Take a Retreat

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

    Every year, priests are asked to take a spiritual retreat.  On a merely physical level, it’s an opportunity to “recharge the batteries,” that can be drained by spending himself for his people.  On a spiritual level, it’s an opportunity to deepen his relationship with the Lord, to grow in the Theological virtues of faith, hope, and love.  Jesus Himself invited the Twelve to take a brief retreat in Mark 6:31, when Jesus said, “‘Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.’”  Mark notes that there were large numbers of people who had been coming to see Jesus, and the apostles and Jesus were often missing meal time, so they went off in a boat “to a deserted place.” 
    But retreats aren’t only for priests.  The lay faithful, too, are encouraged, to the extent possible, to take a yearly retreat.  Before COVID, our great retreat center in DeWitt offered different tailored retreats to men, women, married couples, and other groups.  As we get through this pandemic you can make sure and check their webpage for upcoming retreat opportunities. 
    But I get that retreats are especially hard for those who are still working and/or who are caring for dependents.  For many Catholics, a retreat is something that they hear about that other people do, but nothing they take advantage of for themselves. 
    So this year, for our upcoming Sacred Triduum–Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday–I want to encourage you to think about the opportunities for prayer as a chance to retreat, to take some extra time with the Lord.  We’ve added times for prayer, but there’s also the times when the Church is simply open and quiet, when you can come and spend time with Jesus.
    Jesus Himself, as we heard in our Passion Narrative today, took time to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane as He was preparing for His Passion and Death.  He asked St. Peter, “‘Could you not keep watch for one hour?’”  Come to the Mass of the Lord’s Supper at 7 p.m. on Holy Thursday, and pray with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane after the Mass.  Pray for the openness to what the Lord wants to share with you during these holy days of the Lord’s Passion.  Sign-up for 30 minutes or and hour to spend with Jesus in our Community Room Gethsemane, which will start after Mass and go until 10 p.m.  Most of that time is simply silent, with the Blessed Sacrament.  But it’s a powerful time to pray and spend with Jesus.
    For Good Friday, we’ll have four opportunities for you to come and spend time with Jesus.  The church will be stripped, and we’ll start with Daytime Prayer, part of the Liturgy of the Hours, the official prayer of the Church, at noon.  Then at 12:30 we’ll continue with Stations of the Cross, the great devotion of walking with Jesus as He walked to Calvary to die for love of us.  It’s then that we can ponder our own crosses, our own falls on the path the God has allowed us to walk.  At 3 p.m., the hour that Jesus died, we’ll recall His Death on the Cross, and venerate the cross that saved us from sin and death.  And then at 8 p.m. Good Friday night, we’ll hear the powerful and sorrowful psalms and readings that point to the price that was paid for our salvation.  And, if any of those exact times don’t work, feel free to come to the church any time between 11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. to spend time with Jesus.
    Holy Saturday is our day of watching and waiting.  We know the rest of the story, but we put ourselves into the place of the Apostles and faithful disciples who didn’t know what to do after Jesus had died.  We wait in the great silence of the day that Jesus’ Body remained in the Tomb, while His Soul descended to hell, the place of the dead, to rescue to the souls of the just and escort them into heaven.  We’ll have a powerful set of readings at 8:30 a.m., and then bless any Easter food you bring at 12:30 p.m.  On that day of silence, the expectation of what we know will happen that night pushes us to be patient with God’s will as it becomes known to us in our daily lives, especially in the sufferings that we endure, often not seeing the future risings that will come from them.  And then, at 8:30 p.m., we’ll begin our solemn Easter Vigil, the Night of Nights, when sorrow turned to joy, darkness turned to light, and death was conquered by Life Himself. 
    It’s only a three-day retreat, and it’s not the full three days, but you’ll have a great opportunity to take time away with the Lord, to give Him all that is on your heart right now, to rest with Him.  This is a beautiful way that we accompany Jesus during His Passion, doing for Jesus what He does for us in all our sufferings: stay with us, encourage us, pray with us.  Don’t miss out on this opportunity of our Triduum retreat.  Recharge your spiritual batteries; come to be with Jesus; rest with Him.

Participation in the Mystery

Mass of the Lord’s Supper

Sometimes you just need to mix things up a bit.  Usually, I preach on the readings, because the Word of God should be preached; St. Paul says, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel.”  However, tonight, to mix things up, I thought I’d preach on one of the prayers that will be said soon, what we call the Prayer over the Offerings.  This is the prayer that is said after I have prepared the bread and the wine on the altar, and have washed my hands in preparation.  

The prayer says, “Grant us, O Lord, we pray, that we may participate worthily in these mysteries, for whenever the memorial of this sacrifice is celebrated the work of our redemption is accomplished.  Through Christ our Lord.”  Maybe it sounds to you like any other prayer in the Mass, a little wordy, some unique words.  But this one in particular is very full of meaning that, if we are not paying attention, can gloss over us.  

We start out by asking God the Father to help us “participate worthily in these mysteries…”  Right now, we are participants in something.  We are not spectators (at least we are not supposed to be).  We are engaged in something.  So often the Church uses the phrase “active participation” when it comes to what we should be doing in the Mass, and because we are an active society, we tend to take it as doing something, like being a lector or an extraordinary minister or a choir member.  But active participation is always united to us giving ourselves, first and foremost interiorly, to the Father through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit, in what is being celebrated.  Tonight, on Holy Thursday, we participate in the Lord’s Supper in a mystical way.  We do not simply remember it.  A lot of Protestant music will talk about remembering what our Lord did at the Last Supper, remembering His saving life, Death, and Resurrection.  But we don’t only remember.  We participate.  Simply remembering is for museums, which is what some churches have become.  If people understood that they participate in what we celebrate, churches would not be so empty.  

But it is not any participation.  It is a worthy participation.  And how do we worthily participate?  We respond to the prayers with the voice, we listen to the prayers with our ears, we focus our attention on what is being done, on the smoke of the incense, on the precious nature of the vessels.  And hopefully, we also come with pure souls, free from any grave sins that hinder us from being present with Jesus, just as Judas left the Upper Room.  He could not worthily participate because his heart did not belong to God.  Shortly after this prayer we are invited to lift up our hearts, to leave behind the worries and anxieties of the day, and to focus on what God is doing for us.  We say, “We lift them up to the Lord,” but do we?

The Upper Room, where Jesus celebrated the
Last Supper

In what do we participate?  Yes, I have said the Last Supper, but we participate in the mystery of the Last Supper.  This is not a Sherlock Holmes mystery.  This mystery is something which is infinite, but which breaks into our finite time and minds.  We often will mentally chide St. Peter for not understanding what was going on when Jesus tried to wash St. Peter’s feet, or the apostles who fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane.  But do we understand what is going on?  Do we understand that the mystery of Jesus’ Body and Blood in the Eucharist is a gift beyond description, beyond riches, beyond understanding.  St. John Vianney said that if we truly understood what happened in the Mass, then they would die of joy.  

This mystery is so great that angels themselves bow down in worship, and shield their faces from the miracle that takes place when ordinary bread and wine become the Body of Blood of Jesus.  The God whom the universe cannot contain humbles Himself and makes Himself present in the ciborium and in the chalice.  The saints, who worship with us tonight and at every Mass, join their prayers to the perfect prayer of the Mass, the perfect prayer of Jesus offering Himself to the Father.  

The place in Jerusalem where Jesus was
nailed to the cross

And the Eucharist, every Eucharist, is not simply the Last Supper, but is what the Last Supper points to, what only one of the Apostles would actually experience, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.  Tonight only makes sense–and every Mass only makes sense–in the light of the crucifixion of Jesus on Calvary.  Jesus gave His Church, His bride, a way that His once for all sacrifice on the cross could be accessible, not only in memory, but in reality, to every member of the Church throughout the ages.  And that is why the prayer continues, “for whenever the memorial of this sacrifice is celebrated the work of our redemption is accomplished.”  Every time Mass is celebrated, Christ’s saving work continues.  That’s why we offer Masses for people, that Christ’s saving work can be applied for this person or that person, living or deceased.  Each and every day that the Mass is celebrated, salvation is achieved by Christ.  And it’s achieved here, where we get to participate in it, not watch it as spectators.  

Of course tonight we use many of our signs and symbols to impress what the prayers say.  But it’s the same at a Papal Mass, and at Mass in the gym at Powers, and at Mass here at St. Pius X Church.  Tonight, as we enter into the three intense days of our Lord’s saving action of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter, let us set aside all earthly cares, lift up our hearts to the heavenly things, and focus our spirit, mind, and body on the great mystery of our salvation, accomplished by Christ, and made present for us in the Mass.  “Grant us, O Lord, we pray, that we may participate worthily in these mysteries, for whenever the memorial of this sacrifice is celebrated the work of our redemption is accomplished.  Through Christ our Lord.”