"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
“One may ask if each of us does not really carry in his or her own heart a blueprint of the one that he or she loves. This blueprint is made by our reading, our prayers, our experiences, our hopes, our ideals, by our mother and father. Then suddenly, the ideal becomes concretized and realized in a person, and we say, ‘This is it!'”
– Fulton Sheen
Thanks to Vanida for this one
The Readings this week start to wrap up our Easter Season prior to the Feasts of Ascension and Pentecost.
In the First Reading we read about that great moment in Church History when the first Gentiles received baptism and entered the Church. In our Second Reading, we conclude our study of St. John’s First Epistle by hearing about the love of God. Finally, in the Gospel, Jesus unpacks His teaching concerning His metaphor of “the vine and the branches” which we heard last week.
As we come to the Eucharistic table this week let us come with thankful hearts. God’s love is so great that He came to redeem us, call us His friends, pour His Spirit into our hearts and make us members of His family.
“Yes, the Church is made up of sinners; in fact, it is a hospital for sinners and often looks and smells like a hospital, with ill patients, raw wounds, and disease on every side. Such things bother us and make us uncomfortable, but where else are the wounded and dying to go? They would pass out and die in the desert alongside the dusty trails” – Jeff Cavins, “I’m not being fed!”
“Procure books [of the Bible] that will be medicines for the soul. At least get a copy of the New Testament, the Apostle’s epistles, the Acts, the Gospels, for your constant teachers.
If you encounter grief, dive into them as into a chest of medicines; take from them comfort for your trouble, whether it be loss, or death, or bereavement over the loss of relations.
Don’t simply dive into them. Swim in them. Keep them constantly in your mind. The cause of all evils is the failure to know the Scriptures well.” – St. John Chrysostom
In the past I’ve attended non-Catholic churches and heard things like “We don’t do liturgy“. The funny thing was that when I came back the following week the service was exactly the same. It was identical the next week…and also the week after that… Things happened pretty much like clockwork.
The truth is that they did have liturgy, it was just their liturgy…
