The First Disciple

With this month of September, as if taking a clue from the glorious Feast of the Assumption, the Marian Feasts appear. September 8th, the Birthday of Mary; the 12^th, the Holy Name of Mary; the 15^th, the Sorrows of Mary; the 24^th, the ancient feast of Our Lady of Ransom. The Marian tribute flows into October with the Feast of the Rosary on October 7. Why does the Church do this? Ask this of the readings…

Nestled in this Green Formation-in-DiscipleshipTime, what role does the Mother of Jesus play in the fostering of our own discipleship? In our own formation? In our own spirituality? In the life of the Church? Fear not that she will replace her Son in our lives. But don’t miss the fact that she is given to us as the model of our own formation in discipleship. We look to our mother to see what we shall be. We look to her to see how one becomes a true disciple.

Yes, she was conceived without the sin of Adam. The blood her Son would shed would intercept it…the blood she gave Him, because with God there is no time. And we? We will have an immaculate completion…freed at last from all sin by that same blood. Then there was the Virgin Birth…His body formed in her by the Spirit’s power in her DNA. And how else will you also give Christ to the world? How else does the Church give Christ to the world if not by a virgin birth? Mediatrix of all graces? The Sacred Humanity came from her, and that humanity was the sacrament of our saving. Is not your humble humanness, and that of the Church, the means of reaching out to others? And finally, in her Assumption, that humble God-bearing body becomes transformed by the very love that burned in her from Him. And you? What will your transfigured humanness look like, fed by His Risen Life in the Eucharist? Our mother shows us what discipleship looks like, and what it does to our humanness. She shows us what the Church will look like when the struggle is over, when there are no more tears.

 

Lovely Lady, dressed in blue, 

teach us how to pray…

God was just your little Boy, 

and you know the way.

 

 

This is my Body…

We’ve just celebrated a significant Revival in honor of the presence of the risen Jesus in the Eucharist. The reason for this effort is a survey that revealed many Catholics are no longer believing that the consecrated host holds the real presence of the risen Jesus. They learned it when they studied their catechism, but now, as science has taken center stage on TV, how are they to explain it in conversation? What might we say to our families and friends when they ask us about this? How might this month’s readings help us with this?

We might begin by saying that the mystery of the incarnation really has three steps…down. First, our wild loving God in the person of the Word, stepped down into the Virgin’s womb. The Word fused itself with our DNA…our double helix. If that is not amazing enough, he took a second step…down. The Word in the humanness of Christ Jesus chose to enter the worst level of human suffering, death by execution by your very own kin. But there is a third step. The transformed human that is the risen Jesus took a third step…down. He figured out how to feed us with his own risen life by becoming a ‘thing,’ bread to be kept in a bread-box we call the tabernacle.

Catherine of Siena says it well: “Oh mad lover! It was not enough for you to take on our humanity: you had to die as well! Nor was death enough…I see your mercy pressing you to give us even more when you leave yourself to us as food to strengthen our weakness, so that we forgetful fools should be forever reminded of your goodness.” (Dial. 30, p. 72) Yes, three steps…down.

It would be wise too, for us to mention that we are dealing with an alternate physics here. We have no idea what a transformed humanness is like. We just know that this time-space body gets pretty exhausted by the end of the day. Jesus has a transformed human metabolism. Its limits are gone. It has been transformed by love…as ours will be, and he can be anywhere he pleases. In fact, he is the one presence that holds all the tabernacles that hold him. Our faith in the Eucharist holds the promise of our very own future. The Revival prayer by Bishop Andrew Cozzens says it well:

Jesus living in the Eucharist, come and live in me.

Jesus healing in the Eucharist, come and heal me.

Jesus sacrificing yourself in the Eucharist, come and suffer in me.

Jesus rising in the Eucharist come and rise to new life in me.

Jesus loving in the Eucharist, come and love in me.