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Trinity Sunday
Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk
27th May 2018
Contemplating Christ through the
Liturgy
by Rev. Fr. Thomas Hughes S.J.
Nothing is so beautiful and
ravishing as the truth, to know things as God sees them,
to feed our faculties with Heaven and Earth, with time
and eternity, all from God's point of view; to see the
evolving periods of world's progress with the eye of His
providence; to follow with the illumined eye of His
providence; to follow with the illumined eye of
Christianity the course of Christ's ways upon Earth, and
all the biographical, topical, historical elements which
centre in Him. He is the One Man who fills the whole
horizon of God's supernatural providence in this world.
This is just one of the meanings in those words: "Ecce
Homo - Behold the Man!" In Him we contemplate His
Church, His Saints, the operation of His Sacraments, the
development of His Kingdom.
All this is the field for
contemplation and daily thought. Here we are among the
Angels who round about the Throne stand contemplating
with keenest interest the unfolding of the human drama.
See how that is carried on in the intensive cultivation
of our imagination and mind together, not merely by the
live and vivid teachings of the Church's doctrine, but
by the living drama of her Liturgy.
In the sacred Liturgy there unfolds
scenes of beauty, variety, significance and depth. They
are transparent with the life of Christ shining through,
with the analogies of faith in everything He did and
taught and left to be unfolded further as occasion
offered; with the scenes of His bodily life amongst us
so aptly reproduced in the life of His Mystical Body
since His Ascension; from the Manger to the Cross, the
Angel announcing, the Babe of Bethlehem weeping, the
star shining in the East, the scenes of word and work
following one another on land and water, all to be
maintained in life and teaching by His Church till the
end of time: "A mystery of godliness, which was
manifested in the flesh, was justified in the spirit,
appeared to Angels, has been preached among nations, has
been believed in the world, has been taken up in glory!"
(1 Tim 3:16). In this vast analogy of faith, thus set
out before you in the Liturgy of Christ's Church as well
as in her life historically, what is there needed for
the cultivation of your imagination and intellect,
except that you do what you are invited to every day in
our prayers. Let us meditate on these mysteries; "that
we do imitate what they contain, and obtain what they
promise, through Jesus Christ Our Lord".
Here you have a source of power for
leading and directing a Christian life. You have the
forces in reserve for facing a Christian death, and
martyrdom itself on behalf of truth or virtue; as the
Liturgy says in praise of a Martyr, "The Lord Our God
fed him with the bread of life and understanding, and
gave him the water of wisdom to drink" (Ecclus. 15).
From all this you can see how necessary it is to provide
the material of thought by a meditative life.
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