Every time I watch the altar server carrying the cross and leading the procession to the altar while the entrance hymn is sung, I feel slightly overwhelmed. We are being gathered together by Christ himself. It is something that is happening to us, given to us, being done through us. We are entering into the presence of Christ as into a new “dimension” which allows us to see the ultimate reality of life.
We are not gathering together like we gather at a meeting or a clubhouse or a restaurant. We are doing something more than going to this or that Mass in one parish or other at a time most convenient to us. We are answering a call to do what is most natural to the human creature: to adore. We are answering an invitation to keep our hearts lifted high. We are plunging into the new life of the Kingdom through liturgy and sacrament. We are approaching the altar, which is a sign that we have been given access to the heavenly sanctuary.
“Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
In the Mass celebrated Sunday after Sunday, day after day, Jesus brings our personal reality into harmony with his own heart, his own truth, his own will. In the assembly, our voices and even our lives are more and more harmoniously united, as we become more and more like Jesus himself. That is why Jesus makes it clear that we are responsible for each other, that we are “brother and sister” to each other. If one member of the community gathered in Christ is having difficulty, or straying, or offending in some significant way, indifference or tolerance is not an acceptable response, since Jesus himself outlines in this passage a process for winning back our brother or sister to live their new life in Christ more deeply.
In the end, we do not belong to ourselves. We belong to Christ. We belong to each other. When we have answered the initiative of Christ who gathers us together, we grow more completely into one harmonious voice with him and with each other as we offer praise to the Father and intercede for the world.
Daily Reading
Memorial of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Priest and Martyr
Readings for the Memorial of Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe, Priest and Martyr Reading 1 EZ 9:1-7; 10:18-22 The LORD cried loud for me to hear: Come, you scourges of the…
Saint of the Day
Saint Maximilian Kolbe
Saint Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish Conventual Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz in Poland.
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