A Grateful Dad

I have not felt well the past few days, but the silver lining has been the way my kids have expressed their affection and taken care of me.  Getting me this or that, getting themselves this or that so I could rest on the couch - they are extremely generous little souls.

I am a grateful dad in another sense too. I remember attending Mass a couple of Sundays after my oldest, Brennan, was born and as the Eucharistic prayer began, just weeping in a loving awe at the realization that swept over me:  My little boy, the most important person in the world to me, was loved by Jesus. Jesus had stretched out His arms and let nails be driven through them for my child. I was grateful that Jesus had died for me, but now I felt an unspeakably deeper gratitude because He had laid down His Life for my child !  After Lily's birth, that gratitude doubled.

I make the Apostle Paul’s prayer for his readers my own this afternoon:  "I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph.3:17-19)

The Our Father as a Template

The Our Father really is the perfect prayer.  How could it not be? It's straight from the lips of Jesus.  Because of that it can be used both as the straightforward prayer it as, as well as a template for a whole regimen of personal prayer.  We can fill each line with our own thanks and petitions.  Allow me to offer a few suggestions:

Our Father who art in heaven – praise the qualities of God of which you are most cognizant and thank him for favors and the many ways he has shown his care to you and your loved ones (family life, housing, friendships, employment ...)

Hallowed be thy name – pray for atheists, agnostics, and anyone you know who is not practicing his/her faith.

Thy kingdom come – intercede for the needs you hear on your national and local news.  Pray that abortion be outlawed and marriage respected.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven – mention your family, friends, coworkers, and clergy.

Give us this day our daily bread – pray for your needs and those of the people around you.  Pray for the grace of the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, to be active in you and your loved ones' lives.

Forgive us our trespasses – confess your sins and ask God’s forgiveness for others of whose sin you are aware.

As we forgive those who trespass against us – ask God for the grace to forgive, both for yourself and others who have been wronged.

And lead us not into temptation – petition God to help yourself and others in your weakest areas

But deliver us from evil – ask God to protect you and those in your family and community from the evils you fear

A shorter variation is to visualize the faces and situations that correspond to each petition as we recite the Our Father, asking Jesus and the Spirit to provide whatever has slipped our memory (Rom.8:26-27).

Why Call It Eucharist (Thanksgiving)?

Jesus said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer”… And He took bread, and when He had given thanks He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My Body which is given for you.” And likewise the cup after supper, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:15,19-20).

It is one of those realizations that leave you speechless. There was something significantly more, qualitatively more, going on in Jesus’ prayer than the traditional, “Blessed are You, L-rd, our G-d, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.” Jesus gave thanks to His Father for the True Bread, His Body, that would be broken for us. He thanked the Father that He was able to offer Himself for our redemption! We see how difficult this was for Him when, just a few hours later, we glimpse Him in the Garden of Gethsemane; and yet, almost paradoxically, it was an offering He “earnestly desired” to make.

Historically at Calvary, and sacramentally at Jesus’ final Passover, we see our Lord living out as a man, Who He is from all eternity – the Son of the Father. For it is the Son Who receives all He is from the Father and reciprocates by pouring out Himself to the Father, in the Person of the Spirit. This is the same Trinitarian movement we see in the Cross/Eucharist – but with the Son’s humanity now fully caught up into His outpouring of Love. The Son, Who has received all He is, “gives thanks,” by pouring Himself out in a return of Love. And because He does this as man, His action overwhelmingly atones for – and superabundantly redeems – all sin, man and woman’s rejection of God.

By calling what we Christians “do” Eucharist (the Greek word for “thanksgiving”), we make a profound statement. We have been made sons and daughters in the only Son, and we enter into His Gift of Self to the Father. Like Him, we who have received all we are from the Father, give ourselves back to Him in a movement of thanksgiving/Love - the Holy Spirit pouring forth from Jesus, and carrying us into the arms of the Father. It only makes sense that the Eucharist, what the Church calls “the source and summit of the Christian life,” should be a manifestation of its central Mystery - God’s own Trinitarian Life.