Easter: May 1st
Optional Memorial of St. Joseph the Worker
Month of May 2015, Pope's Intentions
May
- Universal: That, rejecting the culture of indifference, we may care for our neighbours who suffer, especially the sick and the poor.
- Evangelization: That Mary's intercession may help Christians in secularized cultures be ready to proclaim Jesus.
Month of May
Await: Front Cover of Artwork and Commentary.
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| Giuseppe Magni - Adoration + + + |
The Year of Consecrated Life;
The Mission of the Resurrection
As we celebrate now the joys and graces of this Easter season, we are drawn into the power of the Lord’s Resurrection. We see it in the transformation of Thomas’ doubt into faith, and in the undoing of Peter’s betrayal by his confession of love. In fact, all of the Apostles are brought from their fear-filled Upper Room to the hope-filled frontiers of the world. This is the living power of the Lord’s Resurrection that remains with the Church to this day.
In Pope Saint John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation Vita Consecrata, he makes mention of the need to perceive consecrated persons in the light of the Resurrection. Because the “Paschal Mystery is the wellspring of the Church’s missionary nature” (#25), it lies at the heart of every vocation to consecrated life. No vocation is for itself alone. Even the cloistered nun and solitary hermit live their consecrated life for the good of the Church, for the conversion of the world to Christ.
“To the extent that consecrated persons live a life completely devoted to the Father (cf. Lk 2:49; Jn 4:34), held fast by Christ (cf. Jn 15:16; Gal 1:15-16), and animated by the Spirit (cf. Lk 24:49; Acts 1:8; 2:4), they cooperate effectively in the mission of the Lord Jesus (cf. Jn 20:21) and contribute in a particularly profound way to the renewal of the world” (VC #25).
Father James M. Sullivan, o.p., serves as director of the Institute for Continuing Theological Education at the Pontifical North American College in Rome.
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April Month.
The First Mass
To see our Lord Jesus Christ appear in glory, we must await the end of history, when he will come again to judge the living and the dead. This is why when he appears after Easter, in what is called his glorified body, Christ bore no aspect of the triumphant: Mary Magdalene mistook him for the gardener, and the two disciples on the road to Emmaus thought him an ordinary traveler.
But here, represented in the inn at Emmaus, Rembrandt goes further: he doesn’t fear to show us a Jesus yet too human to be the risen One, his face distraught, like a Christ still undergoing his Passion. Thus the Painter of Light illustrates the words of Blaise Pascal, for whom “Christ will be in his death throes until the end of the world.” And it is true: Christ will be in agony as long as evil abounds, and so he is at each Mass—the source and summit of Christian life—making present and active, though without bloodshed, his supreme sacrifice on the cross for the glory of God and the salvation of creation.
On the altar, the Victim is truly the same as on the cross, just as the minister who offers the sacrifice is also the same. For the priest does not consecrate in his own person, but in persona Christi: he does not say, “This is Christ’s Body,” but, “This is my Body….”
Here Rembrandt represents, as it were, the first Mass—the first time in history the reenactment of Christ’s sacrifice was celebrated by Christ himself—after, it must be stressed, a powerful Liturgy of the Word expounded along the road. At the inn of Emmaus, Rembrandt captures Jesus at the very moment he speaks the words and makes the gestures of the Institution: “On the day before he was to suffer, he took bread in his holy and venerable hands, and with eyes raised to heaven, to you, O God, his almighty Father, giving you thanks, he said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his disciples….”
Pierre-Marie Dumont
Christ at Emmaüs (detail), Rembrandt (1606–1669), Louvre Museum, Paris, France. © Musée du Louvre, Dist. RMN-GP / Philippe Fuzeau.
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