150. Fifth Thursday of Easter

Meditations no. 196 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

We worship God with love, because we owe him everything in the order of nature and grace.

People have always felt the need to offer sacrifices to God, since man’s need to show his reverence towards God in deeds is born of the dictates of natural reason. In fact, created and constituted as the crown and head of physical creation, we are ordained by nature to serve God and worship him with adoration, love and praise. Thus the supernatural virtue of religion binds us to the one Almighty God.

The Christian has still greater reason to worship God, because as well as being the all-powerful Lord and Creator, God is our Father, who has wanted to make us sharers in his very life. And as his children, we have to adore him supernaturally, moved by God’s own love. We must also seek God’s glory in all our actions. Today it is all the more urgent to do so, since, as our Father wrote, there are people who try to desecrate everything, seeking to convert whatever is in itself sacred, even the very priesthood, into something profane. We want to bring all things to God, each according to its nature: what God has made sacred is sacred.

In the words of St Thomas Aquinas, the recognition of God as the beginning and end of our life, to whom we owe everything in the order of nature and of grace, and for whom we have been made, inclines us to render to God the loving worship that is due to him, as well as to subject ourselves to God and confess our need of him as the author of all good. That is why, with the Church, we confess: Father in heaven, it is right that we should give you thanks and glory: you are the one God, living and true. Through all eternity you live in unapproachable light. Source of life and goodness, you have created all things, to fill your creatures with every blessing and lead all men to the joyful vision of your light. Countless hosts of angels stand before you to do your will; they look upon your splendour and praise you, night and day. United with them, and in the name of every creature under heaven, we too praise your glory as we say: Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory.

Worship of God has to be given through his Son Jesus Christ in the holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The main external act of the virtue of religion is sacrifice. Ever since Christ died on the Cross for us, our worship should be offered to God through Jesus Christ, the firstborn among many brethren. Only through Jesus Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body, will we give due worship to God, the Father. The three divine Persons act together in the holy Sacrifice of the Altar. This is why I like to repeat the final words of the collect, secret and post-communion: “Through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord,” we pray to God the Father, “who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

In the Mass, our prayer to God the Father is constant The priest represents the eternal high Priest, Jesus Christ, who is, at the same time, the victim offered in this sacrifice. And the action of the Holy Spirit in the Mass is truly present, although in a mysterious manner. By the power of the Holy Spirit, writes St John Damascene, the transformation of the bread into the body of Christ takes place.

The three divine Persons are present in the Sacrifice of the Altar. By the will of the Father, with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, the Son offers himself in a redemptive sacrifice. We learn how to personalize our relationship with the most Blessed Trinity, one God in three Persons: three divine Persons in the unity of God’s substance, in the unity of his love and of his sanctifying action.

In the name of the Church, the priest offers Christ as an immolated Victim, to acknowledge God’s dominion and majesty, to thank him for all we have received, to implore new graces, and to atone for the sins of all people. And we, united to the Sacrifice of the Mass, offer to God all that we have and are, and we strive to make all our works into spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

The Mass is, I insist, an action of God, of the Trinity. It is not a merely human event. The priest who celebrates fulfils the desire of our Lord, lending his body and his voice to the divine action. He acts, not in his own name, but in persona et in nomine Christi: in the Person of Christ and in his name.

Because of the Blessed Trinity’s love for man, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist brings all graces to the Church and to mankind. This is the sacrifice announced by the prophet Malachy: From the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and a fragrant sacrifice and a pure offering is made to me in all places. It is the sacrifice of Christ, offered to the Father with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit - an offering of infinite value, which perpetuates the work of the redemption in us and surpasses the sacrifices of the old law.

Offering God all we have: our mind, our will, and our being.

Our Father used to comment that the way I see it, everything seems too little when it is for the Lord. We want to be able to offer him the very best. Generously give the Lord that young heart you have, that beautiful, splendid life: give your life to him. Make yours the sacrifice of Abel, not that of Cain. Abel gave him the best of his flock. What pleases God most is a clean life, a life entirely dedicated to him, a life of love. That is why we want to offer our life, our unstinting dedication, in expiation for our own sins; for the sins of all men, our brothers; for the sins committed at all times, and for those that will be committed until the end of time. Above all, for the Catholics, for God’s chosen ones who do not respond, those who betray the special love God our Lord has bestowed on them.

Absolutely everything has to be for God; we offer him the very deepest recesses of our mind and will, our whole being. He receives our offering: it goes up to his throne like incense, united to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We each make the consecratio mundi, the consecration of the world, through our personal dedication to the Lord’s service and, through him, to the service of all souls without exception, in the practice of our own job or duty, in the middle of the world, which we love, each in our own state.

Let us give up our lives cheerfully. So your talents, your personality, your qualities are being wasted. So you’re not allowed to take full advantage of them. -Meditate well on these words of a spiritual writer: “The incense offered to God is not wasted. Our Lord is more honoured by the immolation of your talents than by their vain use.”

In our own place, through silent, self-effacing work, we each raise up to the Lord a loving worship, which is incorporated through the Holy Mass to the worship offered by Jesus Christ, the Eternal High Priest. Thus we each share in his unlimited effectiveness. Let us now renew the offering of our entire life to God, while we honour Mary, the ever-virgin mother of Jesus Christ our Lord and God, Joseph, her husband, the apostles and martyrs Peter and Paul, Andrew, James, John, and all the saints.