Dear Friends,
With much happiness, we enter into the joyful season of Advent! The stage was set last weekend, the First Sunday of Advent, with the invitation to be watchful and alert as we wait in anticipation for the coming of Christ. During this holy season, our focus changes and our conversation shifts from Matthew to Mark’s Gospel in the New Liturgical Year B. Along with welcome changes to our weather and not-so-welcome changes to the length of daylight, the color of our vestments also changes. We move from the green of Ordinary Time to the violet of the Advent Season. We also pray the Apostles’ Creed during this time, this oldest of creeds, “as it helps us frame the season of Advent by clearly articulating Christ’s incarnation (His first advent,) death and resurrection, and also reminding us of his return to judge the living and the dead (His second advent).” In these days of pandemic, we sense an unknown cry of urgency in our singing of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” as we long for His response. We hear clearly the answer from Scripture … “Be watchful! Be alert!” He urges us not to be discouraged by the overwhelming issues in life but, rather, to continue to trust in Him as we try prayerfully to remain attentive to the Word and His presence in the world. Despite suffering under the weight of the pandemic, let us remain steadfast in Christian peace and joy.
With all the “busy-ness” of the season, it can be difficult for even the most conscientious among us to keep our focus on Christ as we prepare for Christmas. Let us enter this Second Sunday of Advent with the determination to do as St. John the Baptist did and let our love for Christ’s coming grow stronger and burn more brightly in our hearts. Let us not grow weary or slack with our responsibility to prepare the way of the Lord or make straight His paths, however “inconvenient” it may seem.
One of the surest ways we can prepare for the coming of Christ is to avail ourselves of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Thanks to those who made it to the Advent Penance Service on the first Tuesday of Advent. For those who were not able to attend, we are offering additional opportunities on 22 December, times listed in the bulletin. Please do not forget the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on 8 December. Three Masses are scheduled for that day: 8 a.m., 12.05 p.m., and 7 p.m. Together let us honor our Mother, the perfect example of one who waited patiently for the coming of Our Savior.
Be Blessed!
With love, Fr. John
Ecclesia de Eucharistia
For this week, we shall reflect on paragraphs 47 - 48 of the encyclical, “Ecclesia de Eucharistia” (The Church draws her life from the Eucharist) by St. John Paul II on the vital role the Eucharist plays in the life of the Church. With these paragraphs we begin to read the 5th chapter titled: THE DIGNITY OF THE EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION. Here Pope John Paul II is discussing about special circumstances where the Holy Communion can be administered to those from Eastern Christian Churches in communion with the Pope.
CHAPTER FIVE: THE DIGNITY OF THE EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION
- Reading the account of the institution of the Eucharist in the Synoptic Gospels, we are struck by the simplicity and the “solemnity” with which Jesus, on the evening of the Last Supper, instituted this great sacrament. There is an episode which in some way serves as its prelude: the anointing at Bethany. A woman, whom John identifies as Mary the sister of Lazarus, pours a flask of costly ointment over Jesus' head, which provokes from the disciples – and from Judas in particular (cf. Mt 26:8; Mk 14:4; Jn 12:4) – an indignant response, as if this act, in light of the needs of the poor, represented an intolerable “waste”. But Jesus' own reaction is completely different. While in no way detracting from the duty of charity towards the needy, for whom the disciples must always show special care – “the poor you will always have with you” (Mt 26, 11; Mk 14:7; cf. Jn 12:8) – he looks towards his imminent death and burial, and sees this act of anointing as an anticipation of the honor which his body will continue to merit even after his death, indissolubly bound as it is to the mystery of his person.
The account continues, in the Synoptic Gospels, with Jesus' charge to the disciples to prepare carefully the “large upper room” needed for the Passover meal (cf. Mk 14:15; Lk 22:12) and with the narration of the institution of the Eucharist. Reflecting at least in part the Jewish rites of the Passover meal leading up to the singing of the Hallel (cf. Mt 26:30; Mk 14:26), the story presents with sobriety and solemnity, even in the variants of the different traditions, the words spoken by Christ over the bread and wine, which he made into concrete expressions of the handing over of his body and the shedding of his blood. All these details are recorded by the Evangelists in the light of a praxis of the “breaking of the bread” already well-established in the early Church. But certainly from the time of Jesus on, the event of Holy Thursday has shown visible traces of a liturgical “sensibility” shaped by Old Testament tradition and open to being reshaped in Christian celebrations in a way consonant with the new content of Easter.
- Like the woman who anointed Jesus in Bethany, the Church has feared no “extravagance”, devoting the best of her resources to expressing her wonder and adoration before the unsurpassable gift of the Eucharist. No less than the first disciples charged with preparing the “large upper room”, she has felt the need, down the centuries and in her encounters with different cultures, to celebrate the Eucharist in a setting worthy of so great a mystery. In the wake of Jesus' own words and actions, and building upon the ritual heritage of Judaism, the Christian liturgy was born. Could there ever be an adequate means of expressing the acceptance of that self-gift which the divine Bridegroom continually makes to his Bride, the Church, by bringing the Sacrifice offered once and for all on the Cross to successive generations of believers and thus becoming nourishment for all the faithful? Though the idea of a “banquet” naturally suggests familiarity, the Church has never yielded to the temptation to trivialize this “intimacy” with her Spouse by forgetting that he is also her Lord and that the “banquet” always remains a sacrificial banquet marked by the blood shed on Golgotha. The Eucharistic Banquet is truly a “sacred” banquet, in which the simplicity of the signs conceals the unfathomable holiness of God: O sacrum convivium, in quo Christus sumitur! The bread which is broken on our altars, offered to us as wayfarers along the paths of the world, is panis angelorum, the bread of angels, which cannot be approached except with the humility of the centurion in the Gospel: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof” (Mt 8:8; Lk 7:6).