The
Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
Dear brothers and sisters,
Earlier this week, a headline of
great importance caught my attention that most of the world simply ignored:
“After three years of ISIS occupation, the Mass returns to Mosul.”[1]
Can you imagine three years without the Eucharist?
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| PHOTO: Amigos de Irak |
For the first – or, possibly, the
second – time in three years, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was offered in the
Iraqi city of Mosul - one month to the day of the city’s liberation from the
Islamic State - on August 9th in what remains of St. George’s
Monastery. When the Islamic State took Mosul in June of 2014, its fighters
quickly began “using sledgehammers to smash crosses and icons, and removing the
cross from the dome and replacing it with the black ISIS flag.”[2] They
did what they could to remove every symbol of the Christian faith, but they
could not remove the faith from the hearts of Christians.
What did our brothers and sisters
experience as they watched their very dearest places be destroyed? What
emotions filled their hearts as they suffered so dearly? Surely they cried out
with the Prophet Jeremiah, “All the day I am an object of laughter; everyone
mocks me. Whenever I speak, I must cry out, violence and outrage is my message;
the word of the Lord has brought
me derision and reproach all the day” (Jeremiah 20:7).
We might suffer an occasional taunt
because of our faith in Jesus, but they endured unspeakable persecution. To
avoid any sort of ridicule, we keep quiet about our faith and pretend it is
merely a private matter, but the Christians in Iraq, though they knew the
persecution was coming, did not keep their faith hidden. Rather, they
proclaimed the merciful love of the Lord Jesus to those who were not merciful
because our brothers and sisters knew Jesus’ “kindness is a greater good than
life” (Psalm 63:4). Do we know the same? They trusted in the Lord’s words that
“whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mathew 16:25). Do we trust the
same?
Just as their faith in the Lord
Jesus has not been in vain, neither will our faith be in vain. Now the black
flag that taunted the Christians of Mosul for more than three years has at long
last come down. They have rightly replaced it with the cross of Our Lord and
beneath its shadow they “shout for joy” (Psalm 63:8). Now, finally, they can
gather again at the Lord’s altar and sing, “As with the riches of a banquet
shall my soul be satisfied, and with exultant lips my mouth shall praise you”
(Psalm 63:9).
If we so often shy away from any
public expression of our faith as we go about our daily lives, how did they
have the strength to manifest their faith in public? They could do so because
they listened to the instruction of Saint Paul “to offer your bodies as a
living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship” (Romans12:1). Commenting on the Apostle’s admonition, Saint Augustine asked:
If
the body … is a sacrifice when it is used well and rightly for the service of
God, how much more so is the soul when it offers itself to God? In this way,
aflame in the fire of divine love and with the dross of worldly desire melted
away, it is remolded into the unchangeable form of God and becomes beautiful in
his sight by reason of the bounty of beauty which he has bestowed upon it.[3]
How can you and I offer ourselves
to God so our hearts might be aflame in the fire of divine love? The answer is
very close to us and a bit obvious, and so for this reason is often overlooked.
The answer is found in the offertory of the Mass.
In just a few moments, the
offertory will begin with the preparation of the altar, the taking up of the
collection, and the presentation and offering of the gifts. Mother Church urges
us to participate in each of these aspects of the offertory, but what does this
mean?
To
participate means to share in the task of another. Here that other is the
priest. He is not there for himself, but for the congregation. By means of the
words he speaks and gestures he makes in the power of his office, something
happens – through Christ. Everyone present is called upon to share in that happening.
The priest responds to it, not privately for himself, but for all. And again
all are invited to share in his invocation, celebration, adoration, pleading,
and thanksgiving. The celebrant’s actions radiate in all directions far beyond
his personal life. This is so primarily that all may – and should – enter into
them.[4]
It is not enough for us to come to
the Mass without preparing to participate in it, nor is it enough for us to be at
the Mass and simply stand, sit, and kneel at the proper moments and mumbling the
responses without ever entering into the mystery of the Mass in the quiet of
our hearts. To be sure, given the many distractions that may be present, this is
not always easy to do, but still we must try. As with everything else important
in life, something is required of us; we are required to offer ourselves to God.
In just a few moments I will receive
your offerings and present them to God and will then invite you to join me in offering
your gifts. What I will offer
is really very little [just a bit of bread,
some wine, pieces of paper, and the occasional coin]. We could say that it has
practically no value. But, it should represent us. If you want to
learn to take [your] proper part in the Holy Mass, it is important that you
learn to offer yourself and to offer all that is yours in this moment of the
Mass.3 Take your work, your studies, your needs, your struggle, and
even your weaknesses. Take all of that and put it on the paten beside the
hosts, those small pieces of bread. Put it on the chalice with the wine.
Jesus Christ is going to come to this
altar within a few minutes. There are many ways in which he could have chosen
to come. But he has wished to come by marvelously turning the bread and the
wine into his own body and blood. He has wished to come by means of
transubstantiation, by which something that we offer him, something that is
ours, is changed into his body and blood, while of the bread and wine only the
appearances remain. The bread and the wine are our gifts, our offering to God.
They will be your gift and your offering if you make them yours, if you put
yourself there, on the paten with the bread, in the chalice with the wine. If
you let yourself get distracted at the moment when the priest is offering the
gifts, then the bread and the wine will be other people's gifts, something that
other people offer to God. But they won't be your gifts, because you have not
offered them, you have not offered yourself with them.[5]
Let us, then, heed the words of Saint
Paul and make of ourselves an offering to God, that our hearts might be aflame with
the fire of divine love. Then we will be able to manifest the joy and peace that
comes from being friends of God and bring others to offer themselves to him, as
well. If we live in this way, not only will our souls thirst for God, we will be
satisfied with his gift of himself. Amen.
[1] “After three years of ISIS occupation, the Mass returns to Mosul,” Catholic
World Report, 30 August 2017.
[2] “ISIS Destroys Assyrian Churches,Hostages Still Being Held,” Assyrian
International News Agency, 16 March 2016.
Cf. “Muslims and Christians unite to rebuild Mosul monastery,” Catholic News Agency, 7 June 2017.
[3] Saint Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, 10.6.
[4] Romano Guardini, Meditations Before Mass (Manchester, New
Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 1993), 35.
[5] Cormac Burke, The Mass Explained (Manila: Sinag-Tala Publishers, 1981).
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