sense of the sacred: St. John the Apostle

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

St. John the Apostle

On this Feast of St. John the Apostle, I remember this picture which was used for the souvenir card for my diaconal ordination 25 years ago (November 21, 1992). I chose this picture because at that time, i felt that my entrance into the clerical life was an act of abandonment to the Lord. At the back of this picture were the words: You are my inheritance, Lord!

May the Lord keep me in his service all the days of my life!

1 comment:

kamDecember 27, 2017 at 4:47 AM
God Bless You!
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We ought to get back the dimension of the sacred in the liturgy. The liturgy is not a festivity; it is not a meeting for the purpose of having a good time. It is of no importance that the parish priest has cudgeled his brains to come up with suggestive ideas or imaginative novelties. The liturgy is what makes the Thrice-Holy God present amongst us; it is the burning bush; it is the Alliance of God with man in Jesus Christ, who has died and risen again. The grandeur of the liturgy does not rest upon the fact that it offers an interesting entertainment, but in rendering tangible the Totally Other, whom we are not capable of summoning. He comes because He wills. In other words, the essential in the liturgy is the mystery, which is realized in the common ritual of the Church; all the rest diminishes it. Men experiment with it in lively fashion, and find themselves deceived, when the mystery is transformed into distraction, when the chief actor in the liturgy is not the Living God but the priest or the liturgical director. - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Chile, 1988)

Do we still need sacred space, sacred time, mediating symbols? Yes, we do need them, precisely so that, through the "image," through the sign, we learn to see the openness of heaven. We need them to give us the capacity to know the mystery of God in the pierced heart of the Crucified. - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Spirit of the Liturgy )