More from Let Me Be Catholic

“How was Mass?”

 

Which made me think:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

plea for reverence

As some of them are still aware, I still check out what the Tumblr Catholics are up to every now and then.
So, a shout out to all of you; you're all, always, in my prayers.

Scrolling down Jess' tumblog, I cam across this post from a convert who is in the RCIA program; her name is Olivia. I've just copy-pasted the Original Post here. Since all my block quotes are italicised, I have changed what Olivia had in italics to this font instead.

Please, please, please heed what she's saying. Please. For the love of God. No, really, for the Love of God Incarnate, under the form of Bread.

I’ve been sitting here for a good 5 minutes trying to think of a good way to lead into what I want to talk about….I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no easy way to say this.
We, as a people, as a Catholic people, are irreverent towards the blessed Sacrament. We are irreverent towards JESUS. I know what you’re thinking. Olivia, you’re not even Catholic yet, what could you possibly know about the Eucharist. 
Well I will tell you what I know. I know that Jesus IS the Eucharist. I know that when I wake up on Sunday morning (or any morning I get to go to Mass) I’m going to a celebration. I’m going to experience the meeting of Heaven and Earth. I’m going to witness the most intimate of all encounters with Christ. I’m going to be in the presence of Jesus Christ, my friend, my savior, my love, my Father, my everything.
What is it that people don’t understand? It is physically painful for me at Mass to watch SO MANY people casually walk through the communion line, casually receive the Eucharist, casually consume it, and casually walk back to their seats. RECEIVING THE EUCHARIST IS NOT SOMETHING TO BE DONE CASUALLY. Do you realize that when you walk in that procession you are walking towards the living God? The creator of you, of the universe? You are walking towards He who suffered for you. He who weeped for your soul. He who gave his life so you could live more abundantly?!
Please, my dear friends, I am begging you, think about that next time you go to Mass. It is not your priest saying to you “body of Christ” it is Jesus offering his body to you just as he offered it to the disciples at the Last Supper.
I fear for the day we answer for our irreverence  Again I beg you, spend time contemplating the Real Presence. I pray that it is your prayer for the Eucharist to become as real to you as your priest standing before you. Realize my brothers and sisters that when you go into a Church you are in the literal presence of Jesus Christ.
Heavenly Father, who is an endless font of Mercy, look upon your people with compassion and love. Help all of us to become aware of the reality of the Eucharist and of your REAL PRESENCE. Help each one of us to grow in reverance towards your most Holy body and blood.

[original post, here]

Other Tumblr Catholics you should check out:

• Callum @ Catholic Splash
• Niko @ Niko's Nature
• Q @ Intellect & Romance
• Phillip @ Grace & Caffeine
• Catholic Soul @ Totus Tuus
• All About Mary
• Jean @ Signum Crucis

Quotes of the Now

We are all called to be faithful mystical spouses of our Lord Jesus Christ. Every sin therefore is an adulteration against our Beloved who is always faithful and always loving; even when abandoned and cheated upon time and time again. O my Beloved, forgive me, embrace me!

Callum Martin

And it is surely unreasonable to attack the doctrine of the Trinity as a piece of bewildering mysticism, and then to ask men to worship a being who is ninety million persons in one God, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.

-GK Chesterton, Heretics
via Niko's Nature

 

From America to Perth, via Rome

I like what Cardinal Dolan does. This address to his brother Bishops of the USCCB is all over the 'blogosphere.' Most people are commenting either on his call to return to the Sacrament of Penance or on his mention of the possible return of the US Church to abstinence from meat on all Fridays of the year.

I, however, would like to mention this:

But I stand before you this morning to say simply: first things first. We gather as disciples of, as friends of, as believers in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, "the Way, the Truth and the Life," who exhorted us to "seek first the Kingdom of God."

We cannot engage culture unless we let Him first engage us; we cannot dialogue with others unless we first dialogue with Him; we cannot challenge unless we first let Him challenge us.

The Venerable Servant of God, Fulton J. Sheen, once commented, "The first word of Jesus in the Gospel was 'come'; the last word of Jesus was 'go'."

You can listen to the whole thing here, thanks to Fr Z.

It reminds me a lot of a document - also from the USA - recently released by the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious. An extract here for you, emphases added:

The Eucharist and the New Evangelization are intimately intertwined, since the New Evangelization has Christ at its center and the Eucharist is Christ. Further, the Eucharist is the “source and summit of the Christian life.” Christian life is lived in the Church, and “the Church exists in order to evangelize.” Therefore, the Eucharist is also “the source and the summit of all evangelization…” The truth of this statement is summarized by Blessed John Paul II’s statement, “…the Eucharist is at the center of the process of the Church’s growth.” One sees, then, a reciprocal relationship between the Eucharist and evangelization: the Eucharist nourishes evangelization, while evangelization leads to the Eucharist. Presbyterorum Ordinis accentuates this truth, explaining that “…all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it” and “No Christian community can be built up which does not grow from and hinge on the celebration of the most holy Eucharist.”

                The Eucharist is the source of evangelization, because the encounter with Christ leads one to proclaim Him to others. This is seen in a simple way in the Gospel pericope recounting the journey to Emmaus of the disciples who are unsuspectingly joined by the risen Christ. The two disciples have spent the whole day journeying towards their destination, seeking to unpack the events of the preceding days. Undoubtedly their own fatigue and the unusual attractiveness of their enigmatic companion inspire the compassion with which they invite the hidden Lord Jesus, “stay with us, for it is growing dark.” However, all sentiments of weariness melt away and are supplanted by evangelical zeal when “their eyes were opened and they recognized Him” in the breaking of the bread. They immediately undo the day’s journey, hastening to proclaim their encounter with the risen Christ to the Apostles in Jerusalem.

 My own Archbishop - Arch+ Timothy Costelloe SDB - addressed [also here] the recent Synod on New Evangelisation thus:

In Christifidelis laici Pope John Paul II spoke of the need to "remake the fabric of the ecclesial community" if we are to remake the fabric of the society in which we live. To do this we must recover the ecclesiology of the Church as the Body of Christ, with Christ as its life-giving head.

The first chapter of the Instrumentum laboris stresses this by focusing our attention on Christ and reminding us that the goal of all evangelisation is to foster an encounter between the person and Christ.

The time has come for us as bishops to place Christ at the heart of our preaching and teaching, and encourage our priests and deacons to do the same. We must help people to be captured by the fascination which the Jesus of the gospels exerts on hearts and minds.

To paraphrase the Rector Major of the Salesians of Don Bosco who made a similar remark about contemporary religious life: The greatest challenge facing the Church today is to return the Church to Christ and to return Christ to the Church - not to become other than we are but to become more fully who and what we are.

 Let me paraphrase the paraphrase.
The greatest challenge facing the Church today is to return the Church to the Eucharist and to return the Eucharist to the Church - not to become other than we are, but to become more fully who and what we are.

Arise, envious sun, and kill the fair moon...

I really need to stop doing this; it happens so often now that I don't even realise until it's too late. Or, rather, too early. What I mean is this. It's now sometime after 3 am and I really only thought that it was almost-midnight. I must say, though, that this is the first time in several years that such has happened for the reason it has tonight; namely, that I got lost on the internet. Usually, it's because I'm in a Chapel somewhere, or at SBG, talking with Fr Martin and Br Gilbert.

I say that I need to stop doing this, but perhaps I just need to adopt a nocturnal lifestyle.
Or a semi-nocturnal one.
I could do "all-nighters" on Friday, Saturday and Sunday (or at least the latter two) and spend Monday recovering, in order to function well on Tuesdays.

It's when my mind is overtired that I stop filtering my thoughts and I believe that such a lack of filter is probably good for me to some extent. I don't know if everyone habitually stops their trains of thought when they get close to any topic that causes them discomfort or pain; I don't even know if anyone else does it. I know that I over do it.

You see, it is common  place for me to chose not to think about a certain topic because my inability to not-feel about it is diminished. Or, not diminished so much as nonexistent. And feeling is dangerous.

And I'm writing in sentence fragments.

Even thinking about that fact that I actively chose to not-feel about certain things is a train of thought I usually halt as soon as I am able. Such thought is too dangerous because it comes much too close to actually feeling.

Related to feelings:
I think a large portion of the reason I make friends with guys so much easier than with girls (have I ever wondered about that 'out loud' on this blog before?) is because guys typically show their feelings less. It is way easier for me to talk about abstract concepts than it is for me to talk about practical ways of doing things. However, the difference between the two types of conversation (in the order of difficulty) is almost minuscule when compared to the difference between practical-type conversations and those which revolve around feelings and emotions. (If such an occasion ever occurs, I tend to emote, rather than feel because emoting is further removed from my self.)

Yeah, so, I'm not comfortable with myself; I ought to be and I'm not. I ought to be because my Holy Guardian Angel is and he is an immediate expression of God's Love [x] and, since God is Love (1 Jn 4:8,) my Angel is an immediate expression of God's Self.

That last sentence is an immediate expression of my ability to write my best theology papers at this time of whichever day it is.

Anyway; if God is comfortable with me - or at the very least, deigns to be with me and provide for my every need, and many of my wants - I ought to be comfortable with myself. Yet, here I go again: I am taking a subject which ought to transform the way I live, act, think and (frankly) feel and turning it into an intellectual exercise.

Back to the being-friends-with-guys thing.
Guys don't typically need to have "How do you feel about that?" conversations all that often, at least when compared to girls. Moreover, when girls aren't like that, they are typically holding a "This is how I felt about it:" conversation. I dislike the first and find the second one draining.
Typically, too, guys seem better at comfortable silences wherein I can allow my mind to wander to not-feeling.

Further, although I don't think that me having a larger number of guy-friends than the other is problematic per se, I do believe that I need to learn to be more comfortable around other women.

There are, of course, a few notable exceptions to both parts of this 'rule,' none of whom I will name but all of whom I hope will both recognise themselves and tell me such.



I am not going to pretend that this post has been entirely coherent, but thus endeth the lesson.