01-06-2011 - Traces, n. 6
INSIDE AMERICA BY LORENZO ALBACETE Consider devotion to Our Lady. If our faith in Jesus as true God and true Man is the amazing recognition that the Divine has entered human history in bodily form, doesn't it make sense to feel the attraction of the ongoing source of His bodiliness which is now forever part of Trinitarian life? Would we not be fascinated and attracted by the "place" where the union between the temporal bodiliness and infinite life (desired by the heart) takes place and remains thus forever? And when it is revealed that the place where the body of a human person becomes the body of a divine Person without ceasing to be human is the womb of a young Jewish girl who freely placed herself entirely in God's hands, is not a personal relationship with her part of our faith in the Incarnation—indeed, part of our personal relation with Him? The Eucharist, in the words of Vatican II, is the source and summit of the life of the Church. It is the means through which the crucified and risen Christ becomes present to us "here and now." His contemporaneousness with us is irreversible: after the Eucharist, the body and blood of Christ does not go back to being simply bread and wine. Faith in the Real Presence of Christ through the consecrated Host is part of our faith in His contemporaneousness with us, in the irreversibility of the Incarnation for us and our salvation, in the eternal self-offering of Love that sets us free to go past the law of corruption and death due to our sins. In this case, too, a lack of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament outside the celebration of Mass is a symptom of a weakening of faith in the Incarnation. Finally, custody of the historical thread that makes present to us today the events of 2,000 years ago, the thread that allows us to be sure that what happens to us today in the life of the Church is exactly what happened then to the Apostles, is at the heart of the charism given to St. Peter and his successor the Pope. Therefore, difficulties with the authority of the Pope may be a symptom of difficulties with the unity of the Church, upon which we depend to sustain our faith in the Incarnation. Three symptoms, three danger signals. Maybe it is just a matter of a bad day, but if they persist, we should have it checked by friends who give witness of a strong faith. |