Dear friends in Christ
As we enter the final days of the liturgical year, the Church reminds us once again of some central truths of our Faith: the meaning of life, our death, judgement and the second coming of Christ. This is what links the first reading and the Gospel of the Mass this Sunday. In every age Christians have repeated the lovely simple invocation: Come, Lord Jesus! This prayer was so widely used that the early Church has passed it down to us in the original Aramaic. This is one of the acclamations we say at Mass after the Consecration. In the moment when Jesus becomes truly present on the Altar, the Church expresses her earnest desire to behold His coming in glory. In this way the liturgy on earth is at one with that of Heaven. Even though the moment has not arrived for us to be with God in Heaven, we have a foretaste of that glory in Holy Communion. St Pope John Paul II made this plea: Let us pray that the heartfelt prayer of the Church, ‘Come, Lord Jesus’, will become the spontaneous plea of every human heart. We can never be satisfied by the things of the world. Our hearts yearn for the promised blessing still to come.
As we approach the end of the Church year—next weekend is the celebration of Christ our Universal King—we are also going to have our Solemn Days of Eucharistic Adoration. This could not take place last year with all the disruptions of the last eighteen months. These hours of prayer bring us to the heart of all true religion, The Mystery of Faith. In fact, from the First Sunday of Advent the obligation for Sunday Mass is restored after the disruption brought about by the pandemic and a suspension of this precept of weekly Sunday Mass. Our hope is that with the Forty Hours' Prayer we will be brought back again to the centrality of the Blessed Eucharist in our lives. Our Catholic Faith is purely and simply about bringing each of us humbly before Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. You might start thinking about the time you can spend in church on those days 25-27th of this month.
God bless you!
Msgr Kevin Hale