"It’s the Prodigal Son story, only with an intensity the parable can only hint at."

That apt descriptor coming our way via The Anchoress after watching what follows:

Ms. Scalia continues:

The God of Abraham is a very strangest Being ever encountered and called “god”. He is One who does not have to attend to us at all, but because of love — because he IS Love — chooses to surrender himself to us, in love, so that we might learn that it is safe to surrender ourselves back.

I love this God, and I want to surrender myself and yet do it so poorly, and incompletely, and always with a string of distrust by which I pull back my surrender, still so certain — in my deluded way — that my sense of control is what is reality.

This is why God has to find a million different metaphors to remind me, again and again, that he is the Unconditional Love — merciful, yes, and also just — but always, beyond contexts and peripheries, the All-in All of Love.

In truth — and I re-learn it every time I sit before the Blessed Sacrament — there is only one constant Reality, and in the face of it, everything else must be diminished.

Apropriate words,  particularly on this Feast of Corpus Christi when Catholics celebrate the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  Here's more on this central rite from Fr. Phillip Powell:

The Eucharist is not a family picnic or Sunday dinner. We’re not talking about a community meal or a neighborhood buffet. All of these can and do express genuine love for God, self, and neighbor. But Thomas is teaching us something far more radical about the Eucharist here than the pedestrian notion that eating together makes us better people and a stronger community! The sacramentum caritatis is an efficacious sign of God’s gift of Himself to us for our perfection. In other words, the Eucharist we celebrate this morning is not just a memorial, just a symbol, just a community prayer service, just a familial gathering, just a ritual. In Christ, with him and through him, we effect—make real and produce—the redeeming graces of Calvary and the Empty Tomb: Christ on the cross and Christ risen from the grave. Again, we are not merely being reminded of an important bible story nor are we being taught a lesson about sharing and caring nor are we simply “feeling” Christ’s presence among us. We are doing exactly what Christ tells us to do: we are eating his body and drinking his blood for our perfection, for our eternal lives. And while we wait for his coming again, we walk this earth as Christs! Imperfect now, to be perfected eventually; but right now, radically loved by Love Himself and loved so that we may be changed, converted from our disobedience, brought to repentance and forgiveness, and absolved of all violence against God’s will for us. 

And you thought this post was just about a happy beagle.

There's so much I'm learning about Catholicism, so much I've been missing.

I truly am home and it's good to be home.

Comments

[Dee Galyon]

As a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod member, I agree with your statements on the Holy Supper...It is indeed the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ. What a blessing of God's graciousness to us sinners!