With you is the source of life



Saint Bonaventure
Bishop and Doctor of the Church

An excerpt from his Lignum vitae (Tree of Life)

Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

Take thought now, redeemed man, and consider how great and worthy is he who hangs on the cross for you. His death brings the dead to life, but at his passing heaven and earth are plunged into mourning and hard rocks are split asunder.

It was a divine decree that permitted one of the soldiers to open his sacred side with a lance. This was done so that the Church might be formed from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death on the cross, and so that the Scripture might be fulfilled: They shall look on him whom they pierced. The blood and water which poured out at that moment were the price of our salvation. Flowing from the secret abyss of our Lord’s heart as from a fountain, this stream gave the sacraments of the Church the power to confer the life of grace, while for those already living in Christ it became a spring of living water welling up to life everlasting.

Arise, then, beloved of Christ! Imitate the dove that nests in a hole in the cliff, keeping watch at the entrance like the sparrow that finds a home. There like the turtledove hide your little ones, the fruit of your chaste love. Press your lips to the fountain, draw water from the wells of your Savior; for this is the spring flowing out of the middle of paradise, dividing into four rivers, inundating devout hearts, watering the whole earth and making it fertile.

Run with eager desire to this source of life and light, all you who are vowed to God’s service. Come, whoever you may be, and cry out to him with all the strength of your heart. “O indescribable beauty of the most high God and purest radiance of eternal light! Life that gives all life, light that is the source of every other light, preserving in everlasting splendor the myriad flames that have shone before the throne of your divinity from the dawn of time! Eternal and inaccessible fountain, clear and sweet stream flowing from a hidden spring, unseen by mortal eye! None can fathom your depths nor survey your boundaries, none can measure your breadth, nothing can sully your purity. From you flows the river which gladdens the city of God and makes us cry out with joy and thanksgiving in hymns of praise to you, for we know by our own experience that with you is the source of life, and in your light we see light.


Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

 



Thursday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary time



“This is how you are to pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name ...” (Matthew 6:9.)

Origen of Alexandria (part 2 of Pope Benedict’s reflections on Origen) comments on this verse from the Gospel proclaimed at Mass today:

According to the apostle, “as long as the heir has not reached his majority, he differs little from a servant, though he be lord of all. He remains under tutors and governors until the time of his maturity appointed by his father.” But the “fullness of time” consists in our Lord Jesus Christ coming among us, when those who desire it receive adoption as sons, as Paul says in these words: “For you have not received the spirit of bondage in fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, whereby we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” (On Prayer, 22.)



Collect
Almighty ever-living God,
Whom, taught by the Holy Spirit,
we dare to call our Father,
bring, we pray, to perfection in our hearts
the spirit of adoption as Your sons and daughters,
that we may merit to enter into the inheritance
which You have promised.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
who lives and reigns with You in the
unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.


Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen


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After the gift of bread we ask pardon for our sins



Saint Cyprian of Carthage
Bishop, Father of the Church and Martyr

An excerpt from his Treatise on the Lord’s Prayer

Thursday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

As the Lord’s Prayer continues, we ask: Give us this day our daily bread. We can understand this petition in a spiritual and in a literal sense. For in the divine plan both senses may help toward our salvation. For Christ is the bread of life; this bread does not belong to everyone, but is ours alone. When we say, our Father, we understand that he is the father of those who know him and believe in him. In the same way we speak of our daily bread, because Christ is the bread of those who touch his body.

Now, we who live in Christ and receive his eucharist, the food of salvation, ask for this bread to be given us every day. Otherwise we may be forced to abstain from this communion because of some serious sin. In this way we shall be separated from the body of Christ, as he taught us in the words: I am the bread of life which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats my bread will live for ever and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. Christ is saying, then, that anyone who eats his bread will live for ever. Clearly they possess life who approach his body and share in the Eucharistic communion. For this reason we should be apprehensive and pray that no one has to abstain from this communion, lest he be separated from the body of Christ and be far from salvation. Christ has warned of this: If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood you will have no life in you. We pray for our daily bread, Christ, to be given to us. With his help, we who live and abide in him will never be separated from his body and his grace.

After this we ask pardon for our sins, in the words: and forgive us our trespasses. The gift of bread is followed by a prayer for forgiveness. To be reminded that we are sinners and forced to ask forgiveness for our faults is prudent and sound. Even while we are asking God’s forgiveness, our hearts are aware of our state! This command to pray daily for our sins reminds us that we commit sin every day. No one should complacently think himself innocent, lest his pride lead to further sin. Such is the warning that John gives us in his letter: If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, the Lord is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins. His letter includes both points, that we should beg for forgiveness for our sins, and that we receive pardon when we do. He calls the Lord faithful, because he remains loyal to his promise, by forgiving us our sins. He both taught us to pray for our sins and our faults, and also promised to show us a father’s mercy and forgiveness.



Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 






Wednesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time



“But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to others to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.” (Matthew 6:17-18)

Saint Augustine of Hippo comments on this verse from the Gospel proclaimed at Mass today:

”Vainglory can find a place not only in the splendor and pomp of worldly wealth but even in the sordid garment of sackcloth as well. It is then all the more dangerous because it is a deception under the pretense of service to God. When one dazzles by immoderate adornment of the body and its raiment or by the splendor of whatever else one may possess, by that very fact one is easily shown to desire ostentatious display. This person deceives nobody by a crafty semblance of holiness. But if, through extraordinary squalor and shabbiness, one is attracting others’ attention to one’s manner of professing Christianity, and if one is doing this of choice and not merely enduring it through necessity, then one may determine by one’s other works whether one is doing it through an indifference toward needless adornment or through ambition of some kind. Indeed, the Lord has forewarned us to beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing: “By their fruits you shall know them.” Trials of one kind or another that cause these people to lose the very advantages they have gained through their dress or claimed to deny what they sought to gain by it will inevitably reveal whether it is a case of a wolf under a sheep’s skin or a sheep under its own. But just as sheep ought not to change their skin even though wolves sometimes hide themselves beneath it, so a Christian ought not try to delight the eyes of others by needless adornment just because pretenders very often assume that scanty garb which necessity demands and assume it for the purpose of deceiving those who are less aware.” (Sermon on the Mount, 2)


Collect
O God,
strength of those who hope in You,
graciously hear our pleas,
and, since without You mortal frailty can do nothing,
grant us always the help of Your grace,
that in following Your commands
we may please You by our resolve and our deeds.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen





Your Kingdom come. Your will be done.



Saint Cyprian of Carthage
Bishop, Father of the Church and Martyr

An excerpt from his treatise On the Lord’s Prayer

Wednesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

The prayer continues: Your kingdom come. We pray that God’s kingdom will become present for us in the same way that we ask for his name to be hallowed among us. For when does God not reign, when could there be in him a beginning of what always was and what will never cease to be? What we pray for is that the kingdom promised to us by God will come, the kingdom won by Christ’s blood and passion. Then we who formerly were slaves in this world will reign from now on under the dominion of Christ, in accordance with his promise: Come, O blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom which was prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

However, my dear friends, it could also be that the kingdom of God whose coming we daily wish for is Christ himself, since it is his coming that we long for. He is our resurrection, since we rise again in him; so too he can be thought of as the kingdom of God because we are to reign in him. And it is good that we pray for God’s kingdom; for though it is a heavenly kingdom, it is also an earthly one. But those who have already renounced the world are made greater by holding positions of authority in that kingdom.

After this we add: Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven; we pray not that God should do his will, but that we may carry out his will. How could anyone prevent the Lord from doing what he wills? But in our prayer we ask that God’s will be done in us, because the devil throws up obstacles to prevent our mind and our conduct from obeying God in all things. So if his will is to be done in us we have need of his will, that is, his help and protection. No one can be strong by his own strength or secure save by God’s mercy and forgiveness. Even the Lord, to show the weakness of the human nature which he bore, said: Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, and then, by way of giving example to his disciples that they should do God’s will and not their own, he added: Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.

All Christ did, all he taught, was the will of God. Humility in our daily lives, an unwavering faith, a moral sense of modesty in conversion, justice in acts, mercy in deed, discipline, refusal to harm others, a readiness to suffer harm, peaceableness with our brothers, a wholehearted love of the Lord, loving in him what is of the Father, fearing him because he is God, preferring nothing to him who preferred nothing to us, clinging tenaciously to his love, standing by his cross with loyalty and courage whenever there is any conflict involving his honor and his name, manifesting in our speech the constancy of our profession and under torture confidence for the fight, and in dying the endurance for which we will be crowned — this is what it means to wish to be a coheir with Christ, to keep God’s command; this is what it means to do the will of the Father.



Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 






Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time



“... that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45)

Saint Augustine of Hippo comments on this verse from the Gospel proclaimed at Mass today:

“Since he calls us to the adoption as sons through the only begotten Son himself, he calls us to his own likeness. For, as the Lord at once adds, “He makes his sun to rise on the good and the evil and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” Now, if you would understand the expression “his sun” to mean not the sun that is visible to bodily eyes but his wisdom, to which the following expressions refer — “he is the brightness of eternal light” and also “The sun of justice is risen upon me,” as well as “But to you that fear the name of the Lord, the sun of justice shall arise” — then you must also understand the rain as a watering by the teaching of truth, because that teaching has become manifest to the good and to the evil. But you may prefer to understand it as the sun that is manifest to the bodily eyes of beasts as well as people and to understand the rain as the showers that produce the fruits that God has given us for the perfection of the body. I believe this to be surely the more probable meaning, since the other “sun” does not rise except on the good and the holy, for this is the very thing that the unjust bewail in the book that is called the Wisdom of Solomon: “And the sun [of understanding] has not risen upon us.” And the spiritual rain refreshes only the good, for the vine signifies the bad of whom it is said, “I will command my clouds not to rain upon it.” (Sermon on the Mount, 1)


Collect
O God, strength of those Who hope in You,
graciously hear our pleas,
and, since without You
mortal frailty can do nothing,
grant us always the help of Your grace,
that in following Your commands
we may please You by our resolve and our deeds.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.


Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen





May your name be hallowed



Saint Cyprian of Carthage
Bishop, Father of the Church and Martyr

An excerpt from his treatise On the Lord’s Prayer

Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

How merciful the Lord is to us, how kind and richly compassionate! He wished us to repeat this prayer in God’s sight, to call the Lord our Father and, as Christ is God’s Son, be called in turn sons of God! None of us would ever have dared to utter this name unless he himself had allowed us to pray in this way. And therefore, dear friends, we should bear in mind and realize that when we call God our Father we ought also to act like sons. If we are pleased to call him Father, let him in turn be pleased to call us sons.

We should live like the temples of God we are, so that it can be seen that God lives in us. No act of ours should be unworthy of the spirit. Now that we have begun to live in heaven and in spirit, all our thoughts and actions should be heavenly and spiritual; for, as the Lord God himself has said: Those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be despised. And the blessed Apostle wrote in his letter: You are not your own; you were bought with a great price. So glorify and bear God in your body.

We go on to say, May your name be hallowed. It is not that we think to make God holy by our prayers; rather we are asking God that his name may be made holy in us. Indeed, how could God be made holy, he who is the source of holiness? Still, because he himself said: Be holy, for I am holy, we pray and beseech him that we who have been hallowed in baptism may persevere in what we have begun. And we pray for this every day, for we have need of daily sanctification; sinning every day, we cleanse our faults again and again by constant sanctification.

The apostle Paul instructs us in these words concerning the sanctification which God’s loving kindness confers on us: Neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such indeed you were. But you have been washed, you have been sanctified, you have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. We were sanctified, he says, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. Hence we make our prayer that this sanctification may remain in us. But further, our Lord who is also our judge warns those who have been cured and brought back to life by him to sin no more lest something worse happen to them. Thus we offer constant prayers and beg night and day that this sanctification and new life which is ours by God’s favor may be preserved by his protection.


Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 






Monday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time



“Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles.” (Matthew 5:41)

Saint John Chrysostom comments on this verse from today’s Gospel reading:

“Do you grasp the excellence of a Christian disposition? After you give your coat and your cloak, even if your enemy should wish to subject your naked body to hardships and labors, not even then, Jesus says, must you forbid him. For he would have us possess all things in common, both our bodies and our goods, as with them that are in need, so with them that insult us. For the latter response comes from a courageous spirit, the former from mercy. Because of this, Jesus said, “If any one shall compel you to go one mile, go with him two.” Again he leads you to higher ground and commands you to manifest the same type of aspiration. For if the lesser things he spoke of at the beginning receive such great blessings, consider what sort of reward awaits those who duly perform these and what they become even before we hear of receiving rewards. You are winning full freedom from unworthy passions in a human and passible body.” (The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 18)



O God,
strength of those who hope in You,
graciously hear our pleas,
and, since without You
mortal frailty can do nothing,
grant us always the help of Your grace,
that in following Your commands
we may please You by our resolve and our deeds.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen





Our prayer is communal



Saint Cyprian of Carthage
Bishop, Father of the Church and Martyr

An excerpt from his treatise On the Lord’s Prayer

Monday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

Above all, he who preaches peace and unity did not want us to pray by ourselves in private or for ourselves alone. We do not say “My Father, who art in heaven,” nor “Give me this day my daily bread.” It is not for himself alone that each person asks to be forgiven, not to be led into temptation or to be delivered from evil. Rather, we pray in public as a community, and not for one individual but for all. For the people of God are all one.

God is then the teacher of harmony, peace and unity, and desires each of us to pray for all men, even as he bore all men in himself alone. The three young men shut up in the furnace of fire observed this rule of prayer. United in the bond of the Spirit they uttered together the same prayer. The witness of holy Scripture describes this incident for us, so that we might imitate them in our prayer. Then all three began to sing in unison, blessing God. Even though Christ had not yet taught them to pray, nevertheless, they spoke as with one voice.

It is for this reason that their prayer was persuasive and efficacious. For their simple and spiritual prayer of peace merited the presence of the Lord. So too, after the ascension we find the apostles and the disciples praying together in this way. Scripture relates: They all joined together in continuous prayer, with the women including Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. They all joined together in continuous prayer. The urgency and the unity of their prayer declares that God, who fashions a bond of unity among those who live in his home, will admit into his divine home for all eternity only those who pray in unity.

My dear friends, the Lord’s Prayer contains many great mysteries of our faith. In these few words there is great spiritual strength, for this summary of divine teaching contains all of our prayers and petitions. And so, the Lord commands us: Pray then like this: Our Father, who art in heaven.

We are new men; we have been reborn and restored to God by his grace. We have already begun to be his sons and we can say “Father.” John reminds us of this: He came to his own home, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who received him, who believe in his name, he gave the power to become children of God. Profess your belief that you are sons of God by giving thanks. Call upon God who is your Father in heaven.


Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 






From prohibition to command: the vaccine that strengthens and transforms death to life



εὐαγγελίζω (euaggelizo)
“to announce the Good News of victory in battle”

“Jesus said to the crowds:
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven;
whoever eats (φάγῃ, phage) this bread will live forever;
and the bread that I will give
is my flesh for the life of the world.”
The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying,
“How can this man give us his flesh to eat (φαγεῖν, phagein)?”
Jesus said to them,
“Amen, amen, I say to you,
unless you eat (φάγητε, phagete) the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
you do not have life within you.
Whoever eats (τρώγων, trogon) my flesh and drinks my blood
has eternal life,
and I will raise him on the last day.
For my flesh is true food,
and my blood is true drink.
Whoever eats (τρώγων, trogon) my flesh and drinks my blood
remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me
and I have life because of the Father,
so also the one who feeds on (τρώγων, trogon) me
will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,
whoever eats (τρώγων, trogon) this bread will live forever.””


θεωρέω (theoreo)
(“to perceive, discover, ponder a deeper meaning”)


After much teaching and debating with the crowd, Jesus sounds a clear, blunt and forceful command that carries an equally clear admonition: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat (φάγητε, phagete) the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” In an unambiguous way, Jesus commands the very eating of His Flesh and the drinking of His Blood, actions that would have been abhorrent to the Jewish crowd of the first century as well as an offense to the sensibilities of many people then and now. So why does Jesus of Nazareth, Himself a devout and faithful Jew, command a non-kosher and rather barbaric action? A response (emphasis on A) lies in the very creation of humanity expressed in Genesis.

In the Creation Account, we learn via the dialog between Eve and the Serpent that humanity lives within boundaries, a characteristic of all created reality. Humanity, for example, is not given carte blanche to eat anything in the Garden: a particular tree is not to be touched and its fruit is not to be eaten. Boundaries are placed on what humanity can and cannot consume in the Garden. While Eve may not know the exact reason why the fruit is prohibited, she knows that the fruit is forbidden.

[As a brief aside, this food prohibition is not whimsical nor capricious on the part of God nor are any of the episodes of this Sacred Account of the Beginnings to be declared casually ‘just a story’ that can be dismissed because ‘we know better.’ We don’t. There is much bound to the tree, the fruit and the entire Garden experience that is crucial for grasping what it means to be created in the “image and likeness of God.” Being created “in the image and likeness of God” has implications not only for the rest of Creation, but for the relationship of God of humanity.]

So long as humanity listened to the voice of God alone and went about the work entrusted to them, Genesis contends that Divine Harmony - Original Justice - flourished. But when humanity choose to listen to another and to grasp (as opposed to receiving graciously) for that which Divinity forbade, life took a noticeable turn, to say the least and the relationship that humanity enjoyed with God changed utterly. That which was forbidden (for our own good) was not only grasped and taken but even more so, consumed. Eve, Adam, and the whole of humanity were filled with shame and alienated from the Loving God because the command “Do not eat!” was ignored.

Out of love, the Creator sounded the ‘first Gospel (known by the Fathers of the Church as the Protoevangelium, [Genesis 3:15])’ and promised healing. The rupture, grave in and of itself, became inextricably bound to our nature because we not only touched but consumed a reality that severely damaged our capacity to relate genuinely and authentically to God, others, the true self and all creation. Healing, promised by God and implicitly desired by humanity, needed to be applied to the root of the ailment which in this case involved listening to another instead of the One Creator (cf Dt 6:4-9, the great prayer of Israel known as the Shema), touching and ingesting a toxin that radically altered the privileged relationship that humanity enjoyed with God. As the healing work began to unfold, the Divine Word drew humanity step by step into a closer relationship (Abraham, for example) and fed humanity in such a way to grow more selfless (covenant meals of hospitality, for example) and free (Passover Meal, for example).

“In the fullness of time …” as Saint Paul pens, God the Father sends Jesus His Son, the Word to bring this healing to fulfillment. Throughout His Public Ministry, Jesus calls humanity to listen to what He has heard from His Father. He often touches humanity to bring about healing of body and soul and in the episode proclaimed this weekend, He commands the very consumption of Himself to combat the ingested toxin of the Garden.

But what kind of eating does Jesus mean? It is an important question because the Evangelist John employs two distinct Greek verbs in this Sunday’s proclamation - and both of them are translated into English as “to eat.” In the first part of this Sunday’s pericope, the Greek verb φάγω (phago) is used. φάγω (phago) refers to a physical act of eating and it is the verb used to translate the Hebrew אָכַל (ʾakal) that appears in Genesis 3. אָכַל (ʾakal), while its primary meaning and principle usage is the physical act of ‘food into mouth,’ it can refer – on occasion – to a metaphoric or poetic ‘eating’ that is akin to ‘taking in a lesson or a message.’ The Greek φάγω (phago) functions in a similar way. Most of the time, φάγω (phago) refers to the physical act of eating but on occasion can refer to a metaphoric, poetic or idiomatic ‘eating,’ such as the saying in the American usage of English, ‘I could eat my words.’

But then there is matter of the other verb in Greek that is translated into English “to eat,” the Greek verb τρώγω (trogo). In antiquity this verb not only referred to the action of eating but also how one ate: gnawing and chewing … and the gnawing and chewing were often accompanied by guttural sounds and monosyllabic grunts and groans. In other words, τρώγω (trogo) describes an exceptionally graphic action, often used to depict how animals and barbarians ate - not the way our moms and dads taught us to eat and behave at the supper table! τρώγω (trogo) functions here TO REMOVE any hint or suggestion that Jesus is speaking about a metaphoric, poetic or solely spiritual eating. The action is physical. The action is also quite messy – AND – it points directly to the Cross. The only way that anyone can consume the flesh and blood of a living being is for that living being to be dead. Jesus’ command “to eat” and “to eat” in a specific way - τρώγω (trogo) - is a declaration of giving Himself completely in fidelity to the Father’s Will that results in His Sacrifice on the Cross that we may live fully.

Thus the “do not eat” of Genesis is replaced by Jesus’ command “to eat” and “to eat” in a very particular way: τρώγω (trogo). Biblically, this is a significant Sacred Text in the Church’s teaching of Jesus’ Real Presence. At the Easter Vigil in the Diocese of Hippo some 1600 years ago, Saint Augustine addressed the newly Baptized and Confirmed prior to the reception of Holy Communion for the first time, “Become Who you consume.” In the Garden, our nature ingested a poison; our nature welcomed sin into our very being – not just into our spiritual nature, our physical nature as well. We are in need of an antidote for the ingested poison, spiritually and physically (sacramentally). No wonder that Saint Ignatius of Antioch and Saint Gregory of Nyssa referred to the Holy Eucharist as a Sacred Drug! Saint Ignatius wrote of the Eucharist as the “medicine of immortality” and Saint Gregory wrote of the Eucharist as the antidote for poison of sin swirling around in our souls and bodies.

Graciously coming before our Lord, receiving (not taking) with hearts open to His Real Presence is our healing and our strength for the journey - a vaccination that we can receive no where else and from no one else.






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