30th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Featured readings:
Psalm 18: I love you, O LORD, my strength, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer, my shield, the horn of my salvation… Extolled be God my savior.
Matthew 22 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”
I am preach to our theme for the year: The Beauty of The Lord in His House. This week the homily is: The Lord’s Beautiful Presence is here—let us even widen our holy imagination and enhance our gaze.
Inside this holy space of the church and the sanctuary, in our holy liturgies here, God has His actions going on all the time. Most happen in the unseen realm, as God comes to meet us here in Holy Mass. The High Priest Christ Jesus takes his leading spot, the angels arrive from Heaven (especially in the Gloria, Alleluia, Sanctus, and Consecration), then Mother Mary assists to Christ’ body—in her appointed role, and all the saints’ intercession come to support us! Still, there is much more, in that unseen realm: Link ups to the universal Church take place, the Holy Scripture goes forth in proclamation to each of our ears for to penetrate our minds, hearts and souls. The Word made flesh adds to His Body and Blood effect to the world, and He renews His covenant people, who are assembling to His summons and coming to be in praise of Him and showing their ongoing reliance on His Lordship. God scrutinizes the congregation for their disposition for receiving His grace. Mercy flows into people’s honest prayers for their Lord to have Mercy and the Lamb of God… have mercy on us. The Catholic priest praying the Mass gets inhabited by the Lord of Holy Orders, to be Jesus’ instrument. And, friends, these are just some of the unseen actions of encounter with our God in a Sacred Liturgy here.
Then there is the seen part of the Lord’s encounter. The Lord takes the bread and wine offering and moves it in transubstantiation and then we can see the hosts and notice the filled cup give a visible sign that God is here. That’s the Sacrament Jesus. His Church gathered is seen and it is another effect of Sacrament. The priest is seen as acting “in persona Christi” (in or as the person of Christ sign). The Missal book on the altars contain the prayers of the ancient liturgy going back to the Last Supper, and the Lectionary book seen at the ambo show that God’s Scripture is collected in it, to be proclaimed.
We see these things.
Both the unseen and seen aspects of the Sacred Liturgy bring us into beauty, because we are uniting to Our Lord in a very particular way. Wherever God comes in this anointed, special manner in His Son (and by His Spirit), a beautiful Lord makes a beautiful experience possible. So it is good to be in a Holy Mass or an Exposition and Benediction of the Eucharist, where God in beauty comes.
Hear how the Psalms put it. Psalm 90:17 succinctly says: “let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.” Or Psalm 96:6,9 declares that “splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary… (so) worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness“). Or in a the 18th Psalm as prayed today: “I love you, O LORD, as to be brought into your care, to be my strength, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer, my shield!” This a Temple psalm of someone gathered into the house of the Lord, who prays from that positional place. So they pray: “Extolled be God My Savior.”
We come in a physical manner to also receive into the mystical manner. We are grateful that God can be physically experienced in the Eucharist, and heard in the Word, and noticed in the people gathered with whom He lives in their hearts. Those are manifestations in the seen participation, but there also is a way for the church to enhance participation in her prayers there. Physically we can decorate or adorn the church. We have several such things to do it—like the “cross of light” skylight to say “resurrection hope” or the colorful window by the baptism font to show a river of blessing flowing from God in heaven down to the font. The image speaks of something quite real: Grace comes to the baptized here in this spot. It enhances the church, particularly at baptisms. Large meaningful Crucifixes are put up in almost all parishes, reminding how each Mass is a Holy Sacrifice.
I’d like to center your attention on a blank wall space we have in our sanctuary to the left and right of the crucifix. It would be a desirable place to put a large, meaningful, colorful depiction of Resurrection life. Through many years we’ve had different wall hangings put there, made by some talented folk, but those art pieces are deteriorating, and a bit hard to hang and take down from its high hooks. It likely is time to do something new
Now I know of people who are artists in the realm of liturgy, both in music form and also in artistic expression. For instance, there is Michael Corsini, who makes music but also makes church art for large spaces. I asked him to visit me and talk about what he sees in Resurrection pictures in his mind. He described how a work of art could show the liturgy of heaven and paradise above and the Eternal Lamb, all above the clouds and rainbows of our higher world. This is our high Resurrection hopes. The Lamb’s Feast could be depicted. Then coming down from the high heavens is the new Jacob’s Ladder or Highway to Heaven or Pilgrims’ Way of our Lord Jesus, that He has laid down for our access to Him—with believers passing over to Glory by it, but also angels and intercession from God coming down by it. He then sees saintly people of all types as icons of Risen Jesus faith, reaching forth to God’s right hand of victory. Then just below at eye level there could be painted an empty tomb and the angel and the women and then two apostles as come to it, then the Resurrection appearances in Jerusalem, Emmaus, the Sea of Galilee, as seen also.
I said that in one’s artistic imagination, in a sort like Ignatius of Loyola’s faith exercises, but actually drawn out to see—such forms could really enhance a person’s prayer and experience in our church for a liturgy.
Psalm 18 concludes today with “extolled be God my Savior!” I think a great commissioned work of art to a parish sanctuary could be a parish’s expression of “extolled by God our Savior.” The Matthew 22 Gospel today has Jesus exhort His listeners to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.” I think such love of God could be exhibited by a beautiful image we bring in for His sanctuary, to show some of the mystical unseen things of our Resurrection faith, with bringing it to a seen level. It would be a blessing.
It once was a great blessing to me when a high school woman artist drew something for me. I once was teaching this Laurel high-schooler the Catholic faith, and from scratch, and when I first described the Empty Resurrection Tomb to her, she drew the whole scene in pencil for me, right there in the office. With her artistic mind and eye, she saw what I was verbally describing from God’s Word. It was quite a lovely pencil illustration, and I’ve saved it ever since.
I think that past experience relates to what is our present one here. We are in a parish theme of Beauty in the House of the Lord.
The Lord’s Beautiful Presence is here, and we believe in the Resurrection Mystical mysteries as His so-named people, and perhaps some images put up would deepen that beauty and reality here.
Would we be open to have Michael Corsini come and describe this artistic realm of liturgy to us, and what Resurrection images could enhance our prayer—even if just verbally described?
The upcoming Parish Anniversary Day of Saturday, November 14 at 10:30 to 1:30 presents that opportunity for you. He’ll give two talks and in-between we’ll have a lunch in our hall. I invite you to come.
I propose this project or even first just to receive this verbal description of Resurrection imagery because I think it can enhance our gaze at Christ, and He to us. As Psalm 27 puts it so well, the author of the prayer just hopes “for one thing: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire of Him in his temple.”
Hear Michael Corsini talks on our November 14th anniversary day gathering. It will feature: 1/ THE LORD GIVES US BEAUTY FOR WORSHIP (see Isaiah 61) 2/ MICHAEL’S OWN TESTIMONY AS A CATHOLIC LITURGICAL ARTIST. In-between, we’ll have a lunch cooked by some K of C members. It’s Saturday, 10:30-1:30.