Liturgy Transcends

I had a moment today at daily mass.  Somewhere between the Gospel reading and receiving communion I became overwhelmed with emotion.  

At one point I was caught up in an anamnetic euphoria at the thought of how infinite the cloud of witness was that were surrounding me.  Perhaps because Father had chosen the wonderfully name dropping Eucharistic Prayer 1 I my mind's eye began to see the altar space fill up with all those who had gone before at the table of the Lord; among them the personal witness of my grandparents, and my father and the children that were lost to me through miscarriages who have joined the Church Triumphant.  I felt so totally wrapped in love as the words of the prayer wove through this reverie. 

As we drew close to reception of Communion, I had a quantum leap in my understanding of how we all become the Body of Christ through the reception of The Body of Christ in the Eucharist which unites us in a way that is so much more cosmic that it transcended and transported me into that Cloud of Unknowing.   As I walked back from receiving I was uncontrollably racked with sobs of joy, tears streaming down my face.

When the Mass had ended, I left my parish community feeling such love that I had to stop and thank Father.  Not knowing exactly what to thank him for I decided that thanking him for his homily (on not being judgemental) would be great.  It was a great homily, but it would be silly to thank him for a transcendent experience.  He was so humble he couldn't even accept thanks for the homilette, as he called it, because he was simply trying to work on his own stuff.

I am so glad that I had this experience, but I'm not gonna lie, I'm hoping that it doesn't become a regular occurrence.  I don't think I could handle crying at every Mass.  Oh well, maybe I should start carrying tissue just in case.


Pax

GO Two-fer What I'm Writing Wednesday and Theology Thursday Rolled Into One

On Wednesday my lovely 18 year old daughter had a seizure at school. She hasn't had a seizure since she was 13 years old, when she was diagnosed with epilepsy so we were a bit shocked by this turn of events, but after a visit to her Neurologist, we may have a reason for this and it may be an isolated incident. Just to be safe though, she is being placed back on a maintenance dose of epilepsy meds for the time being and we are praying that she has no more problems.

Because having to deal with her problem threw off my schedule for the day I am combining my two topic lines for Wednesday and Thursday and I am going to feature one of my articles from Helium.com as the GO Theology Thursday blog entry.

I want to emphasize for those of you who might be wondering why someone who just completed a degree in Theology would write an essay on the Eucharist in this simple language that when I write for Helium I try to write with the intention of making my essays understandable to anyone who has never in their lives even entered a Catholic Church. I try to explain Catholic doctrine and practices in as simple a language as I can. I think I did a very nice job in this particular essay on the topic of Eucharist and its meaning to mankind.

I hope you enjoy it.

Pax