20170722
MOVEMENT FROM SACRAMENTAL TO MYSTICAL LOVE
Readings
at Mass
Liturgical
Colour: White.
EITHER:
|
First
reading
|
|
Song of Songs 3:1-4 ©
|
The bride says this:
On my bed, at night, I sought him
whom my heart loves.
I sought but did not find him.
So I will rise and go through the City;
in the streets and in the squares
I will seek him whom my heart loves.
I sought but did not find him.
The watchmen came upon me
on their rounds in the City:
‘Have you seen him whom my heart loves?’
Scarcely had I passed them
when I found him whom my heart loves.
OR:
|
Alternative
First reading
|
|
2 Corinthians 5:14-17 ©
|
The love of Christ overwhelms us when we reflect that if one man
has died for all, then all men should be dead; and the reason he died for all
was so that living men should live no longer for themselves, but for him who
died and was raised to life for them.
From now onwards, therefore, we do not judge anyone by
the standards of the flesh. Even if we did once know Christ in the flesh, that
is not how we know him now. And for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new
creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here.
|
Responsorial Psalm
|
|
Psalm 62(63):2-6,8-9 ©
|
For you my soul is thirsting, O Lord my God.
O God, you are my God, for you I long;
for you my soul is thirsting.
My body pines for you
like a dry, weary land without water.
For you my soul is thirsting, O Lord my God.
So I gaze on you in the sanctuary
to see your strength and your glory.
For your love is better than life,
my lips will speak your praise.
For you my soul is thirsting, O Lord my God.
So I will bless you all my life,
in your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul shall be filled as with a banquet,
my mouth shall praise you with joy.
For you my soul is thirsting, O Lord my God.
For you have been my help;
in the shadow of your wings I rejoice.
My soul clings to you;
your right hand holds me fast.
For you my soul is thirsting, O Lord my God.
|
Gospel Acclamation
|
Alleluia, alleluia!
Tell us, Mary: say
what thou didst see upon the way.
– The tomb the Living did enclose;
I saw Christ’s glory as he rose!
Alleluia!
|
Gospel
|
|
John 20:1-2,11-18 ©
|
It was very early on the first day of the week and still dark,
when Mary of Magdala came to the tomb. She saw that the stone had been moved
away from the tomb and came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the
one Jesus loved. ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb’ she said ‘and we
don’t know where they have put him.’
Meanwhile
Mary stayed outside near the tomb, weeping. Then, still weeping, she stooped to
look inside, and saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had
been, one at the head, the other at the feet. They said, ‘Woman, why are you
weeping?’ ‘They have taken my Lord away’ she replied ‘and I don’t know where
they have put him.’ As she said this she turned round and saw Jesus standing
there, though she did not recognise him. Jesus said, ‘Woman, why are you
weeping? Who are you looking for?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said,
‘Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go
and remove him.’ Jesus said, ‘Mary!’ She knew him then and said to him in
Hebrew, ‘Rabbuni!’ – which means Master. Jesus said to her, ‘Do not cling
to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go and find the
brothers, and tell them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God
and your God.’ So Mary of Magdala went and told the disciples that she had seen
the Lord and that he had said these things to her.
MOVEMENT FROM SACRAMENTAL TO MYSTICAL LOVE
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [ SONG 3:1-4,
or 2 COR 5:14-17; PS 63: 2.3-4.5-6.8-9; JN 20: 1-2. 11-18]
Why is there
a lack of fervor in the faith today? Sad to say, many have left the Church but those who stay
are lukewarm and tepid in their faith. Many lack evangelical zeal and the
desire and enthusiasm to spread the Good News about Jesus. The practice
of faith is reduced to the practice of religion. It has become a routine
in life. It has even become an iron rice bowl for those in priestly and
religious life. No wonder, so many have left the Church or some have joined
other religions or Protestant churches where faith seems to be more alive and
vibrant.
The cause of
the indifference towards the faith is due to a lack of the consciousness of the
love of God in our lives. Rationalism is the first cause for distancing
from God. With the emphasis on science and reasoning, there is a
tendency towards rationalism. Our faith in God is very much on the level
of intellectual knowledge rather an affective experience of His love.
Theologians can be very knowledgeable in theology but yet lack a real faith in
Christ because of the lack of a conscious experience of His personal
love. The danger for those who are engaged in theological study is
that they think they know about God’s love and yet in truth they do not know it
in their personal life. It is a deceptive way of pretending to know lots
about God.
The second
reason is activism. Many are very active in the apostolate and in the
ministry. Today, the emphasis is on work and activities. People are
afraid to stay still and do nothing. We must always be doing something
and multi-tasking as well. We are afraid of silence and
contemplation. So we are busy with our projects and activities, doing
things for people and for the Church. It is all about output without any
input. As a consequence, we become edgy and irritable when overworked.
We begin to focus on results and efficiency and no longer on the needs of the
people. It is not surprising that many who are involved in Church
ministry or those in priestly life become jaded, lose interest and enthusiasm
after a while and instead get themselves engaged in squabbling over rules and
control.
The third
reason is the loss of the Sacred. They lack devotion and the presence of the sacred.
Religious things are reduced to the level of the profane. Many no longer
respect the sacredness of the Church, the Eucharist, or the sacramentals.
Holy things are treated with irreverence. When the line between the
sacred and profane is blurred, there is no sense of God’s presence. This
is not to say that they are so clearly distinguished, for we know that God
could also be found in ordinary things and the ordinary events of life as
well. But to arrive at this realization, we must begin with the
experience of God in the sacred. Without a real encounter of the Sacred,
we can no longer feel the presence of God in our lives.
When we read
the bible or study the history of the Church, the growth of the Church was
always the result of people and charismatic leaders who were deeply in love
with Christ and for His people. In the Old Testament, it was the great love for God in leaders
like Moses, King David and the prophets that the faith was kept. The
prophets, Elijah, Jeremiah, Hosea and Isaiah, were all consumed by their love
for God. During the time of Christ, it was His deep love and intimacy
with His Father that was the motivating factor in His mission. It was for
the love of His Father that Christ emptied Himself in the incarnation.
During the time of the apostles, it was their love for the Lord that made them
give up their life to follow Jesus in the mission. They were willing to
abandon their family and trade to follow after Jesus.
In the gospel
today, we read of Mary Magdalene’s deep devotion to the Lord. Love enabled her to do all
things. When we are in love with someone, there is nothing that can
prevent us from giving ourselves to that person. When we love, we are
consumed by love. Mary Magdalene was so in love with the Lord she
could not wait for the sun to rise to visit Him in the grave. When she
arrived in the dark, the stone was already moved away. Without checking
what was inside the tomb, her fear was that His body was taken away. And
later when the angels asked her why she was weeping, she was so absorbed in her
attachment to Jesus’ body that she only could say that the body was taken away.
And when Jesus spoke to her, thinking that He was the gardener said, “Sir, if
you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and
remove him.” She never thought for a while how she could ever
remove a dead body which is too heavy for one person to lift, much less by a
woman! The point is that when we are deeply in love, using all our energy
and might, we are able to do things beyond human imagination.
Isn’t this
true for all the saints and the missionaries of the early Church and those before
the 18thcentury? Many of them, for the love of Jesus and their
fellowmen, would leave their homeland to far distant countries to spread the
gospel. Many were persecuted and killed or died because of hunger,
poverty, poor hygiene and illnesses. Many died as martyrs for their
faith, after being cruelly tortured for their belief. Saints like St
Francis of Assisi left everything and sold all he had for the poor and lived in
simplicity because of his love for the Lord. St Francis Xavier
travelled to the Far East to spread the gospel. Indeed, the Church in the
East, Africa and in South America was the result of the sacrifices of the
missionaries. This was why St Theresa of the Child Jesus remarked, “I
understood that the Church had a Heart and that this Heart was aflame with
Love. I understood that Love alone stirred the members of the Church to act… I
understood that Love encompassed all vocations, that Love was everything”.
However,
their love for Christ and His Church came from a prior experience of His love
for them. It is not that we love Him but that He loved us first. This is what St Paul wrote
about his passion for Christ and the gospel. In the letter to the
Corinthians, he said, “The love of Christ overwhelms us when we reflect that if
one man has died for all, then all men should be dead; and the reason he died
for all was so that living men should live no longer for themselves, but for
him who died and was raised to life for them.” (2 Cor 5:14f)
St John also reiterated the primacy of God’s love for us. “In this is
love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the
expiation for our sins.” (1 Jn 4:10)
For this
reason, if we want to renew the fervor of the faith of our Catholics, we must
lead them to a personal experience of Christ’s love for them. We need to renew our
thirst for the Lord’s love as the Bride did in the Book of Song of Songs.
She cried out, “On my bed, at night, I sought him whom my heart loves. I sought
but did not find him. So I will rise and go through the City; in the streets
and the squares I will seek him whom my heart loves. I sought but did not find
him.” The responsorial psalm also speaks of this thirst for God in
his life. “O God, you are my God, for you I long; for you my soul is
thirsting. My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water. So
I gaze on you in the sanctuary to see your strength and your glory. For your
love is better than life, my lips will speak your praise.”
But it must
proceed from the way of human love before we can arrive at mystical love. There is a danger of
Catholics who lack the experience of God’s love but seek a mystical encounter
with Him, bypassing the humanity of Christ through some kind of centering
prayer. It has always been the teaching of the Church and of the mystics
that the only way to encounter the mystical Lord is through the humanity of
Christ. Hence, it is important to recount how Mary Magdalene made the
progress from loving the Jesus of Nazareth before reaching the maturity of
loving the Christ of Faith. The reason why Mary Magdalene could not find
the Lord was because she was still attached to the earthly Jesus of Nazareth.
So Jesus
invited her to transcend the level of sensual love to a spiritual love for Him. He said to her, “Do
not cling to me, because I have not yet ascended to my Father. But go and find
the brothers, and tell them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my
God and your God.” St Paul in the same vein urged the Christians to
do likewise. “From now onwards, therefore, we do not judge anyone by the
standards of the flesh. Even if we did once know Christ in the flesh, that is
not how we know him now. And for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new
creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here.”
In other
words, whilst spiritual life begins with an encounter with the Lord through the
human way, that is, by tangible and sacramental means, yet we must not just
cling to such devotions. There are many of these devotions, charismatic
worship, healing services, Divine Mercy, Novenas and devotions to the saints in
the Church. They are not to be despised or thought to be for the
uneducated. Such devotions help us to cultivate a human love for God and
the saints. It helps us to experience their love affectively. But
if our love for the Lord is just focused on devotions and the sacramentals, we
can become overly superstitious. Nevertheless, they are important
means to lead us to into a deeper encounter with the Lord in contemplative
prayer, in silence and in charity. In the final analysis, the height of
love for God is both a contemplative and mystical experience of His love
leading us to share His love with others.
Written by The Most Rev William Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of
Singapore © All Rights Reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment