Mass of the Lord’s Supper
Responsorial Psalm (Psalm 116):
(audio thanks to: Living with Christ)
Archives
Corpus Christi
In our missal today, right after the second reading, is an “optional sequence” intended to be sung before the Gospel. It is the Lauda Sion, or, Praise of the Eucharist, by St. Thomas Aquinas. We didn’t sing or say it at our particular Mass, and it is quite long – one whole page in small print, twelve verses – but I’d like to highlight two verses here for the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. They focus on the theme of how the Holy Eucharist is the fulfillment of Old Testament events. [Apparently there are about twenty English translations of the original, so I'm just using the one from our Sunday Missal]:
Verse 4:
Here the new law’s new oblation,
by the new King’s revelation,
Ends the forms of ancient rite.
Now the new the old effaces,
Substance now the shadow chases,
light of day dispels the night.
Verse 11:
Hail, the food of Angels given
to the pilgrim who has striven,
to the child as bread from heaven,
food alone for spirit meant;
Now the former types fulfilling —
Isaac bound, a victim willing,
Paschal Lamb, its life-blood spilling,
manna to the ancients sent.
There are many other beautiful and important themes running through the Lauda Sion, and I was very happy to have become acquainted with it this year, as I don’t recall ever seeing it before. You can find some of the many English translations just by googling, or see it in Latin, and there are various versions on YouTube as well.
Understanding the Mass
The following are two online resources available to help us gain a deeper understanding of the Mass:
On the Catholic Home Study Service website (the Director of this service is Father Oscar Lukefahr, C.M.), there are nine free courses available (donations always appreciated though), one of which is entitled, “We Worship. A Guide to the Catholic Mass”. Ann, of Poetry, Prayer, and Praise first introduced us to this fabulous resource back in October 2009, and reminded us of it in a comment on the previous post. Thank you, Ann!
A second resource is a page dedicated to Understanding the Mass at St. Patrick’s Basilica here in Ottawa. While you’re at the site, check out their fantastic collection of free e-books, and especially for my friend JT, scoot down the Homepage to find Michael O’Brien!
Too Much, But I'll Take It
Much can happen in the space of a couple of hours. I was walking to the five-o’clock Mass today, cutting through a fieldy-park listening to/singing along with the Liturgy Podcast, when suddenly my guardian angel made me aware that he was right there beside me, walking to church with me.
At Mass, during the Eucharistic Prayer, the words, “Let your Spirit come upon these gifts to make them holy, so that they may become for us the body and blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ”, gave me a sudden jolt – it was as if I had never heard them before in my life, or understood how intricate a role the Holy Spirit has in the transubstantiation – and I started to cry.
I am sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop, preparing tomorrow’s post for Consecrated to Mary, and crying all through Bishop Bello’s Chapter 26 of Mary, Human and Holy, where she is “Woman of the Upper Room”. As I gaze out the window my heart is breaking for the birch tree we had to cut down, but the Spirit is trying to soothe my soul by showing me the expanse of sky that has now opened up to my view. Water Blessing, by Annette Cantor, which I found at Gratefulness.org, is playing and my spirit soars upwards with it, despite the volume of the neighbour’s lawnmower.
Sometimes it is all too much. Too gloriously much.
Feast of Corpus Christi
This is Father Steve Sinn, SJ, of the Catholic Parish of St. Canice, Elizabeth Bay, Australia. It is his first video, and I’m certainly looking forward to many more.
Excerpt from Heart of the World, by Hans Urs von Balthasar, pgs. 80-81:
I am the vine, you are the branches. You have blossomed forth from me. Are you then surprised if a drop of my Heart’s blood trickles into your every thought and deed? Are you surprised if the thoughts of my Heart quietly infiltrate your worldly heart? If a whispering takes wing in you and day and night you perceive a low, beckoning call? To a love that wants to suffer, to a love that, together with mine, redeems? Are you surprised if the desire comes upon you to risk your life and all your strength and put them in jeopardy for your brothers? And to complete in your own body what is still lacking to my sufferings, what must still lack as long as I have not suffered my Passion in all my branches and members? For, to be sure, none of you is redeemed by anyone save myself; but I am the total Redeemer only united with each of you. Do you want to accomplish the great change with me and build up the Father’s Kingdom? Do you want to live my mind, the resolve of one who did not hold on to his form of God convulsively and clutchingly, but who broke it and emptied it out so that it began to flow as the courage to serve and as lowliness, became obedient even unto death on the Cross? Are you willing? For my work must be perfected in you and it will be brought to term only when my Heart beats in yours, only when all hearts, now submissive and docile, beat for the Father together in my Heart. Are you willing?
Our Hands
He broke the bread and gave it to His disciples saying, “Take this, all of you, and eat it; this is My Body which will be given up for you.” They accepted it from Him with human hands and ate.
He humbles Himself to enter our mouths, to be chewed by some, melted in saliva by others, to proceed down our alimentary canals and goodness knows how much further, surrounded by God-only-knows how many germs and bacteria.
He rubbed blind men’s eyes with mud and spittle; He touched and was touched by lepers. He kissed and He hugged. He never shied away from anyone’s body. He washed people’s feet.
And yet there are some who believe He abhors being gently cupped in our loving hand and cradled momentarily before we receive Him. Have they truly asked Him about this, I wonder.
St. Faustina’s Diary, Notebook I, excerpt from # 160:
When I was about to receive Holy Communion, a second Host fell onto the priest’s sleeve, and I did not know which host I was to receive. After I had hesitated for a moment, the priest made an impatient gesture with his hand to tell me I should receive the Host. When I took the Host he gave me, the other one fell onto my hands. The priest went along the altar rail to distribute Communion, and I held the Lord Jesus in my hands all that time. When the priest approached me again, I raised the Host for him to put it back into the chalice, because when I had first received Jesus I could not speak before consuming the Host, and so could not tell him that the other had fallen. But while I was holding the Host in my hand, I felt such a power of love that for the rest of the day I could neither eat nor come to my senses. I heard these words from the Host: I desired to rest in your hands, not only in your heart. And at that moment I saw the little Jesus. But when the priest approached, I saw once again only the Host.
