Friday, May 27, 2016

I ask your prayers for my wife Mary who's birthday today is.

Matthew, Chapter 28, verse 8

8 Then they went away quickly from the tomb, fearful yet overjoyed, and ran to announce this to his disciples.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,

gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking

so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously

give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,

our presence automatically liberates others. 

Marianne Williamson.

Corpus Christi[1]

Feast of Corpus Christi, in the U.S., said on the Sunday rather than the Thursday after the Feast of the Holy Trinity. An adoration of the Food that sustains us on our post-Pentecostal pilgrimage and "the pledge of our future glory"

At the age of sixteen, a humble Belgian girl began having visions of a bright moon marred by a small black spot. After years of seeing this perplexing portent, Jesus Christ appeared to her and revealed its meaning. The moon, He told her, represented the Church calendar, and the black spot the absence of a feast in honor of the Blessed Sacrament. That nun was St. Juliana, Prioress of Mont Cornillon (1258), and the Feast she was commissioned by our Lord to promote was the feast of Corpus Christi.

Even before its universal promotion in 1314, Corpus Christi was one of the grandest feasts of the Roman rite. At the request of Pope Urban IV (d. 1264), the Mass proper’s and divine office for this day were composed or arranged by St. Thomas Aquinas, whose teaching on the Real Presence was so profound that the figure of Jesus Christ once descended from a crucifix and declared to him, "Thou hast written well of me, Thomas." The mastery with which Aquinas weaves together the scriptural, poetic, and theological texts of this feast amply corroborates this conclusion.

Processions & Pageants

Though Maundy Thursday is in a sense the primary feast of the Blessed Sacrament, Corpus Christi allows the faithful to specially reflect on and give thanks for the Eucharist. Hence there arose a number of observances centered on Eucharistic adoration. The most conspicuous of these is the splendid Corpus Christi procession. This public profession of the Catholic teaching on the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament was solemnly encouraged by the Council of Trent: there is even an indulgence attached to all who participate in it. By the 1600s, the procession on Corpus Christi had become the most famous of the year. Long parades of faithful walk with the Blessed Sacrament (carried in a monstrance by the priest) while church bells peal and bands play. In Latin countries, the streets are blanketed with boughs and flowers, often elaborately woven together. Sometimes a variation on the custom of Stations is employed (see Stational Churches, etc.), where the procession stops at several points for benediction and adoration.

By its very nature, the Corpus Christi procession encouraged pageantry. In addition to the grandeur mentioned above, vivid symbolic reenactments of various teachings became a part of the procession. During the height of baroque piety, people impersonating demons would run along aside the Blessed Sacrament, pantomiming their fright and fear of the Real Presence. Others would dress as ancients gods and goddesses to symbolize how even the pagan past must rise and pay homage to Christ. Still others would carry all sorts of representations of sacred history: Moses and the serpent, David and Goliath, the Easter lamb, the Blessed Virgin, etc. But the most popular of all these was the custom of having children dress as angels. Appearing in white (with or without wings), these boys and girls would precede the Blessed Sacrament as symbols of the nine choirs of heavenly hosts who ever adore the Panis Angelicum, the Bread of Angels.

At Holy Trinity German Church, the Corpus Christi procession was the most important of the year. One witness to the procession of 1851 wrote:

The girls, clad in white, with lilies in their hands, groups of symbolic figures, with banner and flags, the boys with staffs and rods, all the associations of the parish with their signs and symbols and burning candles, finally the flower-strewing little children preceding the clergy -- all these made a fantastic impression (from Holy Trinity German Catholic Church of Boston: A Way of Life, Robert J. Sauer (Dallas, TX: Taylor Publishing, 1994), p. 49)

Today the German battleship Bismarck sunk, WWII, 1941

HIKING

Saturday I will be leading a spiritual hike you are invited but if you cannot I ask all my readers to add their prayers for Meek and humble souls as requested by our Lord via Saint Faustina.

Ninth Day"Today bring to Me the Souls who have become Lukewarm,

and immerse them in the abyss of My mercy. These souls wound My Heart most painfully. My soul suffered the most dreadful loathing in the Garden of Olives because of lukewarm souls. They were the reason I cried out: 'Father, take this cup away from Me, if it be Your will.' For them, the last hope of salvation is to run to My mercy." 

Most compassionate Jesus, You are Compassion Itself. I bring lukewarm souls into the abode of Your Most Compassionate Heart. In this fire of Your pure love, let these tepid souls who, like corpses, filled You with such deep loathing, be once again set aflame. O Most Compassionate Jesus, exercise the omnipotence of Your mercy and draw them into the very ardor of Your love, and bestow upon them the gift of holy love, for nothing is beyond Your power.

Eternal Father, turn Your merciful gaze upon lukewarm souls who are nonetheless enfolded in the Most Compassionate Heart of Jesus. Father of Mercy, I beg You by the bitter Passion of Your Son and by His three-hour agony on the Cross: Let them, too, glorify the abyss of Your mercy. Amen. 

https://www.ewtn.com/Devotionals/mercy/novena.htm#6

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[1] http://www.holytrinitygerman.org/postpentecostschema.htm