The Eucharist and Catholic Social Teaching, Part 4: The Eucharistic Sacrifice and the Mission to the Poor

“Who are the poor?” Most Rev. Daniel E. Flores, S.T.D. addresses this question in his lecture “The Eucharistic Sacrifice and the Mission to the Poor,” depicting the dynamism inherent within the Eucharistic celebration that both names Christ’s mission to the poor, and makes us capable of participating in it.

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Transcript

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I want what I need, so as not to need anything. I have a right to get what I need you have a right to try but you have no right to expect me to help you and woe to you if you get in my way. As Cecilia says in that passage. But he, the Lord, remained within the limits of his own flesh in his own poverty, in his own death. So poor, so miserable. So hard. Our flesh is the sign and source of our vulnerability, our limitations, our poverty. We have one life, it is bound to time and place, and the question for us is, do we accept the limit, and what shall we do with it? For the Lord Jesus embraced the limit, not as a curse, not as something to be overcome, but the path of his gift to us. The Lord Jesus, the word made flesh, the word became flesh souls. So limited. Had one time bound life among us. His limited flesh, his poverty, and from the cross, he needed someone to give him something to drink. His insufficiency. Because when he became one of us, that's what he took on. I can't do it all myself. So what did he do with his limits? This is our question. He gave it up for us. He offered it to the Father as a gift of love. For love is the only response. And he rose from the dead, still bearing the marks of his wounds, and he gives us his flesh to eat, and in his risen body he breathes a spirit into us. It's always notable in the Roman liturgy, by the way, this little thing, that on Easter and it's always in his risen body he breathes the spirit. In his risen body he rises, because it's the limitation of the flesh that is now risen that is the announcement of salvation. In this flesh we will rise. It is striking. That the risen Christ reveals himself, D11, to the signs of his wounds. That is to say, to the glorified wounds themselves. Or, the other way he reveals himself, where they recognize him, In the act of the breaking of the bread. They are, to my mind, fairly equivalent signs. He has to help them click. This is the one who is the Christ. This is the one who gives himself for us. How do I know it is you? Because of the wound and the break. This issue of the breaking of the bread, it is ubiquitous in the tradition since the scriptures. It's in Pius Dei, if you're interested in looking that up. It's also as old as the Didache and Justin Martyrs Apology. It's always there. The breaking of the bread is the Eucharist. It is the sign of the Christ who gives himself up for us. And it is his presence, because the sign is the presence. The presence is the sign. The risen Christ desires to be recognized under the sign of his vulnerability. Hand over for our sakes. He wills it Let's talk a little bit about words. St. Jerome, whose influence over the Latin tradition of theology is enormous just by how he translated things. That's just a little. He translated the Greek word mysterion using two words in Latin. One, mysterium, duh, and the other one was mysterion. Sacramentum. Sometimes, you look at the Vulgate, he used Mysterium. Sometimes he uses Sacramentum. And sometimes you just grab your head and say, why did you pick But he's translating the same word. He knows exactly what he's doing. I mention it only because I think it's just It fascinates me, word choices. Because this play of the words goes all the way to our present day. We, in the mass, for example, after the consecration, the priest says, the mystery of faith, and we chant something, Mysterium Fidei, which is fine. In the Spanish Missal, I say mass probably more often in Spanish than I do in English, the translation is Este es el sacramento de nuestra fe. This is the sacrament, or I wish we'd do that in English, but we didn't, but hey, I had no control over the translations. But I just, bear with me here. Because it influences how we look at something. Because the word mystery for us, mystery is a word that we use a lot. Usually we mean something that's inscrutable, makes no sense at all. But it's instructive. We tend to think of a mystery as a dark cloud and hiding things deep inside, which it is. It is that. And we tend to think of a sacrament, sacramentum, as a visible sign, which it is. Both of those words come from the same word in the Greek New Testament. The mysterion, the mystery, the sign. I want us to understand it's important. Christ is the mystery that is. Ultimately, within him, as St. Paul says, are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge of God, but he's also made visible we're supposed to understand something. The sign is addressed to the mind so as to move the heart. I fear we live in an age that doesn't want to let the mind dumbfounded by the sign, but you have to see the sign. You have to get something. So it's both Mysterium and Sacramentum, because it's the same word. It's the mystery. The mystery is meant to provoke something and takes you inside. It is a dark, bright cloud. Jesus is. But it is one that visibly signifies. We are supposed to see something, and we're supposed to see it. Think differently. It's a grace. It's not like you have to study a thing. It's not like you have to memorize. it's a grace. it's a piercing of the mind with the light of divine truth. That's what we're after. That's what you pray for during Lent. Light that catches your breath. You can't provoke that, folks. You pray for it. So the mystery signifies it means something. And so when we're at the Eucharist, when it's being displayed for us, something's being shown to us. We have to ask for a light to come. It shows us something that we can and should understand, however much like children, but it's in the form, the mystery of the Eucharistic sacrifice in the Mass, in the form of an action that offers His poverty. Take this. This is my body. This is my limited flesh. It's only thing I have to give you. Take it. He gives us His poverty, His vulnerable life, the sacrifice of love to the Father for the sake of the poor, which is us. If we don't see this is us, We don't get it. The poor aren't out there first. They're right here. One solitary, vulnerable life, so poor, so hard, so miserable, handed over to the Father as an act of love for the Father and for us because we needed it and we couldn't do it, Arson. By his poverty, St. Paul says, we are made rich. 2 Corinthians 8, 9. Love in the Son is a self emptying gift. And every Eucharistic Re presentation is the re presentation of the self emptying gift that fills our poverty. So St. Paul says, by his poverty you have been made rich by sharing in the wealth of his poverty. There's the great Christian paradox, and it's not like we can explain it to each other, you just have to sit with it. Sharing in the wealth of his poverty, his self gift. This is now revealed in Mysterium, the Sacramentum, now revealed as the glory of the kingdom in all of its dispossessed fullness. There's the paradox. Don't try to fix the paradox, otherwise it can't save you. Before we say the Lord's Prayer at the Mass, the priest says, at the Savior's command, informed by divine teaching, and then when we say that it's in two rooms. Every line in the Eucharistic Liturgy is very instructive. I think it's worth remembering that the traditional placement of the Lord's Prayer after the Great Amen, after the Consecration, and before the Elevation of the Lamb of God leading to Communion is enormously significant. This is very ancient in the Roman Liturgy and most, I'm sure, many of the other liturgies. It is the formative prayer expressing compactly the desire for the Kingdom and the desire of the Church. We pray this asking the Father, and the Father responds infallibly every time, because His He's the gift of his son, the lamb of God who dies no more, the food of the new life, in the spirit. Thy kingdom come would seem to be the primary posture of a Christian about to receive communion. Wouldn't it seem so? Thy kingdom come. The father respond, this is my beloved son. He is the kingdom. Do you have him in you? This is the question. The kingdom. That would be the kingdom where the blind and the lame are invited. That would be where the law is for the sake of man and not man for the sake of the law. The kingdom would be that place where mercy flows generously like the wine at a wedding, where the widow and the orphan are no longer exploited. The kingdom would be the place where Lazarus is at the door of the rich man and is hungry no more. That would be the kingdom we're longing for. I don't know of Jesus speaking of a different kind of kingdom. That would be the kingdom where the blind and the lame are invited because the invited did not want to come. You have to want to be at that kind of a banquet. Not wanting to be at that part of a kind of a banquet that Jesus announces in the parables is part of our poverty. We'd rather be somewhere else. That's part of our neediness that we do not know so often that we have. So often we can be so trapped in our self made frozen lakes. Matthew 25 verse 31 and following. You know it so well. I know people who shudder when I begin to cite this text because it is so powerful and is unavoidable. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me to drink. When did we see you? When did we see? When did we see? So imagine for a moment What would our lives as Catholics, as Christians, be like if there were no Matthew 25? Verse 31. Suppose it just had never appeared, but it's there. It's the immovable object. You can't get around. Not if you're going to be a part of the kingdom we pray for before we receive communion. What would it be like if there were no Matthew 25? Verse 31 and following. we would be without a vivid expression of how Jesus understood himself in the figure of the Son of Man. For when the Son of Man comes, Escorted by his angels. This is not the kind of parable you can explain away. What would it be like if there were no Matthew 25 31? We would not remember that the Son of Man, head of the human race, is present in each of his members. He who chose to share in our flesh makes us common sharers in his flesh. I'll say that again. He who chooses to become part of our flesh makes us sharers in his flesh. That's the only way he could say, you did it for me. Because the flesh of that one, there is no turning away from another. That is, brother or sister, that is not also a turning away from him. You did it for me, or not? And thus, if we had no Matthew 25, and I just say this because it's worth meditating and it comes up frequently in the readings of the gospel. If we had not, then we would not have this explicit link between what Jesus says at the Last Supper, this is my body and the bodies of the people around us and our own. It is me. The only two places Jesus says this is where I am is the Eucharistic and Matthew 25. That's my body you didn't feed. We will be without the explicit link between this is my body and every member of the human race. The vulnerable bodies, our wounded, limited, poor, miserable flesh, our common poverty. This is our great connection to him and to each other. There is no connection to him without being connected to each other. That's the Catholic mystery. He is the head of the human race. His flesh is ours. Our flesh is his. He is the new Adam. And we will be without the parabolic crescendo to the prophetic tradition. Defending the unjustly oppressed, the widow and the orphan, the defenseless, without rescue to hold in check the manipulations of those who simply have the power to do it. Head of the human race, he is in us, and we in him, even in what, by shorthand, we call the natural order, but all the more so in the order of grace, where his headship is recognized and acclaimed. Behold the Lamb of God. There is a turn in the Eucharistic liturgy. There's a turn. There has to be. We stop focusing on procuring our own invulnerability, so as to offer some relief to the vulnerable around us. In Christ, the communion of the vulnerable makes us a people who strive to supply to the other what they may lack, even as they supply what we may lack. It is the exact opposite of social Darwinism, where it's the survival of the fittest. You didn't make it? Too bad. It's the embrace of the broken human condition, in real flesh and blood terms. This opens us to the truth that our incompleteness, our congenital lack of self sufficiency, is not a curse but a blessing. It's not something to be overcome just because it's in the way. But rather, it invites us, most of all, to relation, to communion, and to the possibility of love. In the lower Eucharist, we learn that we cannot feed ourselves with what we most need. It has to be freely given by another. What we most need is a love that hungers to feed another. It breaks through. It breaks through. You're one of my little ones, she said, as he reached out to touch the face of the misfit right before he shot her. Made rich by his poverty. Rich with what? He says to us, as I have done, so you must do. He makes us rich with a generosity that gives outside of ourselves. A generosity that clothes the naked because we have been clothed with the baptismal garment. A generosity that feeds the hungry because we have been fed with the Eucharistic sacrifice. A generosity that welcomes a stranger because we were once strangers and have been made members of the household of God. A generosity that visits the prisoners because we were prisoners once and we have been set free. A practical consequence. Reality is supposed to look different on the other side of the sacrifice, on the other side of the dying and rising of Jesus. Our vision of what is informed by the light of what has been done for us, given to us, handed over for us, fed to us, and breathed into it. Love acts. Love does something or it's not love at all. In Christ, there is no love of God that prescinds from the flesh and blood condition of the neighbor. So when we walk out of mass, we could ask ourselves, is there something we can do? or make plans to do, for the least of mine. And I do not ask the to do question out of my own American proclivity to always have measurable results. I ask the to do question because rather than, because from a, because the gospel itself insists that love and justice must touch flesh and blood or they are just words that we have emptied of content. The word became flesh. Flesh is very particular. There's a further opportunity to meet Christ in the flesh and blood as we Encounter with the suffering of another when we leave the Mass. The Eucharist encounter summed up in This is my body given up for you is the entire drama unfolding of the liturgy. It is mirrored in the outgoing search for some manifestation. Somewhere, Lord, where are you? Some manifestation of the least of mine. There should be a hunger in us to find him on this campus. In this city, in this neighborhood, in this state, in this country, in this world, somewhere. It's not so important that you spend a lot of time figuring out where, just really it's often a matter of just opening your eyes to who's right around you. The guy who asks for a little bit of your time. The point is that the searching is something that Jesus himself initiates in us so that he gives us a hunger to find him so that he can be found. On the practical side, I would simply say it's better not to go alone. Jesus tended to sound out people in pairs and the church better expresses herself when the practical service to the brother or sister in need or suffering in whatever kind of poverty you may encounter in them is something that we do together. We are not Lone Rangers. We can't do it by ourselves. Together, we can do much. And in that context, I can say that in my own diocese, the many students and people from all over the country, Catholic, non Catholic, people who have faith in some god or no god at all, who come and spend some time with a poor immigrant family or mothers and children, it changes their life. Just to encounter someone who are just so grateful if you just actually Acknowledge that they're human because the world is a cold and hard place and those the world decides are not worthy of our company are basically relegated to non existent status. We can do something about that and it doesn't even cost you that much in terms of money. You can humanize What the world dehumanized by the gifts you receive on this side of the sacrifice. It's an opening of the eyes. Finally, because I have tried your patience. I wish to say something about the mysticism of Christ glimpsed. I was thinking about Dorothy Day. She had a hard mysticism, but it was a true one. Mysticism, is not something just for the spiritual elites. It's the baptismal gift, if we just open our eyes to it. The hunger and thirst for justice is not different than a hunger to go to Christ in His humiliated and broken form. Mary Magdalene searched for Jesus, His corpsed body, and she was found by a gardener. And the words she uses are meant to remind us of the Song of Songs. She says to the gardener, Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him. Song of Songs, Chapter 3. The watchmen came upon me as they made their rounds of the city. Have you seen him, whom my heart loves? Have you looked for him? Recognition is the sweetest grace of the New Testament. And Jesus said, Mary. She turned to him and said in Hebrew, Rabboni, which means teacher. This ardent desire for a glimpse of Christ in the flesh is a eucharistic consequence and a eucharistic desire. But it seems the decision of the Lord's inscrutable goodness to us that we are to look for him under the sign of the broken bread, which is marred, bloodied, rejected, hungry, imprisoned, Alzheimered, drug addicted. That's where he is. Out of his generosity, he insists we learn to see and serve him there, to embrace the leper as St. Francis did. The embrace is not a metaphor, it's an action. We have to see him there, before our eyes can see the Christ in his risen form. The Eucharistic sacramentum is a broken host and a wounded side filling an overflowing chalice. The Eucharistic Mysterium is a making sturdy of the heart To go to the difficult places, the places that offer a glimpse of the Christ. So poor, so thirsty, so miserable, so hard. This grace is a consolation, but not necessarily a comfort. That's why it's a hard mysticism. It is a love suited to our circumstance. For as the Song of Songs also said, For stern as death is love, Relentless as the netherworld is devotion, Its flames are a blazing fire. Christ hidden, Christ loved and searched for, is the only suitable way to get us out of our pervasive self preoccupations. If we cannot learn on this side of the sacrifice how to empty ourselves in some little way, then we are lost in the cosmos. So pervasive, and I point the finger at myself, so pervasive are our webs of self concern that to leave them is like slowly waking up from a dream or from a deep sleep. In fact, it's rising from the dead. Let's just be quiet. You have not tried our patience. That was very powerful. Thank you. So now we have time for questions. Do you want to come back up and field your own? That probably usually goes better. Um, please say something, or not, and, we'll be Quakers, and, we'll continue our reflection. You remind me of Richard Rohr, who I think is a prophet of our time, and I'm currently in the midst of reading his, The Naked Now, which is exactly what you're talking about, which is helping me digest the Bible. What I've been reading. thank you. Oh, thank you. This isn't really a question, but, and I'm not a philosopher, and I don't read Wittgenstein, generally. However, I did read one line of Wittgenstein, and it's seared into my memory, and, it seemed adjacent to what you were saying. He said, Love sees the resurrection. And, I've been pondering for years. what that meant. And it's very appealing on the one hand, but it's very hard on the other hand, because somehow he wants the resurrection to find us and be really obvious and, be a little bit, I don't know, solicitous. And in fact, it seems like that's the way not to see the resurrection. But maybe you could comment on that phrase. It seemed to be, if not adjacent, maybe right in the heart of what you were saying. love sees the resurrection. I do think, I do think we have a lot to learn from the experience of the church. of the churches, the gifts that we have received by persons who dedicated to the care of the poor and the very most difficult situations. I think of Damian and Malachi, right? With the lepers, who had a grace to Entrever, we would say in Spanish, to see inside. It's almost like having the capacity to have seen Christ crucified and yet have seen inside the transfigured glory. Because it's there. It is there. It's a grace though that we, that the Lord has to open our eyes, which is why the grace is too much to be afraid for. And maybe some of the saints who lived such hard dedication in the service of the most rejected. and whole lives. Maybe they prayed for it. Maybe they didn't see it every day, but they knew it was there. And it's not in any way to denigrate the dignity of the person there as if, I'm looking for Jesus, so get out of the way. It's not that. Because the risen Christ is in the flesh of this one as this one, not as another. And so, and but it's there. and it's a grace that perhaps the Lord only occasionally grants. Um, I, Bernard used to talk about these sorts of things, but, say Bernard anyway, but I do think that there's Because what is seen there is the love that is at play, because it's not just in the person that you are ministering to, whoever's feet you are washing, and it's not just in you. The love is the spirit which kind of conspires between you, and it opens a dimension of life that we just are so closed to, which is the dimension of the spontaneity of the grace of God that manifests itself. I think that there are small little transfigured moments that are around us. If we just stop and look long enough, I'll just, I'll do a little quick story. When I was, I used to teach the seminary in Houston and, and we would have adoration every Saturday morning. It's something that I pushed the faculty into doing. They were fairly reluctant to Saturday morning. The seminarians aren't gonna come. They came, I took responsible. Anyway, that's not the deal. I, it was a cold. and I went outside, to take a little break, in the outside the chat it was, and there was a lady walking up. There's a lady walking, I, this may seem like silly, but I, this still impacts me every time I think about this lady. I don't even know her name. There's a lady walking up, it was very cold, it was almost freezing and it was in Houston and she was wearing a very threadbare, sweater and she was obviously cold. She was an elderly lady and she walked with great determination up the steps. She saw me standing there and says, you are a priest, no? And I said, yes. She says, I live in the apartments over there. I lock myself out. You must help me. I said, okay, how can I help you? I must call the landlord, but I, because I don't have my key. I said, but he does not answer. And so now we have to call the lock. So I spent an hour and a half trying to get a locksmith on a Saturday morning to go open her. And she was very demanding and she was, she said, I used to be Catholic. I am French. I've been here. I used to be Catholic, but you are supposed to help me. I said, okay. And so we went through this and eventually and she was cold and she's lived alone and I didn't never met her before. And I was thinking I was going through a moment and I don't, I'm not, cause God gives you these things. I was going through a moment of about the fact that I had been spending some time with the Lord and the blessed sacrament. And then I was spending some time with this lady and it was the same thing. Eventually, I, I says, look, the locksmith, he's going to be there, but she's, and she said, she said, it's cold outside my apartment. I said, then wait here. so anyway, she did and, and she went back and she actually got into an apartment. and I think about that lady all the time. I hope she prays for me because she made my only hope on the day of judgment because I do think about the day of judgment. And I think the Lord is going to put me, he's going to stand me outside the gate and he's going to have all those people that I, that were, that I ran into during my life behind him. And he said, do any of you have anything good to say about this man? I'm hoping she's there. He once helped me get into my apartment. I believe this. Jesus says, make friends with the poor on your way. Jesus says so many things we don't really think about. Anyway, I do think the mysticism is there. I do think love shows you the face of Jesus in places. Maybe it doesn't look the way you would have wanted it to look, but it's there. and it's a tribute to the dignity of this person. That novel by Javier Cecilia, by the way, it's, it's a powerful novel. he writes somewhat in the style of Graham Greene, but I was still a Mexican. I don't know. So anyway, but there was some of that because there was that glimpsing thing that's there. So anyway, I do think it's there. I just, you have to pray for it. And God doesn't owe it to us. that's the thing about grace. He gives it. Doesn't owe it. You have to do this. The story you just told when you said to yourself, I was spending time with the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, and now I'm spending time with the Lord in this woman. did you have to think that, or it just came to you? And, I think about that all the time in my own life, and I try to, link those things, but I think about those things, and I don't know if I ever had a moment where it just was like, was, I don't know how else to say it. It just comes, in the midst of it just I do pay attention to the images that I think the Lord Jesus puts in my head. I do. maybe you think he's a little crazy, it, I pay attention to those things and it was there. He does that. One of the greatest graces of my life is that I do not listen to the radio when I'm driving. I drive a lot up and down the Rio Grande Valley. It's a big diocese. I go and I drive. I do not turn on the radio. I want silence. And I meditate in the morning. I read the gospel. I don't have profound. I just read the gospel. I just want something Jesus said in my head while I'm driving. And he puts things there. I'm not unique in this. If you're given the space, I don't think I'm unique. I just, this is, you just make a little room for a minute. So then things come to you. I just think that comes to you. And this is a gift. you just, so Lord, I hope this is you and not just me, but even if it's me, make something good of it. Thank you for that really powerful talk. You seem to be pointing a lot at problems of seeing and I'm thinking about, living in a world of so much like perceptual distortion. and I think the novel has a bit of that in it too. I want to read that, although I don't read Spanish, so I'll have to wait for the translation. But, I just want to say, and this isn't going to be very coherent, but your oratory is multi sensory. the way you speak, The way you hold silence, the way you hold the words, you're performing an argument that I think, I don't know if you're doing it consciously or if it's even something that can be taught, but it strikes me that, when you hear things like preaching is meant to break open the gospel and these sorts of things, and for you to take these words, the Greek, the Latin, the layers, the simultaneous meaning. The way you hold them, the way you hold the silence, the way you, it's felt. it's a physical sensory experience to hear you speak. That is so needed right now. We live in a very superficial, thin environment that is so perceptually distorted that it's hard to see the things. that we're meant to see, whether it's in adoration of the Eucharist or in the poor, that sight has to be healed, right? This is what you're saying through, it's what Christ does. but as a minister of Christ, to orate in that way is such a healing thing. So I thank you for that and I hope that's something that can be taught to others. Thanks. I appreciate that. I don't know where I learned that and I don't practice it. I used to teach homiletics in seminary only because I was cheap laborer and there was nobody else. it's true. faculty was short somebody. And so I, and, but I always told guys, whatever you say, it's gotta come from your gut because people can tell when it's not. And the people of God will put up with a lot of. of imperfections in the way you, if it's really you and your faith is coming out. I did a lot of work on the synod. I still am. and, worldwide, I was in Rome for this month of us reading all these reports. There's a worldwide complaint about homiletics. And I'm thinking to myself, they can't all be complaining about the same thing, but maybe it's a deeper thing. Show us, and not just the preacher, but I think amongst the witness that, show me that you really are a believer. I think that's what, the authenticity that we're looking for, and it's not just the believer, it's the world needs an authentic, I believe this, and I want to share it with you. I think we all need to do that. It's an authentic window. We worry a lot. One thing I heard in the synod was, we don't feel prepared to witness to the gospel. We need more formation. I said, yes, we need formation. But you need to get in touch with your gut so that you can just say to somebody, this is real. That's a witness. I don't think you need a lot of classes for that. You need an open prayer life and you need a gut that's open to the way the Holy Spirit can punch you because the Spirit punches you. That's salad. I was fascinated with your description of experiencing Jesus. in other people, and the way that you prefaced your talk, about saying we need an immediacy. And I think a lot of times, it's easy to see the presence of Jesus in our lives in retrospect. It's, and that's really good to be able to look back, it has a real value. because it teaches you something of what that is. But, what you've said is that our real work is to learn how to do that, not consciously in the moment, but in our life. So thank you for that. That was wonderful. Thank you so much for the wonderful talk. and when you talked earlier about Matthew 25, something that always strikes me with that verse is, A, the, how Christ compels us to see him in the poor and how we very much have a duty to the poor. But my concern over that verse sometimes is that it can almost cause a sense of anxiety that we look around and that we are constantly trying to find Christ in everyone around us. And if we aren't seeing Christ in anyone around us, then we're failing our duty as Christians. And so how do we balance that anxiety, which obviously Jesus isn't calling us to, how do we balance peace in Christ with also maintaining his mission? Wow, that's a very good question. I think it helps to keep in mind that the seeing of Christ, the perception, the entrever, to see within, is It is a gift. It's not like we have to try harder, which is our semi Pelagian stance before almost everything, right? If you just, I got, okay, we do, we have to, we do have to try, but within grace, which is slightly different. Not slightly different, it's a lot different. So to answer that, because there are moments when you go, Lord, where are you in this? And not just in persons, but in circumstances. we've all been in situations which are so just humanly desolate situations. So we go, where are you? And I don't see. I think just to ask him that. And then be at peace with it, because he heard that, and he will find a way. Maybe not right now, but at a certain moment, maybe in retrospect, because certain important graces, that's the big thing about Augustine, it's about what the memory is able to see afterwards. The memory is one of the principal ways that the Spirit brings us to light of things. But I think we can relax that way, because it is something that you ask the Lord for. We're often like that guy in Matthew, who Jesus, had to touch twice for the eyes to open. they're the people they look like trees. how do you know what trees look like? that's what people told me trees look like. There's a ssssssssssssssss, I, And he will, I think, open that for you, because the anxiety gets in the way of the grace sometimes, that he wants you to see it. But you have to have that immediacy of being able to ask the Lord at that moment. That's part of the immediacy. Or, I don't see you here. I don't. And maybe it's because I don't want to. Or maybe it's, whatever it is, you're going to have to help me. And then relax, because the Lord is here. He hears that, and it isn't over time sort of thing. Certain circumstances are very difficult. But, it's often, I think, in the unexpected presentation of the list in Matthew 25, 31, the, it was one thing to go to them and, and just serve because Jesus says we should serve. It's another to be confronted by it. And that takes us a different way. And maybe that's when we most have the difficulty. it's A particular instantiation of what I say, always pay attention during Lent, not so much to the things you wanted to give to God during Lent, but the things that God asked you for during Lent, which are different. And that's the thing he put in front of you that you didn't expect. And that's something there. So anyway, I would just say, trust the Lord when you ask him for that. and because it is a grace, it's not something we can manufacture. And he can open the eyes. That's what he does. That's what he does. Thank you. I'll reiterate the thanks for this great talk. Something that really struck me was when you said love acts or it's not love at all and love and justice must touch flesh and blood or they've become words empty of their meaning. And later you continue this thought speaking on the self preoccupation that so many of us have and these obstacles that we have to truly living out this love. Because of the many excuses we can make or just any wide variety of reasons. And I guess my question is, what aspects of our lives of faith and this call of the Eucharist do you think we should focus most on or could be most helpful in overcoming some of these obstacles to making our love act? I think it's cultivating a sense of the importance of how the, of The mass ends, for another, not practical senses, because it's a fairly abrupt ending. we, the, our father, the whole, and the communion thing. And then, and we, and then closing prayer, go in peace. And I've always been struck by. But we have, for 2, 000 years, we have been saying Ita Misa Est, and nobody knows how to translate that into the water language, right? and go in peace, or go and love and serve the Lord, or whatever, we have all sorts of, and I said, don't worry about it. The operative word is go. That is, walk out the door, and with an eye that the Lord has already equipped you with, just to pay attention, attentively, to what's around you. And you'll be, and he does that. and then things open up and don't be afraid of the unexpected interruption in life. the person, like I think about this with the lady who, who needed a key to get into her, she was a, an interruption to my life. We don't like interruptions because that's not the plan. we are so focused on the plan. We're so focused on the calendar and I'm a bishop and I hate my calendar. Because it controls me. Because you have obligations to people, and you're supposed to. But, sometimes things interrupt. And, the Good Samaritan went out of his way. he had another plan. I think an attentiveness and allowing yourself to be interrupted is a self gift. It's a self, dying to yourself. and it's also a great gift you give to somebody if you allow, it changes your day. And that's, that, Travels With My Aunt is one of my favorite Graham Greene novels because it's all about this very quiet sort of Englishman and his aunt is crazy and she gets him into all sorts of trouble because his life is like completely out of control. but that's where the grace breaks in. the grace breaks in when we let The interruption, not just be the inconvenience, but the way Jesus pokes his head into this. and that doesn't make the interruption any less obnoxious sometimes, because you, I really do have some work to do. I really do. But, it's the phone call. You get, maybe somebody who's, needs a little of your time because they need a little encouragement or a little, right? And you'll be like, I really need to get this done. And I'm not saying this, but I'm not saying that you always have to go with a, with what, because sometimes the interruption can be, but an openness to what the potential for the interruption is part of the openness of the eyes when you walk out the back door, when you walk out the door of the church. Because you're, you got people. One of the pastors of my, in my diocese said visually said, there was a man standing outside the church asking for money, one of the missions, and, and nobody, and I told, I talked to him and I asked him what he needed and so we got him some help. He said, but I felt very badly and I talked to my people about this. This is hard for a priest to do because we don't, so I said, didn't any of you ask him what he needed or did he ever just step around him? And they all just stepped around him. And I think, we do that maybe because they didn't have time. It's interruption. I'm going to be late for mass. There's some thinking that needs to go on there. Jesus is patient, but I guess it's a long answer to a very important question, and that probably would have been better if it had just been a shorter answer, but I think that attitude of leaving with a sense of openness to what, to the, the unexpected, interruption that might be some way by which Jesus himself is trying to get into your time. It's your time. We are so possessive of our time. We really are. It's mine. My precious. We will say thank you here and we'll say it again in an hour. Okay, thank you.