After the Lamb of God is sung or said, we are almost ready for the high point of receiving our Lord in Holy Communion.  The General Instruction of the Roman Missal says the following about what happens next: “The Priest prepares himself by a prayer, said quietly, so that he may fruitfully receive the Body and Blood of Christ. The faithful do the same, praying silently.” (GIRM, 84)

Both the priest and the faithful are invited into silent prayer as a way to prepare for receiving Holy Communion, but for the priest, there is a specific prayer (rather an option of two prayers) that he is to pray, but the faithful are not given any specific prayer.  On the one hand, this gives freedom to the faithful to pray from their heart in words that are unique to them, or simply just to be in silence, but we have to admit that sometimes “we do not know how to pray as we ought.” (Rom 8:26) And so a written prayer from the tradition of the Church can help in this time of preparation.

First of all, there is nothing to prevent the faithful from using one of the prayers that the priest uses for his preparation.  I prefer the first option, which is as follows:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God,
who, by the will of the Father
and the work of the Holy Spirit,
through your Death gave life to the world,
free me by this, your most holy Body and Blood,
from all my sins and from every evil;
keep me always faithful to your commandments,
and never let me be parted from you.

There are other good options as well.  For example, St. Thomas Aquinas has written a beautiful prayer that can be recited before receiving Holy Communion:

Almighty and ever-living God, I approach the sacrament
of Your only-begotten Son Our Lord Jesus Christ, I come sick to the doctor of life, unclean to the fountain of mercy, blind to the radiance of eternal light,
and poor and needy to the Lord of heaven and earth. 

Lord, in your great generosity, heal my sickness, wash away my defilement, 
enlighten my blindness, enrich my poverty, and clothe my nakedness. 

May I receive the bread of angels, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 
with humble reverence, with the purity and faith, the repentance and love, 
and the determined purpose that will help to bring me to salvation. 

May I receive the sacrament of the Lord’s Body and Blood, 
and its reality and power.

Kind God,  may I receive the Body of Your only-begotten Son, 
our Lord Jesus Christ, born from the womb of the Virgin Mary, 
and so be received into His mystical body and numbered among His members.

Loving Father, as on my earthly pilgrimage I now receive Your beloved Son
under the veil of a sacrament, may I one day see him face to face in glory, 
who lives and reigns with You for ever.  Amen.

So whether you use one of these prayers or one in your own words, or just maintaining a prayerful silence with no words, the important thing to remember is that this short moment of silence is like making those last minute preparations in your house for that long-awaited guest, so that when Jesus arrives, He may find you ready and eager to welcome Him.

Father Alford     

Feast Day: April 14th

We travel to Holland this week, a little town of Schiedam, named after the river it was perched along. Peter was a laborer, and his (even more hardworking) wife, Petronilla, was the mother of their 9 children. Eight were boys, but right in the middle was their only daughter, Lidwina, or Lydia as we’d probably call her. She was born on Palm Sunday, right as the Passion was being chanted at their local church, an easy delivery for Petronilla thank God in the year of Our Lord, 1380.

One wintery day a decade and a half later, Lidwina was out with her friends ice skating and took a bad fall on the ice breaking one of her ribs. It was an injury that changed the course of her whole life. At first it all seemed to be ramifications from the broken rib: an abscess formed in her chest, eventually bursting, further increasing her pain and nausea. With some periods of remission, she grew increasingly disabled over the coming years. By 19, both of her legs were paralyzed, and her vision limited and over the coming four decades, she would lose feeling and eventually grow paralyzed through much of her body, enduring fevers and headaches, bleeding and blindness. For anyone with chronic pain or who has been bedridden, St. Lidwina is your patron.

Scientists say it may have been the first recorded case of multiple sclerosis. The Catholic Church says she was a saint. And it all came down to the way she endured all those crosses. No one expected, at 15, that she would become a saint in that way. She could have been a virtuous wife and mother, she could have entered religious life, or dedicated her life to God in some other way. Her whole life was open before her! But then she had a bad fall, and a disease no one understood began to ravage her body, and she had a choice to make: to embrace Christ, on the cross, or plunge into the sufferings without Him. 

The path of sanctity perhaps sounds heroic and meaningful, and surely it was, but in some ways it actually made it harder for Lidwina. Now people came by, gawking at someone that was said to be a mystic. Poking and prodding, some scoffing at her reputed holiness, some claiming her charity had worked miracles. She risked deeper union with the Lord, remaining with Jesus amidst the daily struggle to stay cheerful, her mind and heart were more and more filled by Jesus’ Love, and inspired by His cross. She prayed constantly, choosing to fast and make sacrifices beyond even what her illness forced upon her.

Her example is a hard one. At first glance, we have to ask: does being a saint mean suffering for most of your life and dying young? Of course, the answer is ‘no’, Jesus says “I came that you may have life, life in abundance.” But then, where is abundant life to be found at Lidwina’s bedside? And here’s where we get to her sanctity: not in the extremity of her sufferings, nor the miracles or mystical prayer, but in the simple choice to hold fast to Jesus in all those circumstances. We don’t know what her relationship with Our Lord was like before her fall (though we know her parents were faithful and pious, so we must assume their home was one of prayer and devotion), but we know that she did choose Jesus, again and again, in the years after. That is something that we can do as well, whether we’re ice skating or just doing a day’s work. whether we’re suffering or currently in fine health, whether we’re given the grace of mystical prayer or just persevering in spending time with Our Lord before Mass. All of us can make the same choice – of relationship with Jesus – and become just as holy, just as saintly, just as inspiring as St. Lidwina.

– Fr. Dominic has ice skated three times in his life. His current skill-level is “unstable”. He can get up to a fine rate of speed but can only decelerate by hitting the boards … or hitting the ice. Meanwhile, figure-skaters are hitting quadruple-axels and speed-skaters are hitting 60mph … and the Lord is waiting for both of us to do life with Him. 

On Easter Sunday, a parishioner asked me if I had ever heard an explanation why people often eat ham on Easter Sunday?  I am sure there may be a reason, but instead of making something up as I am sometimes tempted to do when I am stumped on a theological question, I simply admitted that I did not know.  This interaction was in my mind as I sat down to write this article on the Lamb of God that takes place at Mass just before receiving Holy Communion.

I am aware that lamb is a dish that often finds its way onto the dinner table on Easter Sunday.  In fact, the lamb is a symbol that you will often see associated with Easter.  The lamb is a symbol of Christ Himself, who was sacrificed for our sins on Good Friday.  He is referred to by St. John the Baptist as the Lamb of God.  In the Eucharist, we consume the Lamb of God who has taken away the sins of the world through His Passion, Death, and Resurrection.  Therefore, eating lamb on Easter can serve as a fitting reminder of the gift of the Eucharist that Jesus left us on Holy Thursday before offering Himself in sacrifice on the altar of the Cross the following day.  

It is therefore providential for us to be reflecting on the Lamb of God on this Octave Day of Easter as we continue to rejoice in the glory of the Resurrection.  To help us with our consideration of this prayer, let us return to Venerable Bruno Lanteri and his reflections on praying the Mass, through Father Timothy Gallagher’s book: A Biblical Way of Praying the Mass: The Eucharistic Wisdom of Venerable Bruno Lanteri:

Venerable Bruno writes: “At the Lamb of God, I will seek the sentiments and the heart of one who is guilty and in need of forgiveness.”  Transferred to the spiritual realm, [this] is one who knows that he or she has acted contrary to Jesus’s teaching – through self-centeredness, impatience, lack of charity, anger, or through any of the seven capital sins and their unhappy expressions in act – and brings this awareness to Jesus, the Lamb of God, seeing that wonderful gift of mercy.

(p. 75 of Kindle version of book)

Historically, the triple request for mercy at this point was accompanied by the striking of the breast, as during the during the Confiteor at the beginning of the Mass.  Although the Church no longer calls for this outward gesture of striking the breast, the inner disposition remains the same – humility and contrition before the Lord, whose love and mercy is about to come into our souls.  Let us be particularly mindful of our need for mercy at this point in the Mass, increasing our gratitude for the healing grace the Eucharist is about to bring to us.

Speaking of mercy, the timing for our reflecting on this prayer is doubly providential as it coincides with Divine Mercy Sunday, always celebrated on the 2^nd Sunday of Easter.  Last Sunday, on Easter, we were invited to renew our Baptismal Promises, reminding us of that greatest day of our lives when Christ’s victory was applied to our souls.  On this Octave Day of Easter, we are reminded that, though we may fall out of our weakness after Basptism, God’s mercy is always available to welcome us back and restore us to that place of right relationship with Him.  This grace comes about in a most significant way through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, referred to at times as our “second baptism.”  The ocean of God’s mercy is infinite, and no matter how far we have wandered from the Lord, His Divine Mercy is always available to us to renew and restore us.  Having out sins washed away in the blood of the Lamb (in Baptism and Confession) makes it possible for us to share in the Lamb’s High Feast of the Eucharist where we are nourished and given a foretaste of the glory that awaits us in Heaven.

Father Alford