iugum enim meum suave est et onus meum leve est

Dear Reader,

A rather generous except from Fr. Z's Blog WDTPRS (What Does The Prayer Really Say.)

Very good points for reflection. I am sure that many read his blog if you have seen mine.

This is something I am taking to adoration in my heart tonight!

"In the 1980’s we seminarians were informed with a superior sneer that, “Jesus said ‘Take and eat, not sit and look!’” Somehow, “looking” was opposed to “receiving”, “doing”. This same error is at the root of false propositions about “active participation”: if people aren’t constantly singing or carrying stuff they are “passive”. Younger people no longer have that baggage, happily. They desire the all good things of our Catholic patrimony. They want as much as Holy Church can give. They resist passé attempts to make Jesus “smaller”. After the Second Vatican Council, many liturgists (all but a few?) asserted that, because modern man is all grown up now, Eucharistic devotions are actually harmful rather than helpful. We mustn’t crawl in submission before God anymore. We won’t grovel in archaic triumphal processions or kneel as if before some king. We are urbane adults, not child-like peasants below a father or feudal master. Westand and take rather than kneel and receive. How this lie has damaged our Catholic identity! Some details of society have changed like shifting sandbars, but man doesn’t change. God remains transcendent. We poor, fallen human beings need concrete things through which we can perceive invisible realities. The bad old days of post-Conciliar denigration of wholesome devotional practices may linger, but the aging-hippie priests and liberal liturgists have lost most of their ground under the two-fold pincer of common sense and the genuine Catholic love people have for Jesus in the Eucharist. The customs of Corpus Christi processions, Forty Hours Devotion, and Eucharistic Adoration are returning in force. People want and need these devotions. They help us to be better Catholic Christians through contact with Christ and through giving public witness to our faith. The iugum (whence iugiter) was a symbol for defeat and slavery. A victorious Roman general compelled the vanquished to pass under a yoke (sub iugum, “subjugate”) made of spears. Prisoners were later yoked together and paraded in the returning general’s triumph procession. In worldly terms, crosses and yokes are instruments of bitter humiliation. Jesus says His yoke is “sweet” and “light”. Christ invites us to learn His ways through the image of His yoke upon our shoulders (Matthew 11:29-30). True freedom lies precisely in subjugation to Him. His yokes are sweet yokes. He did not defeat us to give us His yoke. He defeated death in us to raise us by His yoke. In honoring the Blessed Sacrament we proclaim with the Triumphant Victor Christ, “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” (cf 1 Cor 15:54b – 57). Proponents of true “liberation theology” take Christ the Liberator into the public square. In the sight of onlookers, we march in His honor, profess His gift of salvation, and kneel before Him. We cannot honor enough this pledge of our future happiness in heaven, the Body and Precious Blood of Christ. I affirm my subjugation to Christ, Victor over death, hell and my sins. Before the Eucharist, Jesus my God and King, I am content to kneel until with His own hand He raises me."

Vale Amicus, till next time...

btw the text went mental.... sorry about that!