates the period known (rather pedestrianly) as “ordinary time,” which may be thought to correspond to the entrance of the Church into the history of the world in the lives of the community of disciples whom the same Spirit has enlivened and empowered, generation after generation, until it has enlivened and empowered us who gather here. We are celebrating our origins.

“I pray for them”

Seventh Sunday in Eastertide – June 5, 2011 – St. John’s, Goshen

In St. John’s Gospel, four chapters (14-17) are entirely devoted to the last words of Jesus before he enters upon his passion. After giving his last instruction and exhortations to the apostles, in Chapter 17 Jesus turns from them to his Father and prays what is called his “high-priestly prayer.” Today we have heard the first part of this prayer.  It is not offered to us simply as an historical memory, but rather as representing the prayer that Jesus continues to pray for his Church, for us. It should be of immense comfort to know that Jesus himself prays for us.