Wednesday, May 28, 2008

"Real Presence"

In the Liturgy of the Hours, Office of Readings for Corpus Christi, the second reading is by St. John Chrysostom (347-407), in which he basically says "You say you want to see Jesus in the holy Sacrament of the Altar... you do see him, what you really want to see is his garments." - sort of cuts to the chase!

Edit: My mistake, it was in Divine Intimacy by Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene O.C.D., #203, Second Sunday after Pentecost.

St. John Chrysostom said to those who wanted to see Christ in the Eucharist with their bodily eyes, "Behold, you do see Him; you touch Him, you eat Him. You would like to see His garments; He not only permits you to see Him, but also to eat Him, to touch Him, to receive Him into your heart... He whom the angels look upon with fear, and dare not gaze upon steadfastly because of His dazzling splendor, becomes our Food; we are united to Him, and are made one body and one flesh with Christ" (RB).

So, even though it wasn't in the Liturgy of the Hours, it was in the preceeding work, the Roman Breviary...



Our chapter is blessed with the very real presence and garments of Fr. Bart de la Torre O.P., who is visiting for Katie Keenan's high school graduation. He re-blessed the Chapter House for us last night.

When Fr. Bart last visited, none of this was here; Kathleen is explaining a bit...


Fr. Bart looks at our informational poster that has his picture; from 1997!


Kathleen has been collecting rosaries at Our Lady of the Valley for Fr. Bart to take back to the Mexicali parish when he returns.


Fr. Bart begins the blessing of the Chapter House...


After blessing the inside, we go outside


Fr. Bart throwing the holy water on the building. Did the camera catch a holy fireball? (no, it's just the tail light of the trailer caught in the camera flash. Had me going, though!)


and, with Katie!!





and, from my run-away weekend to Bend; Burns caught my attention with blue flowers in the wet fields,


Cranes and lots of water birds in what's left of the spring wetlands,


and antelope (some nursing little ones, which I've not seen before); this bold individual was looking for the gate to cross the road.





"These Holy Mysteries" is another way of referring to the sacraments; for "sacrament" means "mystery" - In current vernacular usage, a mystery is something we don't know which can be discovered by investigating the clues, as in "murder mysteries." However, the original meaning of the word is in terms of the sacraments, thing which are visible and plain before us, but the action of which is hidden, both from sight, and the understanding, since we approach them by faith.

But, this weekend of the Holy Mystery most sublime, had it's own mystery on the plane of the ordinary; a recovered trove of family memorabilia; letters, pictures, documents, from about 1900 to 1945; an individual had found this in a storage unit in Hermiston, and had spent two years looking for the family (even visiting this blog!), not realizing that the address on the letters of the 1930s to 1945, was still good! How this material came to be in a storage unit in Hermiston, we may never know.

Materials laid out at the Deschutes County Historical Society; the first picture only captures about the half of it, and a couple examples...








The Great Mystery brings us Eternal Life; life, on the other hand, brings us the little mysteries...

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