TUESDAY OF THE FIFTEENTH WEEK OF ORDINARY TIME
Feast of St. Bonaventure, bishop, doctor

Dear Father:

Well here I go. I wrote about being too busy that I was leaving my soul behind and I done and got myself so busy that I have not made a journal entry in a week. Shame on me!

Well, anyway, today I was reflecting on the Mass and offer this reflection by Fr. Francis Fernandez:

At that last Passover Jesus offered himself to his Father as a victim to be immolated, as the most pure Lamb And both that Supper and the Mass constitute one single and perfect sacrifice with the oblation offered on Calvary, because in all three cases the victim offered and the priest who offers is the same, namely, Christ.

We have to make the Mass the centre of our whole life. Keep trying, so that the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar really becomes the centre and the root of your interior life, and so your whole day will turn into an act of worship - an extension of the Mass you have attended and a preparation for the next Your whole day will then be an act o worship that overflows in aspirations, visits to the Blessed Sacrament and the o ering up to God of your daily work and your family life.

Let us prepare ourselves for Mass as if Our Lord had invited us personally to that last Passover which He ate with his closest friends. Every day we have to hear in our heart, as if addressed to us, those words of Our Lord: Desiderio desideravi hoc Pascha manducare vobiscum, I have earnestly desired to eat this passover with you. Great is Jesus' desire, many are the graces He is preparing for us.

The story is told of Saint John of the Cross that, on receiving the news of the death of a priest who had just been ordained, he asked if he had managed to say Mass at all before he died, and on hearing that he had only been able to do so once, the saint is said to have remarked: 'How much he will have to account to God for.' Let us consider now during this period of prayer how well we
celebrate or take part in the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar; and what can we say of our desires, our preparation, our efforts to prevent other matters occupying our mind, our acts of faith and of love, during that all too brief period of time we devote to hearing Mass and to making our thanksgiving after Holy Communion?

If, with the help of grace, we really work at it, the Mass will truly be for us the centre to which we refer all our practices of piety, our family and social duties, our work and our apostolate; it will also become the fountain where we recover our strength to begin again each day; the summit towards which we direct our steps, our works, our apostolic desires and the most intimate longings of our soul; it will also be the heart whence we learn to love others who have defects just Eke our own, and who like ourselves have their own less attractive features. If we manage to love the Mass a little more each day, we will be able to say to Our Lord during the thanksgiving after Holy Communion; I'm leaving you now for a while, Lord Jesus, but I'm not going without you who are my consolation, my joy and all the good of try soul... From now on whatever I do, I will do for you and through you, and nothing will be the object of all my words and actions save you, my love.

Your miserable servant,
Brother Bubba

PermaLink: URL to use to Link to this Entry

---

---