The Forked Flame #6
The Forked Flame
As we continue this walk of faith that leads us back to our beginning, we will keep company with words like 'reason' and 'knowledge' and 'truth' and 'love' and 'beauty'. Words with which we will become so familiar that they will characterize our very being and literally spring to our lips in conversation with the people who touch our lives. These words will become true 'pebbles' on our path along "the way" because they engender feelings of compassion and mercy; and bring out the best in others. And as we strive to remain faithful to such 'pebbles' or 'blessings' it will become more natural for us to live our daily lives in a way that making choices for good rather than evil becomes a habit.
In the furtherance of his quest to keep us focused on the path to heaven, Msgr. Barron describes how: "God infinitely perfect and blessed in himself created man to share in his own blessed life toward which we all aspire". He repeats, for emphasis, that once we come to recognize the cross of Christ as "the strongest element of truth" in that it is the fulfillment of God's promise of collaboration with us in the journey; then we can apply the same sequence of events to our own lives by steeping our pain in His, thereby making our disappointments and even our pain easier to tolerate.
We are encouraged to believe that by meditating on the birth, passion, death, and resurrection of Christ, we will come to actually live the fulfillment of the prophecy of old -the promise that we would be sent an advocate in the flesh to dwell among us as a living being. By following the example of the Word Incarnate who suffered, died and rose from the dead we can come to view our own sufferings as opportunities for spiritual offerings through which we can garner for ourselves and others, more "bits and pieces" to help us easily navigate the road to eternity.
Not surprisingly, Barron also shared with us the reality that we can move from blessing to blessing by frequent participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Each time the Liturgy of the Mass unfolds, our celebrant invites us to share in the creation of life that occurs time and time again in the transubstantiation. When we join souls as a congregation in this communal sharing in the creation of life that is the celebration of Mass, the perimeter of our community does not end in the vestibule of the church but rather extends to a more comprehensive area that includes all people of goodwill in the universal Church; as well as the heavenly realm with its chorus of angels and saints. Even without the gift of Divine Revelation, it is possible to experience the tremendous outpouring of joy into the universe from just one occasion of the celebration of Mass. God must indisputably shower blessings upon all the weary travelers of the way, in compensation for the reverent proclamation of the Living Word, and the inspired homilies of the celebrant, who meticulously adds water to wine as a plea to God to have us humans share in his Divinity--if only for a moment in real time. Yes, Mass -this unanimous effort to bring all created things together in pure, divine worship never escapes God and His penchant for "Good Pleasure". So we do well to understand and believe that this symbolic spreading of the word throughout the congregation of believers and the universal community of the church goes a long way towards 'oiling the wheels of our bikes' for the journey.
Our teachers also want is to understand and believe that each time the cleansed and sacred hands of the celebrant places the body of Christ on our tongues that the same flame that turned the bread into the actual body of Christ is transferred into our mouths. This is one way in which the flame that created life becomes a part of the just and ensures that the manifestation of the Holy Spirit remains ongoing.
Finally from what our Church Fathers tell us, in order to fully appreciate the importance of the Mass as a means to the end, we must of necessity develop a good relationship with God.
As Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI in his "Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives puts it: "Man is a relational being, and if his first fundamental relationship is disturbed - his relationship with God - then nothing else is truly in order ".
As we continue this walk of faith that leads us back to our beginning, we will keep company with words like 'reason' and 'knowledge' and 'truth' and 'love' and 'beauty'. Words with which we will become so familiar that they will characterize our very being and literally spring to our lips in conversation with the people who touch our lives. These words will become true 'pebbles' on our path along "the way" because they engender feelings of compassion and mercy; and bring out the best in others. And as we strive to remain faithful to such 'pebbles' or 'blessings' it will become more natural for us to live our daily lives in a way that making choices for good rather than evil becomes a habit.
In the furtherance of his quest to keep us focused on the path to heaven, Msgr. Barron describes how: "God infinitely perfect and blessed in himself created man to share in his own blessed life toward which we all aspire". He repeats, for emphasis, that once we come to recognize the cross of Christ as "the strongest element of truth" in that it is the fulfillment of God's promise of collaboration with us in the journey; then we can apply the same sequence of events to our own lives by steeping our pain in His, thereby making our disappointments and even our pain easier to tolerate.
We are encouraged to believe that by meditating on the birth, passion, death, and resurrection of Christ, we will come to actually live the fulfillment of the prophecy of old -the promise that we would be sent an advocate in the flesh to dwell among us as a living being. By following the example of the Word Incarnate who suffered, died and rose from the dead we can come to view our own sufferings as opportunities for spiritual offerings through which we can garner for ourselves and others, more "bits and pieces" to help us easily navigate the road to eternity.
Not surprisingly, Barron also shared with us the reality that we can move from blessing to blessing by frequent participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Each time the Liturgy of the Mass unfolds, our celebrant invites us to share in the creation of life that occurs time and time again in the transubstantiation. When we join souls as a congregation in this communal sharing in the creation of life that is the celebration of Mass, the perimeter of our community does not end in the vestibule of the church but rather extends to a more comprehensive area that includes all people of goodwill in the universal Church; as well as the heavenly realm with its chorus of angels and saints. Even without the gift of Divine Revelation, it is possible to experience the tremendous outpouring of joy into the universe from just one occasion of the celebration of Mass. God must indisputably shower blessings upon all the weary travelers of the way, in compensation for the reverent proclamation of the Living Word, and the inspired homilies of the celebrant, who meticulously adds water to wine as a plea to God to have us humans share in his Divinity--if only for a moment in real time. Yes, Mass -this unanimous effort to bring all created things together in pure, divine worship never escapes God and His penchant for "Good Pleasure". So we do well to understand and believe that this symbolic spreading of the word throughout the congregation of believers and the universal community of the church goes a long way towards 'oiling the wheels of our bikes' for the journey.
Our teachers also want is to understand and believe that each time the cleansed and sacred hands of the celebrant places the body of Christ on our tongues that the same flame that turned the bread into the actual body of Christ is transferred into our mouths. This is one way in which the flame that created life becomes a part of the just and ensures that the manifestation of the Holy Spirit remains ongoing.
Finally from what our Church Fathers tell us, in order to fully appreciate the importance of the Mass as a means to the end, we must of necessity develop a good relationship with God.
As Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI in his "Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives puts it: "Man is a relational being, and if his first fundamental relationship is disturbed - his relationship with God - then nothing else is truly in order ".
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