The Sacrifice of the Mass stands in contrast to this human limitation. We receive gratuitously what we have not merited: union with God, effected spiritually through grace, and physically, in the reception of His sacred Body and Blood. In this way the offering of the Mass is the prayer of eternal Thanksgiving. The offering, coming from God and perfected in Him, is returned to Him who is the beginning and the final end of all that is good and holy. If the traditional Thanksgiving feast means anything to us, it should be a visual reminder of precisely this reality. We go from the Gethsemane of our lives to the summit of thanksgiving that is the Eucharist (Greek: εὐχαριστία (eucharistia), meaning thanksgiving). We remain the same people; burdened with sin, with doubt, with uncertainty, with the envy and jealousy that indelibly mark our lives. We experience profoundly our own weakness, and the revulsion of the pain that suffering entails. We rebel, we are unfaithful, we live trapped in the impurities that allure and entice us to the shadows. But if the Gethsemane is the place of pain, the altar is the place of glory. Here, bringing our wounded nature and imperfect offering to the banquet feast, bringing what we perceive as little and unworthy of so lavish a Host, we receive infinitely more, and are so transformed time and time again. We are purified, and precisely in all this need, all this barrenness of soul, we are given to absorb that superabundance of gifts that a just God lavishes in love. Grace operates on our wounded nature, we believe perfecting it. This process is fraught with struggle, sometimes with fear and veiled hope, and yet from it we arise revived, strengthened.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 12:43:54 +0000
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