Today we celebrate the culmination of time, and the final manifestation of the glory of Jesus Christ. Throughout our lives we catch glimpses of how God is guiding the course of the world, how He intervenes sometimes in very subtle ways. At the end of time, we will see clearly how intimately involved Jesus was in every movement of every human heart. Jesus is the King of hearts, the shepherd of souls, the new head of humanity – raising us who had fallen in Adam. He is the just judge who will decide if we will rise to share in His glory – fully divinized by His grace – or rise only to plunge deeper into death in hell. He is the merciful judge who draws even closer when we stray. As our head, he proceeds us into heaven – He is a shepherd whose body is composed of sheep. When one is lost or stolen, it is a wound in His flesh that he seeks to heal and recover.
Saint Robert Bellarmine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
What do we mean when we say that God is infinitely powerful? We don’t actually know what infinite looks like or is. Maybe you remember that from Math class – we tried to picture how big infinity is. The problem is that infinity doesn’t have any limits at all so we can’t even imagine it. The mountains are vast, but we can see their outline, space is vast but scientists still think there must be some kind of limit to it.
We human creatures are not infinite – we are limited. You weren’t always alive, you were born one day and you will die some day. Even the evil doers among us are limited in the amount of evil they can do – they can’t achieve infinite evil. God, on the other hand, can do something infinitely good – and that’s what He does when He saves us in Jesus. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is infinitely good – infinitely powerful. That’s why we should never be afraid of following Jesus, and receiving His infinite forgiveness.
Most Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary
“If you have received worthily, you are what you have received.” – St. Augustine. That is why we celebrate today the name of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Eucharistic mystery certainly pertains to how a divine food nourishes and transforms us without our consciously understanding how. It is also the mystery of how Christ is born in our hearts through faith and grows to full stature without our understanding how. Grace comes to the help of our human nature, making it capable of living the divine life of God – if we are willing. We become worthy of the Eucharistic bread in the same way that Mary became worthy to bear the Son of God: willingness. “Let it be done unto me according to thy Word.” Mary did not understand what would be happening to her when she consented to the Father’s Word delivered to her by the angel Gabriel. We do not understand what will happen to us when we say “Amen – so be it” to the Eucharistic Bread we receive at Mass. Our willingness – like Mary’s – does not require us to see in advance exactly where this Bread, this Word, will take us. Yet we know that it is the way of the Cross and the way of Resurrection. “A sword will pierce your heart also.”