What Archangels and Centurions and You Have in Common

On the Feast of Corpus Christi, we continue in Book 4, Chapter 1, with paragraph 3.

Thomas tells us that we have to prayerfully and intentionally invoke a conscious grace - that of being aware of our humility in coming to the Blessed Sacrament:

3. What do You mean by this most loving condescension and friendly invitation?



How shall I dare to approach You, when I am conscious of none of my own good thoughts or deeds on which I can presume upon Your favor?


How shall I introduce You into my house when I have so often provoked your anger and displeasure?

The angels and the archangels* stand with reverential awe in Your Presence; even the saints and the just are afraid: and still You say, "Come you all to Me."


Only because You, O Lord did say it, who could believe this invitation to be true?


And unless You did command it who would dare to attempt to approach Your Throne?

So our friend Thomas shows a way to imitate him so that we may imitate Christ. 

Condescension here is a positive term, in that Our Lord sets aside His own nature, taking the form of Bread and Wine to be consumed by us.  THAT is humility that we can only begin to grasp and imitate through our own mindfulness of our unworthiness.

In comparison to the Holy Angels and Saints, who you would think God would first invite them to His Table, instead He reaches out to we, the wholly unworthy, to offer Himself. 

Thomas doesn't quote it here, but it is appropriate to refer to Matthew 8:8 and following where Jesus meets the centurion and marvels at the man's faith.   The centurion declares himself unworthy to receive Our Lord in his home. 

Jesus was ready to go the the centurion's house to cure the centurion's servant, but the centurion, being a man of humility and faith, declared his unworthiness. Rather, he believed that if only Jesus spoke a word, his servant would be healed. At this, Jesus marvelled.  He declared the servant healed....and so he was.

This holds great promise for us in that if we follow the centurion's example of faith and humility in receiving Holy Communion, Jesus will enter into the souls of our homes, even though we do not deserve that He should come under our roof.  But first, we must ask Him.  He will heal His servant, that is, our own self, if we let Him.  He will heal us, he will save us (Jer 17:14).

Pray with me: "Lord, I am not worthy to receive You, but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed!  May the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ bring me to everlasting life. Amen."

Thank you for reading and praying along with me. 'Til next time, be Imitators of Christ!
tim

*Scripture tells us that the Angels and Archangels are constantly before the Throne of God, worshipping Him (see, for example, Is 6: 1-4), when they are not on a Holy mission (e.g. Rev 12:7-9).

Confident Humilty: Approaching the Unapproachable - and other Contradictions

Book 4, Chapter 1, continues:

2. You command me to approach You with confidence if I would abide with You, and to receive the food of immortality if I desire to obtain life and glory everlasting.

“Come,” You say to me , “all you that labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Matt 11:28.


Oh what sweet and amiable words in the ear of a sinner, that You, O Lord my God, should invite the poor and needy to the communion of Your most sacred Body!

But who am I, O Lord, that I should presume to come to You?

Behold, the heaven of heavens cannot contain You, 1 Kings 8:27 and you say "come you all to Me."

Today, Thomas tells us several contradictions:
1. The Lord commands us to be approach Him with confidence.
    a. He will only spend time with us if we are confident in our approach...this takes faith and a knowledge of our many shortcomings.
2. He commands us to Receive a gift.
a. We give ourselves (up) so we can receive the gift of Him.
3.  He asks us to bring our burdens to Him. 
4.  He will GIVE us rest...usually we TAKE a rest.
5. He invites the poor and needy to a banquet.
6.  The heavens cannot contain Him, and yet He chooses to present Himself to us in the form of Bread and Wine.

One last comment:  This passage from 1 Kings 8 is taken from the dedication of the Temple, by Solomon.  Solomon demonstrates his confidence in several ways.
He has a large cook-out:  Literally slaughtering 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep.  He then says a prayer, on his knees, in front of the temple, just after The Lord enters in the form of a cloud. 

He prays that anyone who asks for help receive it, even if a foreigner should do so. He asks for judgment for the wrongdoings of himself and the nation, but at the same time asks that anyone asking for forgiveness of sin should receive it.  Even if all the petitioner does is turn toward the temple and pray...that will be enough.

In short, he turns everything over to God, confidently - knowing that He will do everything Solomon petitions, because He is God.  Because He's done it before.  Because He is a God of Mercy and Forgiveness.  Because He has kept His promises.

Next week:  Loving Condescension - more contradictions!

Thank you for reading and praying along with me. 'Til next time, be Imitators of Christ!

God and Contract Law: The Invitation to a Promise, the Promise, Accord & Satisfaction vs. A Gift

The Most Blessed Sacrament

Warning: Do not read this series of postings unless you are prepared to see The Sacrament in a whole new Light.  Start slow, and chew on the meditation.  More prayer than thoughtfulness is in order here to absorb the themes Good Thomas is revealing to us.

As we move into Pentecost and Corpus Christi, I'm going to go a bit out of order, skipping to Book 4, on The Blessed Sacrament.  Here goes!   (For those going in order, Book 1, Ch 3,  is here).

Book 4, Chapter 1: On How Great Reverence is to be Shown When Christ is to be Received

Book 4 opens with five New Testament quotes.  While the other books have many Scriptural references in the opening, only Book 4 opens with Christ, as part of a prayerful conversation, directly quoting from the New Testament. 

Thomas always gets it right in that he sees The Word, The Eternal Word (Jesus) and The Blessed Sacrament as intimately intertwined.  You cannot have one without the other and have a complete meal.  Without one, you will always leave the banquet hungry.

Therefore, Thomas opens the book on The Eucharist with a meditation on the Words of Christ, offering an invitation from Jesus to believe and then rely upon His True Presence in The Blessed Sacrament.  The result of that reliance? Spirit and Life. So, first the quotes:

The Voice of Christ:
"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest." Matt 11:28
"[T]he bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world." John 6:51
"This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." 1 Cor 11:24
"Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him." John 6:56
"The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life." John 6:63

Thomas will now make his case with a question and a comparison: How can we dare to approach the Altar of God and receive Holy Communion when we don’t measure up to the likes and efforts of Noah, Moses, David, Solomon, The Angels, and The Saints? His conclusion will be that we can never be worthy or measure up. But as Thomas will repeat throughout this chapter, God keeps inviting and reminding us: “Of course you don’t qualify to be here, but come anyway! Come because My Son has opened the gates of Heaven and Grace for you.”

Disciple:

The Breaking of the Bread by Ariel Agemian



These are your words, O Christ, the Eternal Truth, though not all delivered at one time, nor written in one place.

Since, therefore, these are Your words, and true, all are to be received by me with thanks and with faith.


These are Your words and You have spoken them; and these words are also mine because you have delivered these for my salvation.


I willingly receive Your words from Your mouth that these may be more integrated, yes even grafted into my heart forever.

Such great and tender words! Full of sweetness and love - this encourages me; but my sins terrify me and my unclean conscience keeps me back from approaching such great mysteries. The sweetness of your words invites me, but the multitude of my sins weighs me down.

I find these words of Thomas particularly personal from Thomas.  He is truly edified by Christ's words and yet fully aware of his unworthiness created by his sins. Still, he believes upon the Promises and joyfully approaches the Altar, aware of his fear, his shortcomings and The Lord's Grace.



Professor Kingsfield from "The Paper Chase"
portrayed by John Houseman

This whole first line of quotes and discussion reminds me of the first year of law school, Contracts class, where we discuss the foundation of Contract law, which is the notions of Offer, Acceptance and Consideration:  An offer is supported by a promise, and has to have consideration (a giving up of something of value).  For the contract to be complete, there must be acceptance by the person the offer is being made to - that's us.



In the opening quotes, we have Jesus' invitation to a promise, the promise, the fulfillment of the promise.  His 'consideration' was his death on the cross.  Our consideration is the 'giving up' of our selfish lives for following Him. In imitating Him, we find out how much more He gives us and how we can never give back enough. 

So God binds Himself to an eternal contract - a covenant, really, which is essentially unilateral (He must do it even if we do not perfectly perform our end of the bargain!).  So, it is an enforceable Gift. Wow!  Who said studying the law wasn't profitable?

Next time, we will look at God's invitation to us....

Thank you for reading and praying along with me. 'Til next time, be Imitators of Christ!

tim

Knowledge of Self Gives us a Powerful Weakness for Knowledge of Others

From Book 1, Chapter 2, paragraph 4, Good saint Thomas finishes his thoughts on having an humble opinion of oneself:

4. This is the highest and most valuable lesson: to truly know yourself and to have a low opinion of yourself. To think always well and highly of others is great wisdom and high perfection.

Knowing ours frailties gives us the empathy to understand the weaknesses in others. This is different than sympathy, which is mildly compassionate.  Empathy is more of "walking in their shoes" understanding.  Think of the line from The Prayer of St. Francis'  "O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love...."

Thomas continues, explaining that, like St Paul, we should all consider ourselves as capable of being chief among sinners (1Tim 1:15):

If you should see another person openly sin or commit some wicked crime you ought not think of yourself as better since you do not know how long you may remain in a good state of integrity and grace. We are all frail and weak but see that you do not think of anyone more frail than yourself.

Like St. Paul, we often are at the height of our spiritual pursuits when The Lord sends some thorn in the flesh to humble us.  For me, that's usually after I look down my spiritually pure nose at some other sinner, knowing full well that person is hell-bound.  Thankfully, the thorn brings me back into the breach, where I realize my own weakness and then turn to Confession and His Grace. The Lord also tells us in this same passage that His Grace is sufficient for us (2 Cor 12:9).

Thomas succinctly brings all these prayerful thoughts together in Chapter 2, laying out the natural desire to know things, and then putting perspective on that knowledge, putting value on that knowledge, adding wisdom and humility to that knowledge to reach an humble opinion of ourselves, and empathy toward others.

Next, I will prudently turn to Chapter 4, since I treated Chapter 3 in some detail back in January.

In a short while, I'll have all of these posts, along with a podcast, loaded onto a new site that my friend Dave is helping me set up.  I'll keep you posted.

The podcast will likely come at the end of each chapter, so I can wade through the whole chapter and perhaps go into a little more detail.

Thank you for reading and praying along with me. 'Til next time, be Imitators of Christ!

tim