The opening and closing prayers from Mass yesterday both struck me.
"Almighty ever-living God...pour out your mercy upon us to pardon what conscience dreads and to give what prayer does not dare to ask." (Collect, 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time)
This one gets me every year. What does your conscience dread taking to the Sacrament of Reconciliation? God already knows about it, so why not unload it in the confessional and have that dread replaced with his mercy and forgiveness?
"Grant us, almighty God, that we may be refreshed and nourished by the Sacrament we have received, so as to be transformed into what we consume." (Prayer after Communion, 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time)
This one is straight from St. Augustine! Here’s an excerpt from my first homily:
This is what St. Paul explains to the Church in Corinth in our second reading: that their participation in the Eucharist makes them one because it is a participation in the one body of Christ.
St. Augustine expands upon this idea, teaching that we are like the many individual grains of wheat
that are ground together by instruction in the faith, moistened with the water of Baptism to become
one lump of dough, and baked by the fire of Holy Spirit in Confirmation, all at the hands of the Father, to become one loaf: the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church.
And so Augustine preaches to the newly baptized about the Eucharist, “Be what you see and receive what you are” (sermon 272), the one Body of Christ. Participating in the Eucharistic Body of Christ is what strengthens and solidifies us as the unified Mystical Body of Christ.
