6^th Sunday of Easter, B, IC 3:6, May 25, 2003

“God sent His Son as an expiation for our sins.” (Reading II)

“No one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (Gospel)

Sometimes I think of the profound sadness that must be in the Heart of Christ over our sins. Its’ a meditation-subject that focuses on the phenomenon of our rebelliousness. How is it that we violate our consciences, so often, so grievously? How can it be that some people seem to live, daily, without ever a thought of God, and without reference of their lives to Him? I am not baffled by the allurement of sin: I know that well enough. I readily see that evil, for some reason, is attractive–although that is not reasonable. But what mystifies me is how we can so easily bypass the admonishing, warning, and scolding reproaches of conscience. Are there perhaps some people who have no conscience such that they can live day after day in sin, and then add sin upon sin and never feel remorse; people whose thoughts never register that there’s a God who created them and whose laws over them are sovereign–that is, that they must be obeyed by everyone, in all places, at all times? And then again my thoughts turn to Christ, and the great grief of soul that attended His sacred Passion. Can we not be moved and–for lack of better language–‘feel sorry’ for God? We’ve turned out so bad when we are intended to be so good. We were created for Him, not for the devil. And, it is not just that there are people who daily commit monstrous crimes (let’s say the daily acts of an abortionist, sodomite, adulterer, atheist, drug dealer, murderer) but that we too, we who believe, who insist that we love God, we too have been criminal in some way-or-other and that, even one of our sins would have motivated the whole agonizing Passion of Christ, in all its grim detail, in order to ‘win back my own poor soul!’ How can we fail to be moved at these thoughts of our refusals when God so lovingly and so obstinately beckons us in love to come to Him? Truly, we are a wretched lot; and truly is God much to be pitied in having the unceasing barrage of human evils inflicted on Him in return for His utterly supreme goodness!

It is then that I turn my attention to the sacrifice of the Mass. It is during those meditations that I ponder the immense love of Christ that motivated his act of immolation. I am reminded that in every Mass His sacrifice is renewed and that I stand before the altar ready to witness and participate in the great drama of redemption. I see the Mass then as the solution to the vexing, disturbing problem of the human shamelessness that is sin. And that solution is nothing less than this: that I come to the altar of God to make my own act of sacrifice, of immolation. Let me say this again, so that it may be very clear. I do not come to Mass to observe it, nor only to praise God, (and certainly not to enjoy a communal get-together!). I approach the altar–I in my priestly garments, you united with me–to give God, to render to God the only satisfying act of atonement there is for sin: the sacrifice of the cross. But, in saying that, I understand that I too must be sacrificed with Christ. I draw near the altar to put myself on it and–I must not be reticent to say it, however bold and radical it sounds–to immolate myself with Jesus as a sacrifice to God. I must be on the altar, mystically slain and offered as Christ is mystically slain and offered in each Mass (not, of course, in a bloody death, as we are always reminded on this subject by the Church). I want to give God my all, my whole self. I want to be wholly His and to give Him my will (which I so often abuse by sins), and body, my mind, my ambitions in life, and my....everything. Then there is no longer anything left for me to offend God more. Then all will have been consumed in the flame of the sacrificial holocaust of Christ. And God will be pleased, God will be appeased, and the right order of the world restored, and humanity is renewed.

This is not the talk of madness. It’s the talk of the Christian religion, and it has too long been silent in the Church. Saint Paul best expressed it various places: “I have been crucified with Christ. The life I live now in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20). Or, here: “I appeal to you to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice to God, your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed.” (Rm. 12:1-2)

I mention in the pastor’s space of today’s church paper, what appears to be the opening for a return to the old form of the Latin Mass, sometimes known as Tridentine. I am asked why this would be a preferable thing. Nostalgic? No, that can hardly be sufficient reason. I have many fond recollections of things in my past that I treasure, and I’m content not to renew them. But the Mass is something apart. Although the newer rite of Mass is truly the Mass, and everything needed is there for validity and, even, for edification, yet there’s an emphasis that is not so evident in the newer form of the Mass; and it is that very element of joining myself in sacrifice with Christ, so that (in the words of the priest at Mass) “my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the almighty Father.” When, in the old Mass, the priest prayed at the foot of the altar before ascending its steps, he was making himself ready to ascend to the place of immolation and place of the Divine presence. At the offertory prayers, the priest involved himself in the sacrificial action to take place only at the consecration. These are some points that are missing in emphasis now and I long for their return.

Our supplemental lesson from the Imitation of Christ is a good bolt of heavenly encouragement. In it, Jesus tells his follower that when someone gets a gift from someone loved, it has worth, not because of the gift itself (however desirable) but because of the one who gives it. It has, as the expression goes, a ‘sentimental value’ that’s greater than the worth of the gift. What’s the point? Don’t love Jesus only for His gifts. Surely, they’re wonderful and abundant, and He is extremely generous. But the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Never mind. It’s the Lord, the Beloved that we possess; His gifts are trivial by comparison. And the last part of this chapter is our Lord’s caution about the scheming of the devil (called ‘the Old Enemy’ here) who

“Works by every means to frustrate your desire for good. He suggests many evil thoughts to discourage you. Do not listen to him or believe him, however often he tries to entrap you.”

We resume now to the sacrifice of the Mass. We have every reason to want to engage our whole selves into it: for the consolation of Christ over the unending flood of evil that humanity sends up to Him; we offer it for the satisfaction of our deepest desire to unite ourselves in love with Jesus in His sacrifice; and we offer it for the purification of our souls so that we can emerge from this holy Mass more fit to contend with success in the world against the Old Enemy of our salvation.