Tribulation Times
November 22, 2013
(Mat 26:26-28) And whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread and blessed and broke and gave to his disciples and said: Take ye and eat. This is my body. And taking the chalice, he gave thanks and gave to them, saying: Drink ye all of this. For this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins.
PETER KREEFT: Adoration means especially Eucharistic adoration. In that silence there is a power greater than a thousand nuclear bombs, greater than the sun, greater than the Big Bang. It is the power of God, released when the atom of the Trinity was split on the Cross and the explosion of redeeming blood came out.
TRACT: Value of Sacrifice: The Eucharist & Adoration
OF INTEREST
Crowd throngs village church as Jesus “appears” on Host
An Astounding (Miraculous?) Photograph Taken During Eucharistic Adoration
The Eucharistic “Bomb”
EXCERPT CANADIAN CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS: The Eucharist and Silence
The link between the Eucharist and the way we live is crucial to any understanding or experience of its meaning and value. If we celebrate the Eucharist only as an ecclesial obligation or as a folksy get together it will have little influence upon better conforming our lives to the Gospel. Unless we have come together at a deep level in its celebration the closing words “Go in peace” will mean we go in pieces, just as we probably arrived. Silence allows the full meaning of the Eucharist at its deepest, post-verbal levels of sacramental efficacy, to unfold in our lives. This means that we will know that having shared the fruits of the earth symbolically together we can better serve the Kingdom of justice in our lives and work. We all took the same amount of bread and wine. There was enough to go round for everybody – if the sacristan did his job properly. Therefore if our lives are to be Eucharistic should we not work for the just distribution of wealth, the relief of the oppressed and care for the marginalized? The mystical depth of the Eucharist has direct political implications. Were not Thomas a Becket and Oscar Romero assassinated at the silent moment of consecration? Pope John Paul’s last public teaching and blessing from his Vatican window was silent.
So the implications of silence in the Eucharist take us to the heart of our faith and to the cutting edge of contemporary evangelization. It is not just about what happens at Mass times. It is about expressing what is real at the core of our being and in the fabric of our daily life and work. This I think must be why Pope John Paul linked the experience of liturgical silence to the contemplative renewal of the church. In a world increasingly fractured and frazzled by noise and stress, he recognized the necessity for the church to draw on its deepest contemplative traditions and to teach from these ways of contemplative prayer. It is vital to rediscover the value of silence, he said. John Main, who died in 1982, saw this too: the greatest challenge to modern people, he said, is to rediscover the value and meaning of silence. John Main in his writings on the Eucharist also saw that for modern people, recovering the contemplative dimension of prayer is necessary for experiencing the full meaning of the sacraments.
The teaching of contemplative prayer at the parish and diocesan level is a natural and perhaps inevitable corollary to liturgical silence. We have to start somewhere – with silence after communion or with meditation groups in the parish. The church being a living Body with a spiritual life, her pastors don’t have to be too preoccupied with systems analysis. They simply have to pray and encourage people to pray ever more deeply. It may be more daring in our time to apply this to the religious education and spiritual formation of children and young people.
A living silence after the readings, homily and communion will arouse or, better perhaps, identify the deeper hunger that is at the heart of our church and our world. Learning to pray at the contemplative level will teach us to live better in the spirit, because the way we pray is the way we live and the way we pray is the way we celebrate the Eucharist. This hunger for contemplation, then, is our greatest hope. It is vital to rediscover the value of silence.
KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS: The Eucharist: Sacrament and Sacrifice
Prayer request? Send an email to: PrayerRequest3@aol.com
November 22, 2013
(Mat 26:26-28) And whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread and blessed and broke and gave to his disciples and said: Take ye and eat. This is my body. And taking the chalice, he gave thanks and gave to them, saying: Drink ye all of this. For this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins.
PETER KREEFT: Adoration means especially Eucharistic adoration. In that silence there is a power greater than a thousand nuclear bombs, greater than the sun, greater than the Big Bang. It is the power of God, released when the atom of the Trinity was split on the Cross and the explosion of redeeming blood came out.
TRACT: Value of Sacrifice: The Eucharist & Adoration
OF INTEREST
Crowd throngs village church as Jesus “appears” on Host
An Astounding (Miraculous?) Photograph Taken During Eucharistic Adoration
The Eucharistic “Bomb”
EXCERPT CANADIAN CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS: The Eucharist and Silence
The link between the Eucharist and the way we live is crucial to any understanding or experience of its meaning and value. If we celebrate the Eucharist only as an ecclesial obligation or as a folksy get together it will have little influence upon better conforming our lives to the Gospel. Unless we have come together at a deep level in its celebration the closing words “Go in peace” will mean we go in pieces, just as we probably arrived. Silence allows the full meaning of the Eucharist at its deepest, post-verbal levels of sacramental efficacy, to unfold in our lives. This means that we will know that having shared the fruits of the earth symbolically together we can better serve the Kingdom of justice in our lives and work. We all took the same amount of bread and wine. There was enough to go round for everybody – if the sacristan did his job properly. Therefore if our lives are to be Eucharistic should we not work for the just distribution of wealth, the relief of the oppressed and care for the marginalized? The mystical depth of the Eucharist has direct political implications. Were not Thomas a Becket and Oscar Romero assassinated at the silent moment of consecration? Pope John Paul’s last public teaching and blessing from his Vatican window was silent.
So the implications of silence in the Eucharist take us to the heart of our faith and to the cutting edge of contemporary evangelization. It is not just about what happens at Mass times. It is about expressing what is real at the core of our being and in the fabric of our daily life and work. This I think must be why Pope John Paul linked the experience of liturgical silence to the contemplative renewal of the church. In a world increasingly fractured and frazzled by noise and stress, he recognized the necessity for the church to draw on its deepest contemplative traditions and to teach from these ways of contemplative prayer. It is vital to rediscover the value of silence, he said. John Main, who died in 1982, saw this too: the greatest challenge to modern people, he said, is to rediscover the value and meaning of silence. John Main in his writings on the Eucharist also saw that for modern people, recovering the contemplative dimension of prayer is necessary for experiencing the full meaning of the sacraments.
The teaching of contemplative prayer at the parish and diocesan level is a natural and perhaps inevitable corollary to liturgical silence. We have to start somewhere – with silence after communion or with meditation groups in the parish. The church being a living Body with a spiritual life, her pastors don’t have to be too preoccupied with systems analysis. They simply have to pray and encourage people to pray ever more deeply. It may be more daring in our time to apply this to the religious education and spiritual formation of children and young people.
A living silence after the readings, homily and communion will arouse or, better perhaps, identify the deeper hunger that is at the heart of our church and our world. Learning to pray at the contemplative level will teach us to live better in the spirit, because the way we pray is the way we live and the way we pray is the way we celebrate the Eucharist. This hunger for contemplation, then, is our greatest hope. It is vital to rediscover the value of silence.
KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS: The Eucharist: Sacrament and Sacrifice
The Desert Fathers: sayings of the Early Christian Monks: Self-Control
48.
He also said, 'The chaste monk shall be honoured on earth, and in
heaven he will be crowned in the presence of the Most High.'Prayer request? Send an email to: PrayerRequest3@aol.com
This month's archive can be found at: http://www.
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