Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God,
who, by the will of the Father
and the work of the Holy Spirit,
through your Death gave life to the world,
free me by this, your most holy Body and Blood,
from all my sins and from every evil;
keep me always faithful to your commandments,
and never let me be parted from you.
The prayer above is the silent prayer the priest prays in preparation for receiving the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus in the Eucharist. During this week where we have been asked to pray for vocations, this prayer has been on my heart as I go about my daily prayers. Often in my Holy Hour, or when I pray the Rosary or the Liturgy of the Hours this prayer has slipped into the routine of prayer when I recite my consecration to the Sacred Heart, my prayer for vocations and the prayer for the bishops and priests of the Diocese of San Jose.
“and never let me be parted from you”
The final line of the prayer reminds me of the unity we all wish for in life and death. It is an invitation be become more Christlike in our journeys of faith. But most importantly for me it informs the body of the prayer where in the consuming of the Body of Christ and the drinking of the Blood of Christ we express how much each person is loved by God.
When I was first ordained in 2005 I had studied the Mass in seminary and had heard and prayed the Mass for almost all of my life. I don’t remember the Latin Mass and the Ordinary Form had and continues to be the spiritual food that feeds my soul daily. Throughout the years the prayer of the Mass has become more intimate and more like taking a breath as the labor of the Mass flowed into the prayer of the Mass. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a perfect presider and I make my fair share of errors…but the Mass now moves through my heart, soul and mind with joyful blessing. It is something that has gradually occurred and something I barely noticed until a few years ago when a parishioner remarked how tired I had looked before celebrating the Sunday evening Mass but, as she commented on, she could see life flowing into me as the Mass continued.
“Through your Death gave life to the world.”
How do we find life in the celebration of the Mass? The phrase that Mass is boring that I often hear from people breaks my heart but it also reminds me of when “Mass was boring for me.” When I truly discovered life within the Mass was when I was teaching in New Mexico and began attending daily Mass in the morning before school began. In the quiet ritual of daily Mass the rhythm of God’s grace began to fill me more and more. Daily Mass became a prayer and my presence before God. The intuition was confirmed when as a priest I overheard a student in our Catholic School telling his teacher how much he liked going to daily Mass with his class because it was so quiet and peaceful. This becomes the place of life, where we quiet our minds and allow the soul to be filled with the presence of God in the sacrifice of the Mass.
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God”
To recognize how much God gives to us in the gift of His son Jesus Christ is always a moment of pause. To know we hold Divine life in our hands, to know we take Divine life into our body, to know we become Christlike in this Eucharistic gift is simply amazing. To love Jesus is to love the Mass. To love Mass is to love the Church. To love the Church is to love our neighbor. To love our neighbor is to know how much God loves each one of us as a beloved son and daughter.
God Bless
Fr. Mark