Do You Need Christ?
Giussani writes
"This is why we priests, when we celebrate Mass and stretch out our hands over the offerings, are stretching our hands over what must be changed into the body and blood of Christ. With that gesture, we are really incorporating all people and all their lives, for they comprise the mystical body of Christ."
'So a priest, when he stretches his hands out over the bread and wine at the consecration, is really stretching his hands out over us, that we may be changed into Christ. We are to become Christ, body, blood, soul, and divinity. We are to be changed at the consecration: the consecration is of ourselves.'
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As I read Aimee's brilliant piece I began to wonder, do we go to meet Christ or is it a case of 'going through the motions'? Why do you go to Mass?
Whenever we read in the Gospels of Christ healing the sick we also read where the sick reached out to Him, the woman who reached out to touch His cloak(Mark 5:25-29,34). The cripple who was lowered down on a mat to be nearer to Christ (Luke 5:17-20). The ten Lepers who cried out to Christ for healing(Luke 17:12-19). Even the outcasts were welcomed by Christ as in the case of Zaccheaus(Luke 19:1-10).
Do we understand our own spiritual poverty? Or do we go to Mass from a sense of duty?
Are we so self sufficient that we have allotted Christ a specific time in our diaries as if He were in the periphery of our lives and not the core and centre?
God is the seeker of our souls while we become distracted by making sure we have the best homes with two cars and a pool in the backyard. We save our money so we can send our children to the best schools that money can afford. We make sure we are dressed in the latest fashions and that your family reflects your social status. Where is God in all this gaining of 'things'?
Sometimes we use the excuse that because God is 'Mystery' that this somehow allow's us to be in ignorance of The Triune Spirit.
What does God want? He wants YOU.
God wants ALL of you, not the 'Sunday you' where you attend Mass from a sense of duty. God does not need the 'holy you' where you give the appearance of great piety for all to see.
What does God want?
God wants the wounded you. The child that needs His Father, that seeks to touch the Heart of God not in fear but in Awe and Trust. God wants to Heal the wounds that have been inflicted upon you and that you have inflicted upon others.
God needs you to be real.
Real poverty is not a lack of things. Real poverty is when a soul feels it has no need of God.
Do you reach out to touch The Divine Physician? Do you come in the knowledge that only in the Sacraments will you find the peace & the healing that you seek? Or are you self sufficient, perfect and whole?
Until you have been broken you cannot be healed. God heals the broken hearted, He comes for YOU alone.
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