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Reflections
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Lessons for the Church
This video from Bishop Robert Barron looks for the silver lining that clouds always have or, to express it more in keeping with the Easter season, the new life that can come even out of death. As the old saying goes, "absence makes the heart grow fonder." Our necessary absence from the normal sacramental avenues we have of experiencing God can help us appreciate them all the more. Live-streamed Masses are better than nothing, and they do help us keep the Lord's day holy as we are commanded to do, but they are not the full experience of liturgy. Thus they can make us long for that more-than-just-spiritual relationship that is nourished when we come together as the people of God. The Church is, indeed, an incarnational body.
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From the Jerusalem Catecheses
Let no one imagine that baptism consists only in the forgiveness of sins and in the grace of adoption. Our baptism is not like the baptism of John, which conferred only the forgiveness of sins. We know perfectly well that baptism, besides washing away our sins and bringing us the gift of the Holy Spirit, is a symbol of the sufferings of Christ. This is why Paul exclaims: Do you not know that when we were baptized into Christ Jesus we were, by that very action, sharing in his death? By baptism we went with him into the tomb.
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St. Cyril of Jerusalem
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The Jerusalem Catecheses, from the 4th Century AD, are thought to be written by St. Cyril of Jerusalem. They were meant to help new converts deepen their experience of the Sacraments.
It's not a comfortable thing to be baptized, having water poured all over your head! The discomfort itself is an important part of the symbolism. Death is not comfortable but the Christian shares in the death of the Lord in order to rise with him to new Life (See Romans 6:3-4).
Modern culture may prefer "happy thoughts," but, for Christians, adversity is not so much something to be feared as to be expected. It is a necessary stop on the way to new life!
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God and COVID-19
This video from Fr. Casey Cole, OFM seems timely. The theological questions he addresses here may not be your cup of tea, but they are the sorts of things that pop into people's heads at times like this. Although some of them may surprise you, I like the answers he gives, as well as his basic message: "God is in control."
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Holy Saturday
From an ancient homily on Holy Saturday:
Something strange is happening --there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.
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Another excerpt from the Liturgy of the Hours, this one from the Office of Readings for Holy Saturday. The unknown author knew nothing of COVID-19, of course, but reminds us that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has changed the game and all evil "trembles with fear."
Fr. Jim
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From a treatise on John by St. Augustine
We read in the Proverbs of Solomon: If you sit down to eat at the table of a ruler, observe carefully what is set before you; then stretch out your hand, knowing that you must provide the same kind of meal yourself. What is this ruler's table if not the one at which we receive he body and blood of him who laid down his life for us? What does it mean to sit at thes table if not to approach it with humility? What does it mean to observe carefully what is set before you if not to meditate devoutly on so great a gift? What does it mean to stretch out one's hand, knowing that one must provide the same kind of meal oneself, if not what I have just said: as Christ laid down his life for us, so we in our turn ought to lay down our lives for our brothers? This is what the apostle Paul said: Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we might follow in his footsteps.
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This is an excerpt from the Liturgy of the Hours, Office of Readings for the Wednesday of Holy Week, but I thought it appropriate for Holy Thursday. St. Augustine, using a rhetorical style common in his age, and with a rather free translation of Proverbs 23:1-2, reminds us that receiving from the Lord's table means to be ready to give what we receive. Although we cannot currently receive Him from His table, we can strive to live out the Christ life within us from baptism. With Christ in our hearts we can strive to do as He did, and live as He lived.
Fr. Jim
(Image from wikipedia.org Creative Commons License BY-SA 4.0.)
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From the book "On the Holy Spirit" by our patron saint, St. Basil the Great
When mankind was estranged from him by disobedience, God our Savior made a plan for raising us from our fall and restoring us to friendship with himself. According to this plan Christ came in the flesh, he showed us the gospel way of life, he suffered, died on the cross, was buried and rose from the dead. He did this so that we could be saved by imitation of him, and recover our original status as sons of God by adoption.
To attain holiness, then, we must not only pattern our lives on Christ's by being gentle, humble and patient, we must also imitate him in his death. Taking Christ for his model, Paul said that he wanted to become like him in his death in the hope that he, too, would be raised from death to life.
We imitate Christ's death by being buried with him in baptism.
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If we ask what this kind of burial means and what benefit we may hope to derive from it, it means first of all making a complete break with our former way of life, and our Lord himself said that this cannot be done unless a person is born again. In other words, we have to begin a new life, and we cannot do so until our previous life has been brought to an end. When runners reach the turning point on a racecourse, they have to pause briefly before they can go back in the opposite direction. So also when we wish to reverse the direction of our lives thre must be a pause, or a death, to mark the end of one life and the beginning of another.
Our descent into hell takes place when we imitate the burial of Christ by our baptism. The bodies of the baptized are in a sense buried in the water as a symbol of their renunciation of the sins of their unregenerate nature. As the Apostle says: The circumcision you have undergone is not an operation performed by human hands, but the complete stripping away of your unregenerate nature. This is the circumcision that Christ gave us, and it it accomplished by our burial with him in baptism.
Baptism cleanses the soul from the pollution of worldly thoughts and inclinations: You will wash me, says the psalmist, and I shall be whiter than snow. We receive this saving baptism only once because there was only one death and one resurrection for the salvation of the world, and baptism is its symbol.
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I found this passage from St. Basil in the Liturgy of the Hours for the Tuesday of Holy Week. St. Basil, of course, knew nothing of COVID-19 and how our lives have changed because of it, but what he says about the Paschal Mystery, sharing in the death of Christ to rise to new life with him, certainly suggests an interesting perspective on what we are going through. Could it be a "death" to an old way of life so that we can live a new life? When this is all over may we not just go back to business as usual, but may we grow into a more perfect expression of our baptisms.Fr. Jim
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