One Bread, One Body

.. if a non-Catholic Christian were to become steeped in real Catholicism. I’m talking about the orthodox/faithful kind, not those apparently spawned by the touchy-feely 60s and 70s variety of Catholicism where RCIA was all about “oh we don’t do that anymore” or “oh that’s not really so important”..

Take prayer, for example. When I use the Divine Office (also known as Liturgy of the Hours), it still amazes me how Catholic it is — and how it turns anti-Catholic rhetoric on its head. It also turns liberal Catholicism on its head, I think. I attend morning prayer as much as I can at my parish, and it is a wonderful feeling to start the day praising God. It’s also a fast-track Scripture reading for me, easily covering 4 Psalms and a New Testament reading. Plus the ancient hymns from the first millenium. If we could just all start our days this way — !

These are the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary: The Lord’s Baptism, The Wedding at Cana, The Proclamation of the Kingdom, The Transfiguration, and The Institution of the Eucharist. These five mysteries focus on five key events within the public life of the Lord before his passion and death on the cross, and they are full of mystery and insight. Some of the thoughts I had today were these:

• Why did the Lord choose to use water in baptism? The Lord is not bound to the physical world, is he? In the same vein, why did the Lord choose to use something likewise mundane, bread and wine, to celebrate so deep and holy a sacrament? How good is the Lord, for he deigns to bestow his holiness upon the mundane — even mundane sinners like me! He humbled himself and was made mundane flesh! Truly God’s creation was good from the first instance, as He declared, and He does not abandon what He has made with love! The physical universe is not in itself evil, and the Lord chooses to use the physical universe to sustain us, to teach us — to bestow love upon us! He also shows us that He is not in the glittery gold and the twinkling and dazzling. He is in water, bread, wine. Truly our Lord makes Himself present in the simple things, making himself accessible to all who will open their hearts when He knocks!
• In the wedding at Cana, it is amazing that the Lord of the great feast of Heaven would bestow His first miracle upon a wedding feast! I have seen a Jewish wedding (well, a Jewish and Greek wedding feast put together). Heaven, the Lord tells us, is like a wedding feast, full of joy, dancing, singing, laughter. May we remember the Lord’s presence in times of joy, not only in times of need.
• When the Lord proclaimed the Kingdom, He brought liberty to captives, sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the mute, mobility to the cripple, healing, and life to the dead. The Kingdom is not just proclaimed, for the Lord’s word does not return to Him in vain. When the Word is sent out, frost melts, the waters stir — the Word is efficacious! When the Lord declares, He works what is declared! Happy are we whom He declares to be washed, adopted as His sons and daughters, our guilt washed away, our just punishments borne by His sacrifice on the cross.
• In the holy mountain, the Lord’s glory was flashed upon the pillars of the Church: James, John and Peter. They must have had need to see that, not only to bear witness, but to sustain them when they are tried in those three terrible days of catastrophe (which becomes euchatastrophic). And the Lawgiver, Moses was there. And the prophet Elijah was there. The Law and the Prophets come together in the New Covenant of the Lord, which is the Lord Himself.
• In the Eucharist, the Lord institutes the sacrament of love, giving Himself for our nourishment. His life in His blood is given to us for a new life.

The Lord has truly risen, Alleluia!

I’ve never gone to a late night adoration of the Blessed Sacrament before tonight. It was beautiful. No bells (just the faint smell of incense from the Mass earlier tonight. I’ve been to benediction at an Opus Dei center near college many years ago, and it’s the same thing: a quiet time spent with the Lord. At least after benediction, you get a few minutes of Eucharistic adoration. There’s the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. Even if there was no exposition, just the Lord’s real presence in the Eucharist within the tabernacle. But tonight is different. It is Holy Thursday, and the context is that night between the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper and the trial of the Lord by the Sanhedrin. Tonight, these words haunted me: “Could you not stay awake with me for one hour?” On Holy Thursday, we try to spend one hour (or however long we can), awake and praying, spending time with Him, remembering His terrible agony in the garden, while His disciples slept and left Him to his loneliness and anxiety. I, too, often sleep through His agony at my sins unfolding before His eyes, which He atones for because He loves me.

I dozed off a few times tonight, and I was alternating between sleepiness and wandering thoughts. But I’m so happy I went anyway. May it be, through God’s grace, that I shall spend more and more time with Him, awake and praying, through this Holy Week and in all my days.