This Sunday is the last solemn celebration in the wake of Easter.  Not that we are still in the Easter season- it ended on Pentecost but this Sunday, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Jesus, is the capstone of all the liturgical celebrations since Holy Week. 

If the Ascension were the end of the story we would have only memories. Pentecost told us otherwise; Jesus is staying with us as he promised. Today’s Solemnity reminds us and celebrates that he does indeed remain with us and in a radical manner: our Lord’s Body becomes one with ours in the Holy Eucharist.  He didn’t merely give up his life; he gave his life; gives his life to us.

He continues to nourish us with his Body and his Words.

Be nourished by his word: View/Download this Sunday’s Liturgy of the Word

It is fitting that on the Sunday following Pentecost (last Sunday)- the sending of the Holy Spirit – that we have the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity (this Sunday). It honors not an event but a truth revealed by Jesus. It is the most important truth of all. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that “the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. …It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the ‘hierarchy of the truths of faith.’…it is the mystery of God in himself.” (CCC 234)

From its beginning the Church has worshipped God as a Trinity of divine persons in undivided unity. Many of the prayers of the ancient Church include repeated doxologies to the Trinity.

When we make the sign of the cross, we pray, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” When we baptize we do so with the same Trinitarian formula. Two of our most well-known prayers are the “little doxology” (Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit…) and the “great doxology” (Glory to God in the highest…).

In a baptismal sermon, St. Gregory Nazianzen said:

Above all guard this great deposit of faith for which I live and fight…I mean the profession of faith in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I entrust it to you today. By it I am going to plunge you into water and raise you up from it. I give it to you as the companion and patron of your whole life…I give you but one divinity and power, existing one in three and containing the three in a distinct way…

It is through the incarnation that God revealed himself to be an eternal communion of persons. God’s self-revelation in Jesus, the Eternal Word, is not simply a disclosure of information; it is a sharing of life – his life. Through baptism we come to share the life of Jesus and in living in God’s eternal Son, we share in the life of the Blessed Trinity. 

View/Download this week’s Liturgy of the Word Celebration.

Be enlivened by his word!

This Sunday the Church celebrates Pentecost, one of the most important feast days of the year and that which concludes the Easter season.   

The timing of this feast is where the devotion of praying a Novena – nine days of prayer -derives.  The word “novena”  comes from the Latin for “nine; ” (novem/noveni).   

After Jesus’ Ascension into heaven, the Apostles, the Blessed Virgin, and some of Christ’s other followers all “joined in continuous prayer” (Acts 1:14)  until the dramatic coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.  We know it was nine days, because the Ascension happened forty days after the Resurrection (Acts 1:3), and Pentecost is celebrated fifty days after the Passover.  The Resurrection happened the day following Passover, so we can do the math: 50-40-1=9.  This period in which the fledgling Church “joined in continuous prayer” in anticipation of the promised coming of the Holy Spirit is the first “novena.”

There is a parallel Jewish holiday, Shavu’ot, which falls 50 days after Passover.  Shavu’ot is sometimes called The Festival of Weeks referring to the seven weeks since Passover.  Originally a harvest feast, Shavu’ot now commemorates the sealing of the Old Covenant on Mount Sinai, when God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. (“All that the Lord has spoken, we will do.” Ex 19:8)  Every year, the Jewish people renew their acceptance of the gift of the Law on this feast.  Read more about this in the reflections included in this week’s Liturgy of the Word celebration. 

Typically, on Pentecost, our clergy wear red vestments, symbolic of the burning fire of God’s love and the tongues of fire that descended on Mary and the apostles.  An Italian Pentecost tradition is to release rose petals from the ceiling of the church to recall the descent of the fiery tongues; thus Pentecost is called Pascha Rosatum (Easter roses).  In France, it is tradition to blow trumpets at some point during Mass to recall the sound of the driving wind of the Holy Spirit.

Also on this Solemnity adults, who have been going through the RCIA, ritually conclude their Initiation process. They now transition from disciples to apostles—people sent out into the world with a mission!  Our newly baptized and received, who have been gathering for the 11am Mass, will do so for the last time, as a group, this Sunday; pray for them.

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Sometimes the years seem to hurtle by. There are days when we may wonder: How do I let it all get away so fast? How can I hold on to it better? How can I see the sacredness of each day better?

To some degree the numbering of years helps and, like birthdays and the change of seasons, the marking of a New Year invites us to remembrance and recollection.

The celebration on January 1, of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, who “treasured all these things and reflected on them in her heart,” starts our new year. The Gospel reading for the Liturgy of this Solemnity tells us of shepherds who took time to approach the mystery and wondrously saw Mary and Joseph and the child. Once they saw, they understood and glorified and praised God.

The Gospel Reading also tells us that Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.

What are the things Mary reflected on “in her heart”? Both marvelous events such as the angelic message relayed by the shepherds, and the painful circumstance such as a birth in a stable.

Mary grappled with both sides of the mystery of Jesus’ birth: the miraculous and the everyday; the joyous and the painful; what was already unfolding and what was yet to be revealed.

In all this she was pondering the mystery of God’s presence and thus sublimely models how we too can recognize the Word being made flesh and dwelling among us.

Mary reflected “in her heart” on the mystery unfolding within and around her. This same mystery is revealed when God pours “the Spirit of his Son into our hearts,” making us children of God.

The ancient feast of Epiphany (this Sunday) also celebrates our “seeing”, our witnessing of the mystery that God could take our very flesh and bones. In the light of the Incarnation – Christmas-, with the “showing” of God in Jesus, all is changed, all human ordinariness transformed, all of the commonplace transfigured, elevated, and blessed.

A sense of how God “shows” himself each day; how his grace is manifest in every numbered year, allows us to take possession of our moments gently as time flashes by. We develop a richer taste for life itself, and our thanksgiving reaches deeper into our being.

If we fully enter into the revelation of the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God , if we truly savor it and thereby savor the lives we’ve been gifted with, we may find ourselves joining the long march of witnesses, sent to all times and nations, to share the blessing of God that the Book of Numbers (First Reading) gives to us:

“The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord’s face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord look kindly upon you and give you peace.”

Once we are beyond the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, and the Christmas season, we may tend to forget about the importance of the incarnation for our daily living. Mary teaches us that continued active reflection on this mystery is how we are drawn more deeply into its fullness and able more perfectly to live in the grace of being children and heirs of God.

We begin our new year by remembering and honoring Mary, chosen by God to bear and birth the savior of the world. May this remembrance urge us to give birth to Christ renewed in our lives; our decisions, our relationships.

Happy, peaceful, New Year!

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“You are God; we praise you. You are the Lord; we acclaim you. You are the eternal Father; all creation worships you.”

December 31 is a day of thanksgiving for the blessings of the Old Year that is passing (yes, we can find bless-ings; perhaps “mixed blessing”). Traditionally the Te Deum is sung in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome on this day (formerly it was sung at the Church of the Gesù).

This traditional practice of praying or singing the Te Deum on December 31 offers us a day to thank God for all the days, a moment to bless all the moments of mind and heart, breath and sight. A time to “see” and savor.
This ancient and beautiful hymn of praise, formerly attributed both to St Augustine and St Ambrose and now more reliably ascribed to Nicetas of Remesiana (ca. 333/5-414), is so old that its provenance is uncertain (the lines extolling the apostles, prophets and martyrs echo some similar lines in a work of St Cyprian, but this seems to be coincidence. More recently it has been proposed that the Te Deum is part of an ancient Easter Vigil hymn.

The Te Deum (whose name is simply the first two words of the prayer itself, not unlike the title of a papal document) is unique in that it is a part of the Divine Office: it is prayed at the end of Matins/Vigils/Office of Readings after the final reading and before the closing prayer on Sundays and Holy Days. (According to the 1962 rubrics it is said every single day, outside of the penitential seasons of Lent and Advent.) The Divine Office may be a private prayer — and the Office of Readings may be recited at any hour of the day per the Vati-can II rubrics — but for consecrated religious it is generally prayed in common in the middle of the night. So night owls who visit a monastery or abbey may hear it intoned—beautifully—together.

Another unique aspect of the Te Deum—the entire prayer is reprinted below—is that part of it is prayed during Mass (namely during the Sanctus):

Holy, holy, holy, Lord, God of power and might
Heaven and earth are full of your glory

And the final part of the Te Deum is a nod (or better, a kneel) to the Credo in that the lines are supposed to be said on your knees:

V: Save your people, Lord, and bless your inheritance.
R: Govern and uphold them now and always
V: Day by day we bless you.
R: We praise your name forever.
V: Keep us today, Lord, from all sin.
R: Have mercy on us, Lord have Mercy
V: Lord, show us your Love and Mercy
R: For we put our trust in you.
V: In you, Lord, is our hope:
R: And we shall never hope in vain.

Here we see an obvious invocation of the Kyrie from the Mass in the line, “Lord Have Mercy”, above.

Thus, the Te Deum is a prayer steeped in the Mass, and includes the only intact Hebrew word (“Sabaoth”) kept in the Latin version. The whole is a prayer of praise.

Technically, the Te Deum may be said or sung at the end of Mass or at the canonization of saint, or in a public procession of a saint’s relics.

The Te Deum is, in essence, a very ancient liturgical poem, and like many poems it has been put to music very effectively by some of the greatest composers, from Mozart and Verdi to Dvorak and Benjamin Britten.

And while Te Deum may be inextricably tied to the Divine Office, there’s no rule that says you can’t (or shouldn’t) pray or learn the prayer as a stand-alone oration.

The concluding line, “And we shall never hope in vain.” is an especially uplifting reminder to us individually and collectively.

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Te Deum

You are God, we praise you:
You are the Lord: we acclaim you;
You are the eternal Father:
All creation worships you.
To you all angels, all the powers of heaven,
Cherubim and Seraphim, sing in endless praise:
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of power and might,
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
The glorious company of apostles praise you.
The noble fellowship of prophets praise you.
The white-robed army of martyrs praise you.
Throughout the world, the holy Church acclaims you:
Father of majesty unbounded,
Your true and only Son, worthy of all worship,
And the Holy Spirit, advocate and guide.
You, Christ, are the King of Glory
The eternal Son of the Father.
When you became man to set us free,
You did not spurn the Virgin’s womb.
You overcame the sting of death,
And opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
You are seated at God’s right hand in glory.
We believe that you will come and be our judge.
Come then, Lord, and help your people,
Bought with the price of your own blood,
And bring us with your saints to glory everlasting.
Save your people, Lord, and bless your inheritance.
Govern and uphold them now and always
Day by day we bless you.
We praise your name forever.
Keep us today, Lord, from all sin.
Have mercy on us, Lord have Mercy
Lord, show us your Love and Mercy
for we put our trust in you.
In you, Lord, is our hope:
and we shall never hope in vain. 

Amen.

The Catholic Church recognizes the existence of only three Archangels, or the three mentioned in the Scriptures: Michael (“Who is like God?”), Gabriel (“God’s Power”) and Raphael (“God’s Doctor”).

The Sacred Scripture then, attributes a particular mission to each Archangel.

Michael is the warrior who fights against Satan and his emissaries (Jn 9, Ap 12, 7, cf. Zec 13: 1-2), the defender of those who love God (Dn 10, 13.21), the protector of the people of God (Dn. 12, 1).

Gabriel is one of the spirits closest to God, before his heavenly throne (Lk 1, 19), the one who revealed to Daniel the secrets of God’s plan (Dn 8, 16; 9, 21-22), announced to Zechariah the birth of John the Baptist (Lk 1, 11-20) and to Mary that of Jesus (Lk 1, 26-38).

Raphael stands before the throne of God (Tb 12, 15, see Rev 8: 2), accompanied and protects Tobias in his perilous journey and healed his father from blindness and his future bride from the influence of evil.

In general, therefore, the task of the three Archangels, in addition to contemplation of God, is to communicate His Will to man in various ways, to be an inspiration for human beings, and the catalysts of divine grace for them.

In 2013, Pope Francis consecrated the Vatican City State to St. Joseph and St. Michael the Archangel, recognizing once again his role as defender of the Faith and of the Church.

Christian iconography depicts Gabriel as a young winged cherub, who often carries a lily in his hands, as a symbol of the Annunciation to Mary.

In ascending order, the choirs or classes are 1) Angels, 2) Archangels, 3) Principalities, 4) Powers, 5) Virtues, 6) Dominations, 7) Thrones, 8) Cherubim, and 9) Seraphim.

Below is a beautiful prayer to the Archangels that highlights the role each Archangel has been given by God and how that role can help us when we need them the most.

Heavenly King, You have given us archangels
to assist us during our pilgrimage on earth.

Saint Michael is our protector;
I ask him to come to my aid,
fight for all my loved ones,
and protect us from danger.

Saint Gabriel is a messenger of the Good News;
I ask him to help me clearly hear Your voice
and to teach me the truth.

Saint Raphael is the healing angel;
I ask him to take my need for healing
and that of everyone I know,
lift it up to Your throne of grace
and deliver back to us the gift of recovery.

Help us, O Lord, to realize more fully
the reality of the archangels
and their desire to serve us.

Holy angels, pray for us.
Amen.