As I gazed upon the fruitfulness and richness of the documentaries, my disposition was led back to the part of the letter’s content I cordially and prayerfully composed for the batch in lieu of the permission we asked to witness the momentous celebration of Ipil’s becoming a diocese: “…we believe that, more than (and basically) the performance of rites is the call to deepen and nourish our faith in God through the visible signs we see and act.” The performance of actions leads to a higher but BASIC reality. Why basic? First and fundamentally, liturgia fons et culmen; we draw our strength and all these things from God, as well as, gear all these actions towards His greater glory. Second, if I am going to give an analogy as to the relationship between rites and the faith drawn from it, it would be the basic relationship of performing busy schedules and setting time for rest. Rest is basic to us just as faith in God is! But sometimes we fail to give time for rest and spend time for silence when we are choked by mere functions and busy-ness of our schedules. Hence, why do I give emphasis to rest? This is my first point in my reflection. Because I just couldn’t help but see the essential need and importance of this present generation to go to Mass (and other sacraments) regularly. In the first level, we need to instill in their minds and hearts the invitation to really “rest” in going to Church and in celebrating the Eucharist; meaning to say, the faithful must set aside all the worries that would hinder him/her to focus interiorly and listen intently to the Lord. Our past few Sunday Gospels are calling us all to that. Going to Mass is a retreat: a call to really rest with and in the Lord, a vacation with Him. As inspired by the image used by Bishop Tagle, going to Mass is like visiting a friend. By the mere fact that he went there, he set aside all those other schedules and freely chose to go to his friend’s house not to sleep, but to rest with his friend by exchanging words, stories, and hearts. Isn’t it wonderful!
Second, and in a deeper level and wider scope, the people of God especially the young ones are really invited to “rest” regularly in the Mass because many other “seemingly more attractive” options such as immorality arising from misused freedom, worldliness, and technological allurements are just prowling like roaring lions ever ready to devour the young people’s minds. Aside from that, they need time for rest and silence because the world is getting more complicated and noisier. That is one of those I learned, not just from the documentaries, but also from the course Eucharist last semester especially when I was given the task to translate into our dialect the communion part in the Eucharistic celebration. There, in one of my sources, was clearly stated that the great reason why it is necessary to spend a short yet quality time for silence after the communion songs are sung and before the priest recites or intones the Prayer after Communion – is that, the faithful are really given time to rest and pray in silence, because after the Mass and as they go back to the noisy world, they could hardly look for the “silence” that they innately desired.
After my first point above whose theme generally calls us “The Need to Rest”, allow me to share with you my second point whose theme in the assurance that “We Can Really Rest” in the Eucharistic celebration.
I would like to deepen this point in the light of the term “Liturgy of the World” as explained by Rahner in one of our discussions on the course GRACE. First, let us start on the notion that sacraments are graced-events. Let us avoid the idea that celebrating the sacraments is a way to put grace to a world that is not yet graced. Let us not look at the world and sacraments as two parallels. The world is permanently graced at its roots; even at creation is graced. We should not separate grace from human life. Yes, in human life there are struggles, but there’s grace. By his struggles, he realizes himself and helps him grow in faith, hope and love that lead him to God. We experience struggles everyday. But as what was mentioned above, in the ordinary-ness of everyday life, there is grace. The greatest manifestation of that reality was the experience shown by Jesus OF NAZARETH. He lived in a very ordinary life, and through that ordinary moments in his life and death, it has become Jesus’ irrevocable victory; the victory of resurrection and glory. So the world and its history (good and evil) constitute the liturgy of the world. The ordinary liturgy brings us into awareness in what constitutes the liturgy of the world. We need this liturgy to make us realize the liturgy of the world. Because when we celebrate Eucharist, we bring our ordinary experience; we celebrate what is happening in the world (triumph and struggles). So as we go to Mass, we bring our experiences and ritualize them in worship. That’s why the actions we perform in the Eucharist are used as means for God to reveal His great love. And we can relate to them because we experience them in our ordinary daily life. That is why the image of visitation to a friend and beso-beso is used to illustrate our going to the church; the Penitential Rite put at the beginning of the Mass signifies our ordinary act of shaking the dust off our shoes at the doorstep before we enter a house; the Word of God is the “kwentuhan” between friends; the Prayers of the Faithful show our very personal and ordinary daily concerns, as well as, of the Church’s and our country’s; the Offertory which constitutes help for the Church especially the poor; the use of our ordinary and “nakakabusog” bread and wine to manifest the unquenchable “busog” of the Body and Blood of Christ that we receive; the Communion part which signifies the “Halika, kain muna!” after all the chatting and exchange of stories and hearts, and many others.
So that when we go back to the world, we will recognize God in the ordinary life. Yes, human as we are, it is really difficult to forgive those who had done wrong to us. But as we are forgiven by God, we allow ourselves to become instruments of God to forgive because we believe that this person in loved by God.
No comments:
Post a Comment