Pastors Notes from August 25, 2023
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“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,” says the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9). St. Augustine said it is easier to describe what God is not then to describe what God is. And Pope Paul VI took it a bit further: “Mystery is a reality imbued with the hidden presence of God.” Though our scientific and theological research and advancements have brought us indispensable revelations and understandings, we have to walk carefully in our ‘exploration’ of God. Our language and experiences—regardless of how adept intellectually we are—will always fall short of grasping the incomprehensible nature and existence of God. Our Christian faith and endeavors are ultimately about one mystery: God. Our Father and Creator is mediated (revealed) through creation, through the life, death and resurrection of his Son, through the Church, the Sacraments, and history.
And within the Sacraments—“visible signs of God’s invisible grace”—we are summoned and formed into community through the Eucharist. Mystery persists in the real presence as defined by the Catholic Catechism of the Church: "The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. . . .In brief, the Eucharist is the sum and summary of our faith: ". The inexhaustible richness of this sacrament is expressed in the different names we give it. Each name evokes certain aspects of it. It is called: “Eucharist,” because it is an action of thanksgiving to God. The Greek root of ‘Eucharist’ recall the Jewish blessings that proclaim - especially during a meal - God's works: creation, redemption, and sanctification. The “Lord's Supper,” because of its connection with the supper which the Lord took with his disciples on the eve of his Passion and because it anticipates the wedding feast of the Lamb in the heavenly Jerusalem. The “Breaking of Bread,” because Jesus used this rite, part of a Jewish meal, when as master of the table he blessed and distributed the bread, above all at the Last Supper. It is by this action that his disciples will recognize him after his Resurrection, and it is this expression that the first Christians will use to designate their Eucharistic gatherings.
In the midst of our Church’s ongoing Synod on Synodality and Eucharistic Revival, the Holy Spirit encourages an examination of who we are as a community of Christians, and how our beliefs and participation of faith are bringing us into union with our God who is “always, everywhere present, and always He seeks to discover Himself to each one." Summoned through the Eucharist, the reality and mystery of the real presence, we are in turn receiving the deepest mystery and reality of God; the one who loves us more than we can possibly imagine. Our reception brings us into the grace of that which we cannot fully comprehend, and that which has been and always will be—uncomplicated—within the essence of all life. As the Christian author, C.S. Lewis, once quipped, "We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito." As the ‘world’ demands our attention, distracting us from our faith in the one immutable God, we need the Sacraments, the Eucharist to bring us back into communion with the reality of our Creator who will never forsake that which He brought forth “and saw everything he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” (Gen. 1:31) We don’t confront the commotion of the world, rather we abide within the moments where we are without words, receiving grace in the silence of our being, as the Psalmist proclaims, “Be still and know that I am God. (46:10) Mother Teresa in her practical wisdom reminds us, "We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature — trees, flowers, grass — grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence ... We need silence to be able to touch souls." As Autumn descends upon us beginning this weekend, may we seek such moments, acknowledging the mysterious grace of God prevalent in this season of change, of color, of hope. And may our reception of the Eucharist strengthen our hope in the reality of His Son embracing our journey of faith.
God Bless, Fr. Tim
FYI: "Father, son, and Holy Spirit mean that the mystery beyond us, the mystery among us, and the mystery within us are all the same mystery." (Frederick Buechner, minister & writer)
