Extra Time to Say ‘My Lord and my God!’

“You are the Christ of God.” (Luke 9:20)

We don’t have enough time. During Mass, I mean. At the elevation of the Host, following the consecration.

We do not have adequate time then to say, ‘You are the Christ!’ with the deliberateness, the love, the devotion, that we want to say these words with.

The holy angels are much faster than us.

Before time as we know it began, the holy angels beheld the mystery of the Incarnation in the divine mind. Instantly they humbled themselves and worshipped with their entire beings, consecrating themselves completely to the glory of the Word made flesh.

But we are slow. We poke along. Our minds move forward like mules move up a steep, rocky hillside–ie., very, very reluctantly. So we need more time to adore the Christ.

That’s why the monstrance got invented. To extend the elevation at the consecration, to give us more time to say to the Lord, ‘You are the Christ!’

In exactly one week, we will observe the usual First-Friday custom at Francis of Assisi in Rocky Mount, exposing the Host in the monstrance for adoration, from 10am-noon, and from 6pm-8pm. Then on Sunday, October 5, we will have adoration all day from the end of Mass at 9am until Benediction at 4pm.

At. St. Joseph in Martinsville, we will expose the Blessed Sacrament not just for the usual First-Friday Holy Hour next Friday, but for forty Holy Hours—until Sunday morning.

Even all these extra hours will not give us enough time to say everything that we can and should say to the Lord. But let’s make a decent start of it.

Summary of SCG 3.59

Thanking the good Lord for 41 years which have passed in what seems like a quarter of an hour, I offer you this loose paraphrase of the Angelic Doctor:

Our minds desire to know and understand. We will not be satisfied until we know and understand everything. In heaven, we will.

Except…

We cannot know and understand God Himself, His goodness, His power. He is infinite–beyond the measure of our minds. We cannot know why He made the world, you, me. We cannot understand His reasons for treating us with mercy.

So, yes: Our desire to know and understand outstrips all our other desires and defines who we really are. We can, with the help of God, clear away all our silly penchants for anything less than the truth. Then the desire to know, which moves beneath our fleeting appetites, will propel us to God.

But our acquiring minds do not move at the absolute center of our existential gravity.

In heaven, may it please Him we get there, we will delight in understanding why shrimp swim the ocean waters, why Mars has two moons, why so-and-so did such-and-such.

But the whys and wherefores will have an end. One thing, however, will have no end: our adoration of the infinite Love behind it all, Whom we will never understand.

Desire for knowledge runs pretty deep. Worship of the One Who blows our minds–that runs even deeper.

…Thank you very much for all the kind birthday wishes. The kudos there are really due to my mommy.

Guest Bests

by Mary Ann
Best runner to cheer for during a marathon: a priest

Best lunch companion: a priest

Best trip abroad: pilgrimage with a priest (or two)

Best life’s work: be a priest

Best GPS to Heaven: listen to a priest

Best prayer intention: protection and sanctification of priests

Best Blessing from God: the gift of our priests

Best place to hear the most beautiful words on earth (absolution): Confession to a priest

Best Lenten activity: Stations of the Cross led by a priest

Best Adoration moments: reverent Elevation during Holy Mass by a priest

Best gift: receiving Holy Communion from a priest

October Teachings of Pope John Paul II

In the picture behind the blog title above, I am on my way down to kiss the ring of the late, beloved Pope John Paul II. Pope John Paul II was chosen to be the Successor of St. Peter in October. Over the course of 26 and a-half years as Pope, John Paul managed to do something memorable in just about every month of the year. But October was always special.

In October of 2002, Pope John Paul II declared a Year of the Rosary. He gave us the five Luminous Mysteries to add to our meditations. October is the month of the Rosary–the month to start saying the Rosary again, or to start saying it better. In the letter he wrote that October, the Holy Father pointed out that praying Our Lady’s Rosary leads us to Christ. Praying the Rosary helps us to participate more prayerfully in the Sacred Liturgy. The Rosary, properly understood, is ecumenical.

In other words, you simply cannot go wrong by saying the Rosary every day–or at least one decade of the Rosary every day. If you do not know all the mysteries or have forgotten the prayers for the Rosary, the Vatican has a nice Rosary webpage.

In October of 2004, just six months before he went to meet the Lord, Pope John Paul inaugurated a Year of the Holy Eucharist. He urged all of us to draw close to the Blessed Sacrament, especially by visiting the tabernacle and going to Adoration.

In his Encyclical on the Eucharist, the Pope had written that we need a new sense of wonder about the unfathomable mystery of the Real Presence. In his October 2004 letter, John Paul wrote: “The presence of Jesus in the tabernacle must be a kind of magnetic pole attracting…souls enamoured of him, ready to wait patiently to hear his voice and, as it were, to sense the beating of his heart.”

The First Friday of every month is the day dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. So, on the First Friday of October (or the First Saturday, dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary), let us…
…enter into the Sacred Heart of Jesus…
…which beats for us in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar…
…by reciting Our Lady’s Rosary with devotion.