Before we get started I want to add something I was asked about. "How do you prepare yourself for your writing?" Mainly, I know the Faith and try to understand why we believe what we do. If I don't know the answer when asked, I look it up. I read a lot, also. I have many very good books in my library for help (mostly and primarily pre-Vatican II). And, I invoke the intercession of St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of journalists, when writing and publishing the posts. I don't consider myself a journalist, but, since I'm trying to get the Word out, I ask for help and inspiration. And, since I am a convert of 35 years now, I understand the Protestant errors as well as anyone. I am hard-headed, and we need more like me to come to the Truth and then help others understand the Faith. We won't cave in to the novel ideas of these days, no matter who's teaching them. Anyway, let's move on to the teachings of this Sunday's readings:
We hear from the Gospel of St. Mark this Sunday, the 6th after Pentecost. We will hear about Jesus feeding thousands of people with a few loaves(7 to be exact). Remember this number. After following Jesus into the desert for 3 days, they are famished. Voila! 7 loaves of bread are on hand. Jesus will deliver to them another miracle, but they probably won't know it as such. They will have their fill. The number seven is significant for us. This represents the Sacraments. By utilizing them, we will be spiritually filled. By faith these Jews followed Him into the desert, and are repaid for their time. We follow by Faith, and we are filled with Himself in the Holy Eucharist, which sustains us.
St. Ambrose comments on this Sunday's Gospel. He takes notice of the number Seven. The seventh day god rested, and therefore we should also. The seven Sacraments restore us to life. The seventh beatitude in the sermon on the mount 'refers to the peace-makers, or peaceable, as deserving to be called, most truly, the sons of God. It is in them alone that is fully developed the germ of divine Son-ship, which is put into the soul at Baptism. Thanks to the silence to which the passions have been reduced, their spirit, now master of the flesh, and itself subject to God, is a stranger to those inward storms, those sudden changes, and even those inequalities of temperature, which are all unfavorable to the growth of the precious seed; warmed by the Sun of justice in an atmosphere which is ever serene and unclouded, there is no obstacle to its coming up, there is no ill-shapen growth; absorbing all the human moisture of this earth wherein it is set, assimilating the very earth itself, it soon leaves nothing else to be seen in these men but the divine, for they have become, in the eyes of the Father Who is in heaven, a most faithful image of His first-born Son.'
St. Ambrose continues: '...take notice of the condition specified in our Gospel, as necessary for those who aspire to such nourishment as that. It is not to lazy people, nor to them that live in cities, nor to them that are great in worldly honours, but to them that seek Christ in the desert, that is given the heavenly nourishment: they alone who hunger after it are received by Christ in to a participation of the Word and of God's kingdom.'
Our beloved Abbot Gueranger in 'The Liturgical Year' adds: 'All the truth, all the goodness, all the beauty of created things, are incapable of satisfying any single soul; it must have God. So long as man does not understand this, everything good or true that his senses and his reason can provide him with, so far from being able to satiate him, is ordinarily nothing more than a distraction from the one object that can make him the happy being he was created to be, and a hindrance to his living the true life which God willed him to attain.'
We have ended the month of June, the month dedicated to the Sacred Heart, and entering into the month of July, the month dedicated to the Precious Blood of Jesus. Maybe we can open our hearts to be like His, which was opened on the Cross for us, and therefore do the things that please Him, instead of our own pleasures.
Like He said: "Ask, and ye shall receive." So, we ask.
The Church reminds us of the first drops of Blood that flowed for our redemption on the day when Jesus was circumcised.
It is night on Mount Olivet, and the moon is shining. We see the holy face crimsoned with blood during the agony in the garden.
Unhappy, despairing Judas casts the blood-money down in the temple. "I have betrayed innocent blood!", he exclaims. (I actually used this line to a priest. I had told him that Me and my family were leaving his parish because the Truth was not in him, and that I didn't want my kids to listen to him anymore. I also told him that I thought that Judas was better than he was. He was appalled, to say the least. I then told him that at least Judas said: "I have betrayed innocent Blood." He has recently passed on, and has received what he deserves. I do wish him the best, however.)
In the scourging chamber we see the Lord in deepest humiliation; under raw strokes the divine Blood spurts out over the floor. Christ is led before Pilate. Pilate shows the blood-covered Body to the crowds: 'Ecce homo!' We go through Jerusalem's streets following the bloody footsteps to Golgotha. Down the beams of the Cross blood trickles. A soldier opens the Sacred Side. Water and Blood, the Symbols of our redemption.
Liturgical commentary on the 6th Sunday after Pentecost and the multiplication of the loaves; a prefiguration of the Holy Eucharist.
The Church has chosen for the Gospel the account of the multiplication of the loaves, a type of the Eucharist, our viaticum. It is this second multiplication of loaves which is a more striking figure of the Eucharist, since it was performed with loaves made of wheat, the element used in the Sacrament, while in the first, barley loaves were employed.
By identifying us with the Victim of Calvary, Holy Communion not only completes the effects of baptism within us by making us die with our Lord to sin, but makes us find at the Holy Altar the strength we need to prevent us from falling back into sin and to "perfect our goings in the paths" of the Lord (Offertory).
It is in this sense that St. Ambrose comments thus on the Gospel:
"After the woman, a figure of the Church, was cured of the issue of blood, the food of heavenly grace was dispensed. The right order of the mystery was kept. First a medicine is provided to cure wounds by the remission of sins, and then the food of the heavenly table is served in abundance. Our Lord said: 'If I shall send them away fasting to their home they will faint by the way.' Full of goodness, He maintains the strength of those who follow Him. If anyone faint it is not our Lord's fault, but that of the man himself."
Christ has set within us fortifying agencies; the food He gives is strength and vigor, so, if through negligence, you have lost the strength you received, you must not blame the heavenly nourishment, which never fails, but rather yourself. Was it not through the sustenance given him, when he was about to fall by the way, that the holy Elias walked forty days after the angel's visit?
Source: Dom Gaspar Lefebvre, OSB, 1945, adapted and abridged.
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