Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) On the day that we receive Holy Communion we should endeavor to keep our hearts as living tabernacles of our Eucharistic Jesus, and then visit Him often with acts of adoration, love, and gratitude; this is what Divine love will teach us.                                                          Saint Paul of the Cross

     MERRY CHRISTMAS! [What follows is my annual Christmas message to the Adorers at St. Agatha's. I hope it will also resonate in the hearts of my readers]   “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us”. - John 1:14 As we begin our nineteenth year of Adoration, we give thanks to our Loving Lord for the Gift of His Presence here among us. How blessed we are to spend time with Him, sometimes by ourselves and, from time to time, with other silent, prayerful Adorers. Like the lowly Shepherds and the foreign Wise Men who first paid Him homage, we too come to adore the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. As we kneel in front of our Precious Savior, embraced by this priceless Monstrance, blessed by our late Holy Father, St. John Paul II, we are gazing upon the very same Jesus who took on human flesh and walked this earth, albeit concealed in the Sacred Host. Right before our very eyes is:       ...

(Image Source: Wikimedia Common s) The Eucharistic journey deep into the sacred reaches its summit in Holy Communion, a moment calling for the utmost receptivity to God and the utmost response of love, epitomized by the words of the Apostle Thomas confronted by the glory of the Risen Christ, “My Lord and my God!”... It can become much more difficult to enter deep and contemplatively into the sacred if the liturgy is not celebrated in a reverent and fitting manner. Unfitting “activity” during the Mass, [Alice] von Hildebrand observes, such as the congregational singing of music devoid of a genuinely sacred character, thwarts our ability to enter the depths of the sacred, our contemplation of the sublime celebration of the Holy Eucharist. The motivation behind such an approach to music for the liturgy, that the congregation needs to be given something to do, something to busy themselves with during the Mass, so that they don’t get bored, is in von Hildebrand’s words compar...