Clergy Notes — Corpus Christi, June 2, 2024

The celebration of Corpus et Sanguis Christi is a celebration of the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist; in a manner, an extension of that celebration begun on Maundy Thursday. Due to the solemn nature of Holy Week, there is at that time, some degree of limitation to the expression of joy which we are able to offer.

Yet, as St Jean Vianney once said, “If we truly understood the Mass, we would die of joy.”

So, then, we keep the feast of Corpus et Sanguis Christi in June in order to afford it the fulness of joy which it deserves.

The extent to which we comprehend God’s self-giving nature in the gift of the sacraments – especially in the body and blood of Christ – is of course limited to our human comprehension. Yet, the sacraments (paradoxically) also encapsulate within them a perpetual mystery which continues to draw us in more and more.

We can benefit from the sacraments without fully understanding them, but we must always continue to adore the One who gives us the gift which we will never fully comprehend.

The reason for our adoration is indeed also the mystery. God becomes flesh – self-emptying, self-giving – in order that we – mere creatures – may learn more fully how to love as God loves.

And, it is only in being fed by the sacraments that we are empowered to do just that.

So, we adore the God who comes to us in the lowly form of bread and wine, and marvel that in such lowly objects we may be transformed into the very body of Christ who goes forth from the liturgy to feed the world with the love that only God can love, and is yet delivered in human form; in each and every one of us.

Mother Amanda

Download the Liturgy at Home booklet for Sunday, June 2, 2024.

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Clergy Notes — Trinity Sunday, May 26, 2024

I love the prayer from St. Catherine of Siena (in this week’s Reflection), which captures for me exactly how I love best to imagine the divine: passionate, mysterious, and eternal; fiery yet deeply nurturing; perfect, uncompromising truth and endless compassion. It somehow manages to retain the personal aspect of God we humans yearn for and yet retains the ineffable, unsearchable quality of the divine which can never be described or pinned down.

There is a tendency on Trinity Sunday to either try and explain the Trinity or dodge that impossible task altogether by simply saying, “It is a mystery!” I think neither are quite sufficient. I’ve said before that I believe mystery and paradox are how God seduces us into relationship; we know we will never find all the answers and yet we are compelled to keep searching; it is a perpetual dance of knowing and unknowing; intimacy and mystery – its purpose, ultimately, to keep us in relationship with the One who loves us so passionately.

Relationship, therefore, really is the key to contemplating the Trinity. In St. Catherine’s poem, I believe she nails it when she says, “You had no need of us, for your Godhead is full and overflowing” and also, “You, who are madly in love with your creatures.” This so beautifully explains the tension that we encounter when we wrestle with the judgement of God vs. the mercy of God. There is no “Old Testament God” and “New Testament God” – there is only ONE God; one ancient, eternal, powerfully complex God who is so far beyond our understanding we could never even draw near of our own accord, but who also longs for us more deeply than we can ever comprehend. The only possible way to respond is with our own longing, and with awe that we are invited to do so.

Mother Amanda

Download the Liturgy at Home booklet for Sunday, May 26, 2024.

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