Most of You Won't Read All of This...But You'll Be Glad If You Do

Not much is really going on in markets right now. Things are mostly bouncing around. So today, rather than gin up something that sounds particularly insightful about whether we're in a Bear Market, or whether a Recession is on the way,  instead we turn our hearts and minds to something important that starts tomorrow: Holy Week. If you're Christian, you know what that is. Indeed, even if you're Jewish, you're looking forward to Passover which begins in the latter part of Holy Week.

Most of you likely won't read this. Religion isn't a big draw these days. Or if you start reading, you'll likely not finish. That's because we're posting something that's specific to Catholics, but, really, can be read by anyone who's got a brain, a heart, and a soul. If that's you, and you do stick to it, you'll be glad you did.

Now, none of that was meant to imply that what's being posted by me is all that profound or insightful. It will be what's quoted below that's special. But before we get to those special thoughts, let's continue a bit with some thoughts about Holy Week.

It's always a treat when Holy Week and Easter coincide, or are celebrated close to Passover. At least it is for me. I grew up with lots of Jewish neighbors in an apartment complex filled with folks who, to one degree or another, observed their Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish religion. With few exceptions, we were neighbors joined by the Book - some the Old Testament, others both the Old and New Testament.

Times have changed. But just because religion - especially the religions observed when I was growing up - has been pushed out of the public square doesn't mean it's not as relevant today as it was then. It is, perhaps even more than it was. We need it desperately. If your religion is weak, get to work strengthening it. If it's forgotten, go out and find it again.

What we're going to post now will be from a Fr. Gihr. Father writes about the Mass, specifically that part of the Mass when the bread and wine is offered up to God. He connects the words of that offering to words of three young men, Jews living during the captivity in Babylon. Because they would not reject their religion and honor the Babylonian gods, they were thrown into a furnace, heated seven times greater than usual. In that furnace they walk about unharmed. Rather than revel in their good fortune, they offer themselves as a sacrifice in reparation for sins against the One True God.

Notice how all this connects seamlessly with the conjoining of Holy Week and and Passover. Note as well the congruence of the New and Old Testaments. Christians and Jews might especially take note.

One quick note: "compunction" means a feeling of guilt or moral scruple that prevents or follows the doing of something bad. I point this out because it's a word we hardly hear these days. I think that's because we flee from guilt like it's leprosy or the Bubonic plague. As for moral scruple, too many of us think such would be the inclination of an emotionally distraught if not disturbed person. All of that is, of course, wrong thinking that leaves us morally bereft and keeps us from bothering with any true religious devotion - a huge mistake.

Now for Fr. Gihr's comments. One final remark first: He's talking specifically about the Mass as offered in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church for centuries before the newfangled Mass most of us have been exposed to since 1970. Much of what Father writes about has been excised or dumbed down in that newfangled liturgy. Be that as it may, one can still attend the Mass of the Ages if one desires. 

I won't add anything after Father's comments. They're so good and dig so deep that it's worth reading them more than once. There's nothing I can add. If you made it this far in today's post, you'd be wise to keep going.

One last note: I came across this on Father Z's wonderful blog. If you're Catholic you might want to check it out. If you're not, you can still learn a lot. He's a smart guy.

From Fr. Gihr’s great commentary on the Mass about the offertory prayer of “self-offering of the Priest and Faithful”:

In order perfectly to appreciate the full sense of these words, and to recite them in the proper spirit, we should remember by whom and in what place they were spoken for the first time. They are taken from a longer, humble, penitential prayer, recited by the three young men in the Babylonian furnace. Since, faithful to God’s law, they would not adore the statue of the king, they were cast into a furnace heated seven-fold. Praising God, they walked about in the flames which did them not the least harm. And because they were prevented from offering exterior legal sacrifices, they offer themselves as a propitiatory sacrifice for their sins and for those of their people, in order to obtain mercy. “In a contrite heart and humble spirit let us be accepted (in animo contrito et spiritu humili tatis suscipiamur); so let our sacrifice be made in Thy sight this day, that it may please Thee (sic fiat sacrificium nostrum in conspectu tuo hodie, ut placeat tibi)” (Dan. 3, 39—40). In similar words, the celebrant here prays that the Lord would graciously receive him and the faithful people, for the sake of their humble, penitential sentiments, as a spiritual sacrifice; and if so accepted, then the Eucharistic Sacrifice, when offered by them, in the sight of God, with these dispositions will be such as God will behold and accept with pleasure from their hands.

The three young men were ready to offer their lives cheerfully in sacrifice to God by a bloody martyrdom; after their example we should present ourselves to God to suffer a life of perpetual sacrifice and an unbloody martyrdom. “As gold in the furnace He hath proved them and as a victim of a holocaust He hath received them” (Wis. 3, 6). Thus should we also, filled with humility and compunction, offer ourselves to God as a holocaust in the furnace of suffering and tribulation, of persecution and temptations. A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit; a contrite and humbled heart He does not despise (Ps. 50, 19). Yes, a heart penetrated with penitential love and sorrow, a mind bowed down with compunction will always be favorably received and accepted by the Lord. It is the best disposition that we should bring with us to the altar. When the Lord breathed forth His spirit amid the darkness that enshrouded Mount Calvary, many of the beholders were seized with such fear and sorrow, that they returned to their homes striking their breast (Luke 23, 48). Should not we also be penetrated with regret and contrition, with a penitential sorrow, as often as we celebrate in the Mass the remembrance of Christ’s bloody death? “During this holy function,” writes St. Gregory the Great,1 “we must offer ourselves with compunction of heart as a sacrifice ; for when we commemorate the mystery of the passion of our Iyord, we must imitate that which we celebrate. The Mass will be a sacrifice for us to God, when we have made an offering of ourselves. But we should, moreover, after retirement from prayer, endeavor as far as we are able with God’s assistance, to keep our mind in recollection and renewed strength, so that passing thoughts may not distract it, nor vain joy find its way into the heart, and that thus our soul may not, by carelessness and fickleness, again lose the spirit of compunction it has acquired.” Our entire life should be a cheerful, uninterrupted offertory. We should present ourselves in body and soul2 as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God (Rom. 12, 1). “All the prayers and acts of divine worship, all the charitable and benevolent works, all the practices of mortification and penance, all the labor and fatigue, all the trials and sufferings of her militant children; all the pains and torments, all the patience and longing of her children suffering in the other world; all the virtues and merits, all the holiness and glory of her children already in heaven; the fruitful sweat of the Apostles, the vivifying blood of the martyrs, the devout tears of the anchorets, the chaste, loving sighs of the virgins, the great deeds and still greater fortitude of all the saints, — all these the Church places on her Divine Victim, all these she pours into the chalice of His holy sacrificial Blood” (Laurent).

The Holy Mass is the great heart of the whole body of the Church: whatever the Church, with her members, believes and hopes and loves and suffers and cares and prays for, all this she collects in Holy Mass into the common heart, and in and with the selfsame Sacrifice she carries it up to the throne of God. Whatever moves and affects the soul in joy and sorrow, in prosperity and adversity, in distress and death — we place upon the altar during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we place it directly upon the Heart of our Redeemer who is present, and we are sure of consolation and relief. Yes, all the children of the Church should unite in the offering, all the faithful should be incorporated into and offered along with the one, great and eternal Sacrifice. To all the events in the life of her children the Church would, by this Sacrifice, impart consecration, and there by increase the happiness of her children, alleviate their distress, bless and sanctify their whole life and their death, so that at all times they may live unto the Lord and die in the Lord (Rom. 14, 8).1