THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST (CORPUS CHRISTI) CYCLE C – 2013

      

       Since last Sunday we are again in "ordinary time". 

      The liturgy of this solemnity presents to us this wonderful and adorable mystery under different images.   

FIRST READING   Genesis 14:18-20

Ø  Chapter 14 of the book of Genesis explains how and why Abram makes war against four kings who have captured his nephew Lot and taken all his possessions. 

Ø  When Abram comes back victorious the Melchizedek, King of Salem, comes to meet him

Ø  Melchizedec  blesses Abram and offers to God bread and wine as a sacrifice. 

Ø  The name of Salem means "peace." Salem will become Jerusalem. 

Ø  The name of Melchizedec means "king of justice."

Ø  The Christian community will see in Melchizedec, King of Salem, a figure of Jesus    (Hebrews 7:1-3):

v  We do not know the origin of this king.  

v  He offers bread and wine as a sacrifice to God.  

v  He blesses Abram   

v  He continues to be priest for ever  

RESPONSORIAL PSALM Ps  110

You are a priest forever, in the line of Melchizedec 

The Lord said to my Lord

"Sit at my right hand

till I make your enemies your footstool." 

The scepter of your power the Lord will stretch forth from Zion

"Rule in the midst of your enemies." 

 «Yours is princely power in the day of your birth

in holy splendor

before the daystar, like the dew

I have begotten you.» 

The Lord has sworn, and he will not repent

"You are a priest forever,

according to the order of Melchizedec."    

§  This psalm sings the kingship   and the priesthood of "the Lord" mentioned in the first verse.    

§  In the words "I have begotten you," the Church acknowledges the voice of the Father telling his son "Today I have begotten you..."     

§  It is the day of eternity, forever. The Father continues to repeat these words to his incarnate son Jesus.    

SECOND READING  1 Cor 11:23-26

      Paul hands on to his community what he himself has received from the tradition of the Christian community.   

      This text is the center of today's celebration, Paul tells us that in the night of his passion, the Lord gave himself to us under the signs of bread and wine.     

      Bread and wine, food and drink that rejoice the human heart.  

      The Lord:

ü  takes the bread   

ü  pronounces the thanksgiving prayer over the bread   and says

ü  This is my body that is for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.  

ü  He does the same with the cup: This cup is the New Covenant in my blood  

ü  Do this in remembrance of me.    

ü  For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.    

      The New Covenant takes us back to the first Covenant on Mount Sinai, when God made a covenant of love with his people.    

      This New Covenant is sealed with the blood of Christ, the first covenant was sealed with the blood of animals. The first covenant was a shadow of the true covenant which Christ has made.  

      Jeremiah  (Jer 31,31-34) had announced this new covenant, which would not be written on stone but on the heart of every human being who accepts Jesus.    

      The Lord says that every time we break the bread and drink from the cup, we proclaim his  redemptive death until the end of times.  

      In the New Covenant there are not many sacrifices, there is only one sacrifice Christ's. He makes present his sacrifice on every altar on which the Eucharist is celebrated as the memorial of his love and his giving himself into our hands.

      Through the Eucharist of his body and blood the Lord calls and invites us to do as he has done, strengthened by the Eucharistic  Bread and Wine.     

      We have done this, we do it and we will continue to do it. 

      What does "in remebrance of me" means? He transforms us into himself everytime that we eat his body and drink his blood. United to him, made one with him, we learn progressively to die to ourselves and to live for the good of  others. 

      This bread and wine invite us to make real in our life the values of Jesus. 

GOSPEL  Lk 9:11b-17

v  Jesus is teaching the people, he speaks to them of the Kingdom, which he makes real and present healing and teaching. 

v  The day draws to a close, and the crowd continue to listen to him, fascinated by the words of this young man Jesus from Nazareth. He does not speak like their teachers, he speaks with love, tenderness and respect for every one. He speaks of a kingdom where God will be god, where we will love each other. 

v  The disciples ask him to send the people to the villages so they may eat.  

v  Jesus gives a surprising answer to them "Give them some food yourselves." 

v  But how can we give food to such a crowd with only 5 loaves and 2 fish.  

v  Or where can we have enough money to buy food for all.     

v  Jesus makes his 12 friends his collaborators in what he is about to do.  

v  They will see how they will have enough bread to feed them all. Jesus  gives thanks and blesses the bread and they distribute it.  

v  They all eat and at the end the apostles  picked up the leftover fragments and they filled 12 baskets

v  What a wonderful sign of the Kingdom, of the messianic times prophesized by Isaiah, when there will be plenty of food and drink for all.  This sign of the bread reminds us of the sign of the water changed into wine at Cana. In both instances there is a superabundance, more than what is needed. This is a sign of the Kingdom.  

v  The community of the followers of Jesus, the Church, has seen in  the multiplication of the loaves a sign of the Eucharist, the bread given to us through the centuries, the bread for the journey, the bread which is Jesus himself killed and given to us on the cross to ratify the new covenant with his blood.  The bread which makes us like Jesus, so we may be able to do the same works  he did, to have his same values.    

v  THANK YOU LORD!!!  

Panis angelicus fit panis hominum; Dat panis caelicus figuris terminum: O res mirabilis! manducat Dominum Pauper, servus, et humilis.

Bread of Angels, made the bread of men; The Bread of heaven puts an end to all symbols: A thing wonderful! The Lord becomes our food: poor, a servant, and humble.

 

                        CLARETIAN CORNER  

Since then our Lord has given me the grace to have him ever present, and to have very intimate communication with Hid Divine Majesty, especially with the Most Holy Humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Blessed sacrament. There were so many tokens of love shown by our Lord to this miserable sinner that many times I was obliged to exclaim: “enough, Lord enough! You either widen my heart or put an end to these attentions of love. Venerable María Antonia París, Foundress of the Claretian Missionary Sisters, Autobiography 12. 

Thoroughly convinced that to be a good missionary it is both useful and essential to have love, I have searched for this hidden treasure and would sell everything in order to find it. I studied the means to acquire it and discovered the following: (1) keeping the commandments of God's law, (2) practicing the evangelical counsels, (3) corresponding faithfully with divine inspirations, (4) making one's meditation well.

5.Asking and begging for love continuously and incessantly, without flagging or growing tired of asking for it, however late it seems in coming.  Praying to Jesus and Mary and, above all, asking our Father who is in heaven, through the merits of Jesus and Mary, in the sure hope that that good Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who keep asking him. Saint Anthony Mary Claret, Autobiography 442-443. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

CLARET, Antonio María , Autobiografía.

PARIS, María Antonia, Autobiografía

PAGOLA, José, Following in the Footsteps of Jesus. Meditations on the Gospels for Year C. 2012.  

RAVASI, Gianfranco, Según Las Escrituras, Año C, 2006

SCHÖKEL, Luis Alonso. Comentario a La Biblia de nuestro Pueblo. 2010.  

THE MOST HOLY TRINITY - CICLO C – 2013

      

      On the first Sunday after the Easter Season the Liturgy of the Church invites us to celebrate the greatness of our God, to adore him, to contemplate him, to allow ourselves to be fascinated with his beauty and goodness

      Through the readings we will   enter into the mystery of God one and triune. Like Moses we will remove the sandals from our feet because we are on sacred ground.   

      Let us enter into his presence with our imagination and our feelings and overall with our love.   

FIRST READING   Proverbs 8:22-31 

Ø  Wisdom speaks and says that she existed from the beginning.  

Ø  Wisdom describes for us the works of God. Let our imagination go to the places where Wisdom leads us: 

·         oceans, springs of water, rivers.

·         mountains and hills  

·         earth and fields   

Ø  She says that she was present when God made the sky 

Ø  when he put it the sky as a dome  over the ocean.   

Ø  when he put boundaries to the sea     

Ø  If we pay attention to what Wisdom is saying, God is building a home. The home he has prepared  for us to live in.  

Ø  And Wisdoms tells us that she was there beside him as his craftman, and that she played before him, and was delighted to be with the human race .

Ø  What a wonderful word, the Wisdom of God, God himself found and still finds  his delight in the human race,  in each one of us. 

Ø  The Church sees in this Wisdom the Son of God, through whom all things were made. He became one of us.  In the Eastern Churches they see in this Wisdom an image of the Holy  Creator Spirit.  (ver salmo 104) 

RESPONSORIAL PSALM  Ps  8

O LORD OUR GOD, HOW WONDERFUL YOUR NAME IN ALL THE EARTH

When I behold your heavens, the work of your fingers  

the moon and the stars which you set in place

What is man that you should be mindful of him,

or the son of man that you should care for him? 

You have made him little less than the angels

and crowned him with glory and honor

you have given him rule over the works of your hand

putting all things under his feet 

All sheep and oxen

yes, and the beasts of the field

the birds of the air, the fishes of the sea

and whatever swims the paths of the seas.  

ü  The psalmist is surprised to see how God takes care of his creatures.  

ü  And in a very special way of man, to whom he has given power over them. 

ü  And he asks himself, what is man?  

ü  We repeat the same question, who are we that the Son of the Father became one like us, and put his tent among us?  Who are we that God comes to dwell in us.   

SECOND READING  Rom 5:1-5

      Paul speaks of the redemptive work of God for his creation.  

      We have been justified by faith, and this gives us peace with God by Jesus Christ. 

      Christ is he who has given us the grace in which we live, and at the same time we rejoice in hope of the   glory of God. 

      He says that we do not only rejoice in hope, but also in our afflictions.  

      Knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character hope.  

      He says that hope does not disppoint because the love of God has been poured our into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.  

      The Holy Spirit is he who fullfils the work that God does in us.   

GOSPEL  Jn 16,12-15

v  Jesus says to his disciples that he has many more things to tell them, but they cannot bear them in that moment.  

v  The Holy Spirit will help them to understand and to live what Jesus has taught them during his life. The Spirit will guide them to all truth. He will remind them all the words of Jesus.

v  He will not speak on his own, he will speak what he hears in the intimacy of the Trinitarian life. 

v  He will glorify Jesus, because he will take what is Jesus' and declare  it to them.   

v  Why does Jesus say that the Spirit will not speak on his own? 

v  Jesus had said to his disciples that the Spirit was the promise of the Father, the Father was given the Spirit to them.  But now it seems as if the Spirit was given by Jesus.

v  The answer is founbd in the next verse: everything that the Father has belongs to Jesus.

v  The mission of the Spirit among us has been to make possible the creating and redemptive plan of the Father in the Church and in the world. 

v  This is our God, the Christian God, God who is a Trinity of persons, a community of persons united by the love generated between the three divine persons. He is the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier.   

        we confess your eternal holy Trinity and undivided Unity   (Prayer after Communion - Mass of the Most Holy Trinity)     

      Blest be God the Father, and the Only Begotten Son of God, and also the Holy Spirit for he has shown us his merciful love.  (Entrance Antiphon - Mass of the Most Holy Trinity)  

      Let us see what the beginning of the  book of Revelation says, before John greets the seven churches at the beginning of the heavenly liturgy: 

§  Grace to you and peace from him who is, who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the first born of the dead and ruler of the kings of the earth.  

§  We can simplify this greeting as follows: May the favor and peace of  the Father, of the Holy Spirit and of the Son be with you. 

§  At the beginning of our Eucharistic celebrations the priest greets the people saying: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of the Father and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you.

CLARETIAN CORNER

 

                        

 

Once, I was somehow worried thinking how to maintain a house with so many people since, at the same time, nine young ladies came to receive the holy habit, so poor that they did not bring me not even one peseta, and with so miserable clothes that some – most of them – could not change. On the other hand I knew very soon that among them, only two were industrious, all the others were fond of rest and comfort. This fact, more than their poverty, was the cause of my distress, because I like the poor but diligence ones. Besides this, I was worried those days because they presented me a bill of S 250, rentals of the house we had live in until then and of the one we were starting to occupy (this one, even it if had been bought to build a monastery, had to be rented until we had the documents made), and this was due to the carelessness of the person in change, if he had been cunning enough, nothing of this had to be paid : that is why I was so disappointed. I was also disgusted because until that moment they had made me believe that the Archbishop would take charge of the house (meaning to say” in case that we would not earn anything”). I think the devil was using all the means to make us distrust the Divine providence, but, by the grace of God, his attempt was not successful.    Venerable María Antonia París, Foundress of the Claretian Missionary Sisters, Autobiography- Second Account  88.  

In truth, the fire of love acts in a minister of the Lord in much the same way that material fire acts in the engine of a locomotive or a ship: it enables them to move the heaviest cargo with the greatest of ease.  What good would either of these two huge machines be without fire and steam to move them? None at all. What good is a priest who has finished all his studies and holds degrees in theology and canon and civil law if he lacks the fire of love? None at all. He is no good for others because he is like a locomotive without steam. Instead of being a help, as he should, he may only be a hindrance. He is no good even for himself. As St. Paul says, "If I speak with human tongues and angelic as well, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal.". Saint Anthony Mary Claret, Founder of the Claretian MIssionary Sisters, Autobiography 441. 

BIBLIOGRAFÍA:

CLARET, Antonio María ,Autobiography.

PARIS, María Antonia, Autobiography

RAVASI, Gianfranco, Según Las Escrituras, Año C, 2006

SCHÖKEL, Luis Alonso. Comentario a La Biblia de nuestro Pueblo. 2010.