379. Twenty-fourth Monday of Ordinary Time

Meditations no. 341 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

The work of Redemption is renewed at Mass.

For I received from the Lord, St Paul tells us, what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you.

Every morning in our prayer we prepare to participate in the holy sacrifice of the Mass and to receive our Lord with all the love we can. As our Father wrote: To live the holy Mass means to pray continually and to be convinced that, for each one of us, this is a personal meeting with God. We adore him, we praise him, we give thanks to him, we atone for our sins, we are purified, we feel ourselves united in Christ with all Christians.

We may have asked ourselves, at one time or another, how we can fully respond to the greatness of God’s love. We may have wanted to see a programme for Christian living clearly explained. The answer is easy, and it is within reach of all the faithful: to participate lovingly in the holy Mass, to learn to deepen our personal relationship with God in the sacrifice that summarizes all that Christ asks of us?

At Mass Christ is the principal Priest, and also the victim. St John Chrysostom writes: When you see him exposed on the altar before you, you should say to yourself: on account of this Body I am no longer dust and ashes, no longer a captive but free. On account of this Body I await heaven’s every gift: eternal life, the happiness of the angels, intimate union with Christ. Pierced by nails, torn by the lash, this Body was not overcome by death. Even the sun, on seeing this crucified Body, hid its rays; the veil of the temple was torn; rocks were split asunder; the whole earth shook. This is the Body, bloodied and lanced, from which poured forth two streams of salvation for the entire world: one blood, the other water. Do you need further convincing about the power of this Body?

Aware that something truly sublime takes place at the Mass, in every Mass that is celebrated on earth, we should strive to unite ourselves to Christ’s redeeming sacrifice. Be thankful? St Paul urged. And St John Chrysostom stressed: The most appropriate response for this great gift is to keep Him always in mind and thank Him. The sublime mysteries of grace and salvation that we celebrate at Mass are rightly called “Eucharist”, that is, “thanksgiving”, for they are a memorial of God’s many gifts and a supreme manifestation of divine Providence, and therefore dispose us to give thanks to God at every moment.

At Mass we offer God everything we do and everything we are.

If the Son of God became man and died on a cross, it was so that all mankind might become one single thing with Him and the Father. All of us, therefore, are called to share in this divine unity. With a priestly soul, making the Mass the centre of our interior life, we strive to be with Jesus, between God and mankind.

Our union with Christ makes us aware that with him we are co-redeemers of the world, helping all souls to share in the fruits of his Passion, and to find and follow the path of salvation that leads to the Father.

Our life of work in the middle of the world forms part of the co-redemptive mission to which Christ himself has called us. No noble human endeavour, no earthly reality, falls outside God’s redemptive plans. Work always and in everything with sacrifice, in order to put Christ at the summit of all human activities.

Our priestly soul should lead us to offer all earthly realities to the Creator, a sacrifice which is acceptable to God if it is united to the Sacrifice of his Son, encouraging us to have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus. St Irenaeus says: The Saviour of the world took bread from the fruit of creation, gave thanks and said, “This is my Body.” And he did likewise with everyday wine, also taken from creation, and declared it his Blood. He thus proclaimed the sacrifice of the new covenant, passed on by the Apostles to the Church and now offered to God throughout the whole world … We should bring our offering to God together with the first-fruits of creation which belong to him. Our Lord should find us thankful to Him: by the purity of our doctrine, the sincerity of our faith, the firmness of our hope, the fervour of our charity. Only the Church presents this pure offering to the Creator and gives thanks … We offer God what belongs to him: bread and wine taken from creation and transformed into his Word.

Our Father wrote: Thus we will show the men and women of this world, who live and work in the midst of earthly realities, the meaning of Christ’s priestly prayer: Pater sancte, serva eos in nomine tuo, quos dedisti mihi… Non rogo ut tollas eos de mundo, sed ut serves eos a malo. De mundo non sunt, sicut et ego non sum de mundo. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me … I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

My very dearest children, all these are ideas that come to my mind - as they will also come to yours -when I reflect on the magnitude of our apostolic task in the midst of human endeavours, while also keeping in mind the words of Jesus, united to the scenes of his death - his triumph, his victory - on the Cross: Et ego, si exaltatus fuero a terra, omnia traham ad meipsum. I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw everything to myself.

Holy Mass, centre and root of our interior life.

The Sacrifice of the Mass is a summary of the history of our salvation, of Christ’s redeeming life and death, and of our own life as children of God called to reach holiness in our work. Each day should find us more eager to prepare for Mass: by our careful and loving recollection at night, and our ardent prayer throughout the day, a real dialogue with Jesus and his Father and the Holy Spirit. And during our day, let us frequently offer up our work anew, as we did in the morning offering and at Mass. Sanctified and offered to the Father in union with Christ’s sacrifice, our work is truly co-redeeming: it sanctifies and in a certain manner continues the work of creation, reconciling it with the Creator.

By thus sanctifying our work, we are praising God, thanking him, asking for his help and making reparation. In this way, the Mass becomes the centre and root of our interior life, so that the whole day becomes a continual act of worship, a prolongation of one Mass and a preparation for the next one, overflowing into aspirations, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, the offering of our work…

Sharing Christ’s sentiments on the Cross, we feed always on the Body of our Saviour, we ever partake of the blood of the Lamb, we have the loins of our soul girt continually with chastity and modesty, and our feet shod to proclaim the Gospel. With staff always in hand, we lean upon the sceptre sprung from the line of Jesse. Freed for ever from Egypt, we try always to shun the spirit of the world and follow the path that leads to God, and continually celebrate the paschal feast days. And the Gospel asks us to do all this, not just once a year but every day and always.

From the Mass we derive divine strength for our struggle and our apostolic work. As our Father wrote, A very important characteristic of the apostolic man is to love the Mass. Our holiness depends on the love we put into attending or, in the case of priests, celebrating Mass. During the sacrifice of the Mass, St Gregory says, we should immolate ourselves to God with sorrow-filled hearts, because we who celebrate the mysteries of our Lord’s Passion must imitate what we carry out. Our offering to God will be truly beneficial for us when we make an oblation of ourselves. And after the Mass has ended, we should make every effort… with God’s grace, to maintain in our soul the same strength and fervour.

We do so by our struggle throughout the day to seek out our Lord, by fulfilling the Norms, by our work carried out in God’s presence, and by our apostolic efforts.

Our Lady teaches us to come to Jesus, to recognize him and to find him in all the different situations of our day. And nowhere is she more a teacher than in the supreme moment of the holy sacrifice of the Mass, where time blends with eternity.