Contemplata

“You become what you eat,” they say. If you eat the body and drink the blood of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, who do you become? You become him. You become Jesus. You become another Christ in this world. You learn to live his life – his supernatural and divine Life. You come to know his Father. You begin to breathe his Spirit. You learn to walk as he walked. You learn to pray. You learn to listen to God. You learn to lay down your life in humble service of other people. In short, you and I learn to live in a personal friendship with God.

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At Mass, the people are called to co-offer the sacrifice. But how, precisely, do we do so? It is principally an affair of the heart, a matter of intention. Find out in this episode how heaven teaches us to form such an intention at Mass.

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Very often, when we think of going to Mass or not going to Mass, the question in our minds is, “What I will get out of it.?” We do not think in terms of what God is worth or how, in the Mass, we render to God the worship he deserves from us. But what is God worth? Even if you can’t receive communion that day, you and I have been given the grace, the honor, and the privilege to join with Jesus Christ himself in offering true worship to the Father at the holy sacrifice at the Mass. That is reason enough to go. God is reason enough to go.

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Pope Pius XII once said that “all the faithful should be aware that to participate in the Eucharistic Sacrifice is their chief duty and supreme dignity.”  But how do we do so? What is our part in the Mass? The answer is simple. Our hearts should have the same qualities of the heart of Jesus Christ in his worship of the Father and our hearts should be a reflection of his. But what are the qualities of the heart of Jesus in his worship? Fr. James Brent, O.P., ponders some of these qualities of the heart of Jesus in worship in this episode of Contemplata.

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When we go to Mass, we remain on earth. But Fr. James Brent, O.P. explains that what we have on our altars in our earthly liturgies is one and the same Lamb of God as in heaven—not merely a sign or merely a symbol of the Lamb, but the actual Lamb of God—body, blood, soul, and divinity. 

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There is one place above all where we can come to know the love of God—the Eucharist. It is called the sacrament of charity, the sacrament of love. And it was out of love that Jesus Christ set up this great sacrament in the Church. It was in order to remain with us always, in order to bring us back to himself in eternity.

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In this episode, Fr. James Brent O.P., talks about the Marian apparition at Knock (in Ireland) which he says is also a Eucharistic apparition—and that Eucharistic Adoration is essentially a sustained beholding of the Lamb of God. It is the perfect response to John the Baptist’s prophetic command: metanoeite! Mind your God!

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When we receive holy communion in a certain state, when we are well disposed with certain qualities of mind and heart, then holy communion will have a great effect on us. When our minds and hearts lack those qualities or are not well disposed, then the effects of holy communion on us will be less. The effects of holy communion run deeper, grow stronger, and last longer when we approach with the proper spiritual dispositions. But what are the proper dispositions?

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When we receive holy communion, the sacrament has certain effects on us—spiritual or supernatural effects. Just as food nourishes a child and causes the child to grow strong in bodily life, so holy communion nourishes our souls and causes us to grow strong in the spiritual life, the life of grace. 

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As Catholics, we believe and confess that the Eucharist is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, not a new or additional sacrifice, but the same sacrifice. How can it be so? In this episode of Contemplata, Fr. James Brent, O.P. further explains how the sacrifice Christ offered at Calvary is the same sacrifice on the altar at every Mass. 

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