You will have to forgive me. I'm on retreat. This happens when I am on retreat.
I
It is one of the mysteries of being that the inside of the human heart is much larger than the outside. The heart can easily be held in the palm of your hand, but inside is the vastness of love, the caverns of hope, the depths of wisdom, the hallways of God.
Even more incredible is the Eucharist. The Blessed Sacrament itself can be held on the tip of your tongue or in the hollow of your hand. But within is the vastness of God.
II
God did not create the universe –
- and then walk away only to return when we cry out for help.
Rather God continually makes the universe. Or perhaps a better way to figure it is that He holds the universe in being much like we keep an image present in our thoughts. Therefore everything that is participates in God and is therefore good.
All that is in the universe was made through the Word and nothing that is, seen and unseen, was made apart from Him. All that is, is NOT God and NOT worthy of worship, but it is all contained within God - all participating in God.
As a priest when you concelebrate Mass you typically receive Our Lord in the hand, receiving Him after the main celebrant. So you have a few moments to contemplate Him resting on your palm. This is Jesus the bridegroom through Whom all things are made and in Whom all that is, is somehow contained. In that mysterious way then, isn’t it an ironic bending of reality that the whole universe is held in your hand? That within the tiny tabernacle on the altar is contained the whole of the universe including the very tabernacle that contains it? Within the Eucharist is the entire breadth, and width, and height of God and every corner of the cosmos. And weak as I am I lift the Blessed Sacrament with my hand and bring Him within myself by His very invitation and power.
What god is there as generous as our God? He is no sparce giver. He is both love and lover and too excess. That is why the Eucharist seems like hyperbole. But that is what love does – it gives to excess.
I
It is one of the mysteries of being that the inside of the human heart is much larger than the outside. The heart can easily be held in the palm of your hand, but inside is the vastness of love, the caverns of hope, the depths of wisdom, the hallways of God.
Even more incredible is the Eucharist. The Blessed Sacrament itself can be held on the tip of your tongue or in the hollow of your hand. But within is the vastness of God.
II
God did not create the universe –
- and then walk away only to return when we cry out for help.
Rather God continually makes the universe. Or perhaps a better way to figure it is that He holds the universe in being much like we keep an image present in our thoughts. Therefore everything that is participates in God and is therefore good.
All that is in the universe was made through the Word and nothing that is, seen and unseen, was made apart from Him. All that is, is NOT God and NOT worthy of worship, but it is all contained within God - all participating in God.
As a priest when you concelebrate Mass you typically receive Our Lord in the hand, receiving Him after the main celebrant. So you have a few moments to contemplate Him resting on your palm. This is Jesus the bridegroom through Whom all things are made and in Whom all that is, is somehow contained. In that mysterious way then, isn’t it an ironic bending of reality that the whole universe is held in your hand? That within the tiny tabernacle on the altar is contained the whole of the universe including the very tabernacle that contains it? Within the Eucharist is the entire breadth, and width, and height of God and every corner of the cosmos. And weak as I am I lift the Blessed Sacrament with my hand and bring Him within myself by His very invitation and power.
What god is there as generous as our God? He is no sparce giver. He is both love and lover and too excess. That is why the Eucharist seems like hyperbole. But that is what love does – it gives to excess.
2 comments:
Father Valencheck, you are a poet.
Yesterday at Eucharistic adoration, I was wondering if we could correctly say that Jesus in the monstrance is the "2000 year old Man." His male, human, flesh was born about 2000 years ago and is present to us in the Eucharist. His Divinity, of course, is eternal.
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