Post #198

Topics: Angels: Ascending and Descending on the Son of Man...Video: Tantum Ergo...The Catholic Church: The Mystical Body of Christ

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Thursday night I had occasion to be leaving St. Anthony around 8:30 at night. Locking up behind me was Mr. Bob Wells, life long parishioner of St. Anthony and Sacristan for the Latin Mass. As he turned out the lights we walked out of the sacristy and made our way through the pews to the front door.

Aside from the street lights shining dimly through the stained glass the only other light source were the vigil candles. In the darkness the sanctuary lamp burned red, our Mother's altar lit blue and St. Joseph was illuminated gold.

I thought of my parents, both deceased, who always left a light on expecting me home and, even after adulthood, would leave the porch light on as I made my way out the door and on my way.

My way might have been down the road to my house, or out into life, toward a woman I loved or down a wayward and lost path. But always, there was a light burning for me, and warm food, and comfort and safety.

And so a light still burns...now at St. Anthony, for me, and my parents, for you and for us... where our Father waits in the dark and comfort and safety dwell.

...and now for the necessaries.

Please note: St. Anthony Catholic Church is one of only two churches celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass (EFLR) in the Wichita area. Though this blog is loosely centered around this parish and it's members, Venite Missa Est! is by no means, in any way an official voice of, or for, St. Anthony Parish or the Diocese of Wichita. Venite Missa Est! is strictly a private layman's endeavor.

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Angels Ascending and Descending on the Son of Man
Beginning to Pray

http://www.beginningtopray.com/

By the ministry of the angels and through the sacred humanity of our Lord, Christ brings about on earth what God wills in heaven.  This is what happened to the Virgin in Nazareth.  This is what happened in the agony of Gethsemane.

In the spiritual life, God sends super intelligent messengers from beyond the narrow confines of this visible world to help us take on the mind of Christ and to act in his power.  Angels ascend and descend on Christians just as on the humanity of Christ. Their words communicate deep things into our hearts unimaginably more expansive than are the limited horizon of thought open to merely human speech. St. John of the Cross says that their messages from heaven actually wound us with a deep ardent love of God that does not easily go away to change us, to help us find the only One who can satisfy our heart’s desire. There is nothing like love to free us from ourselves, from the prison of our own preoccupations.  Their ministry is to guide us out of our big fat egos so that we might find Christ and cleave to Him in faith.

One of the biggest obstacles to prayer is our bloated sense of self. It really is a problem of being full of oneself. A primordial hostility towards the true God lives in our hearts and compels us to seek and to fashion idols that appeal to our imaginations, that we seem to understand, that we think we can control. In our arrogance and ignorance, we easily convince ourselves that what we imagine God to be God is. When we do this we have made an idol out of the self because we have limited God to the product of our own fantasy. Whereas prayer should be a humble conversation with the Living God, when the ego is worshipped as an idol, prayer is reduced to an interior monologue in which we exhaust ourselves going round and round in circles - not unlike what is envisioned in various systems of reincarnation. Such prayer is nothing more than talking to oneself. It is fruitless self-occupation. 

Here, self-preoccupation is a very consuming kind of worship. Preoccupied with our own concerns, experiences, thoughts, memories, fantasies, feelings, plans, ambitions, grudges, and desires; there is no interior silence for us to listen to God, to allow his silence to humble us in ours, to hear his creative voice so that it might produce a new work in us. The shell of our ego is so thick that it would have imprisoned us forever had not Christ pierced it by allowing himself to be pierced through by our sins.

Why does God send us angels?  God has desire to bless us with every spiritual blessing through Christ so that we might become the praise of his glory.  Angels help us realize this most high calling because their messages help us see the truth about God and about ourselves.  Through their ministry of which we are rarely directly aware, we see ever more deeply that the life of the Trinity, the inner life of God, is a constantly going out from "self" in an eternal ecstasy of unimaginably rapturous love: the immortal life of God is pure vulnerability, pure desire for union, pure benevolence for the other, pure self-surrender, pure reciprocity -- but in all of this a holiness, a wisdom, an inexhaustible incomprehensibility before which every created intellect must bow and the powers of all imagination must kneel.   By the hidden ministry of the angels, God desires that we, mere frail creatures though we are, share in this eternal life, his own life.  In the image and likeness of this unfathomable God, marred by sin but restored by Christ through his suffering and death, He constantly sends angels in secret ways to free us from ourselves and to lead us into a place where we can find Him to share his life with Him.  God's holy messengers - both angels and men - in speaking the truth to us, wound us with a love by which we see that we are only most fully ourselves when like the Living God we give the gift of ourselves in love.

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Tantum Ergo
YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYxyiUB1L0s&feature=player_embedded

Tantum ergo are the opening words of the last two verses of Pange Lingua, a Mediaeval Latin hymn written by St Thomas Aquinas. These last two verses are sung during veneration and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament in the Roman Catholic Church and other churches that practice this devotion.

Tantum ergo Sacramentum
veneremur cernui:
et antiquum documentum
novo cedat ritui:
praestet fides supplementum
sensuum defectui.
Genitori, Genitoque
laus et iubilatio,
salus, honor, virtus quoque
sit et benedictio:
procedenti ab utroque
compar sit laudatio.

Amen.
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Down in adoration falling,
Lo! the sacred Host we hail;
Lo! o'er ancient forms departing,
newer rites of grace prevail;
faith for all defects supplying,
where the feeble sense fail.
To the everlasting Father,
and the Son who reigns on high,
with the Holy Ghost proceeding
forth from Each eternally,
be salvation, honor, blessing,
might and endless majesty.

Amen.

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The Catholic Church
The Mystical Body of Christ
My Catholic Faith by Luis LaRaviore Morrow, 1961

Based on A Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Revised Edition
of the Baltimore Catechism, the Holy Bible and the Collectio Rituum.

Why is the Catholic Church called the Mystical Body of Christ? The Catholic Church is called the Mystical Body of Christ, because its members are united by supernatural bonds with one another and with Christ, their Head, thus resembling the members and head of the living human body.

How are we united to the Mystical Body of Christ?
We are united by three spiritual bonds: a) a Liturgical bond (the profession of the Catholic faith); b) a Symbolic bond (the profession of the Catholic faith); and c) a Hierarchical bond (obedience to the Church’s rulers, and freedom from a penalty that would cast us out of the Church).

A baptized person separates himself form the Mystical Body of Christ either by heresy, apostasy or schism. A person is cast out of the Mystical Body of Christ when he is excommunicated. Any person who separates himself from the Church or is excommunicated can always return to the Church and the sacraments, if he repents of his sins and seeks absolution form the proper authorities.

1. In the Mystical Body, Christ as head wills to be helped by his Body. Thus He rules the Church, but does so indirectly through the hierarchy, human authority. In a similar manner the human head, to live has need of the rest of the body.
2. Among the members of the Mystical Body of Christ there exists interdependence; so that although each one has his own individual function, yet he does not live for himself alone, but for the entire body. Every good he does perfects the Body, of which he is a part.

What is meant by the Communion of Saints” in the Apostles’ Creed?

By the “Communion of Saints” is meant the union of the faithful on earth, the blessed in heaven, and the souls in purgatory, with Christ as their head.

1. There is only one Mystical Body, only one Church which contains three portions:
2. All the saints and angels in heaven compose the Church triumphant, because they have gained the crown of victory. B) The souls in purgatory comprise the Church suffering, because they still have to expiate for their sins before they can enter heaven. C) The faithful on earth compose the Church militant, because they have to struggle ceaselessly against the enemies of their souls.
3. All the members of the Church are of one family, and share in the spiritual treasures of the Church.

While those in the state of mortal sin do not enjoy fully the benefits of the “communion of saints”, even they are not entirely excluded form it. Thus they may receive the grace to repent and recover sanctifying grace. Hence a Catholic, who still belongs to the Church, although a great sinner, may have more hope of being converted than one who cuts himself off form the Church.

How do the MEMBERS of the Communion of Saints HELP ONE ANOTHER?

The members of the “communion of saints,” the blessed in heaven can help those in purgatory and on earth by praying for the blessed in heaven and pray to them, because they are worthy of honor and as friends of god will help the faithful on earth.