The Road To Emmaus

If you haven't been too busy reading the excellent Malochio of Bodie, you may have noticed that today's Gospel was the Road to Emmaus. Here we find the risen Christ progressively revealing Himself to Cleopas and his companion as they walk away from the heavenly city, Jerusalem. 

He does so through Word and Sacrament. But note this, the turning point in the Gospel and the disciples' journey of recognition occurs when they near their destination and constrain Jesus to stay with them and eat. Then, in the confection of the Eucharist, the scales fall from the the disciples' eyes and they see Christ for who He is; the Word who has expounded the word becomes Flesh.

So with us. If we're to recognize the risen Lord we have to open our hearts to Him in faith and then the guest becomes the host, serving us the word of of truth and salvation and the bread of everlasting life.

To be fair, I didn't do this remarkably powerful Gospel justice but the people seemed to like the message.

"Good sermon, padre," said one cowboy as we sat in his ranch office after Mass. "Thanks, chief, I appreciate it," I replied, looking at an old saddle that was stood up next to a holstered 30-30. "That's a relay saddle," explained my friend, whose father had ridden the rails from Montana to Texas in the '30s to cowboy. Then, as we left the HQ, he pointed out another saddle with hooded stirrups, or Tapederos. 

I picked up handful of scarred leather, "The guy I ride with out of Aquilla uses these."

"Makes sense when you're moving through mesquite and brush."

"Right, like chaps," I observed, thoughtfully, "Not to be confused with the kind of chaps you might find in, say, Oak Lawn, Dallas."

My colleague, who's forgotten more horsemanship than I'll ever know, snorted, "Ain't that the truth," and we climbed into the Gator and got back on the road.

I file this edifying tale under God, Guns, Church and Country Life in Texas. And you know what, there's nothing wrong with that, at all.

Ride on,

LSP

Mass on the Beach

A catholic Chaplain administering the Sacrament of the Altar on Omaha Beach, D Day. The real thing.

Respect.

LSP 

Holy Saturday

The Body of Jesus is laid in the Tomb and the Tabernacles are empty of the Presence, even in some of the Anglican variants of the Mystical Body of Christ, militant here on earth.

Bishop Guest, the 16th century author of Article XXVIII on the Lord's Supper, had this to say about the sacrament of the Altar. The communicant does "take Christ's Body in his hand, receive it in his mouth, and that corporally, naturally, really, substantially and carnally..." but does not "see it, feel it, smell it or taste it." As Dom Gregory Dix reminds us, "It would be hard for anyone to be more explicit than that in asserting the Catholic doctrine of the Sacrament." (The Question of Anglican Orders)

Despite this, more than a few Anglicans sit light to sacramental reality, taking their cue from the late medieval skeptics of the Reformation. For them, the Eucharist is at best a reality because we think it so and at worst an empty symbol of self-referencing belief.

smash it up

Perhaps it's no accident that the Northern European write-off of sacramental givenness was followed by a near total subjectivization of all spiritual value.

Lord, forgive us for the many blasphemies committed against your holy Sacrament.

LSP