2nd Sunday after Pentecost 19 June 2022 Sacrifice and Sacrament
Invitation: God invites us to the banquet. At times God commands, and sometimes He invites.
When it is God inviting we can take that as a command. Either it will be good for us if we accept or bad if we refuse.
It is an offer we cannot refuse.
There are many reasons why someone might not respond to the will of God, to accept His offers.
It is so simple in essence. He offers eternal life beginning even here on earth and we disobey, disagree, hide from Him in general.
Caused by sin we want the wrong things and are repelled by the good.
Sacrifice: in this case we are invited to take part in the Mass, which is the Sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world.
He offers the perfect sacrifice on behalf of us all, obtaining God's forgiveness for us, and disposing us to be more fully contrite each time.
The invitation is to come and see how we are set free from sin, and how we can live in holiness from now on.
He is demonstrating to us how the love of God works, and how we are included.
The more contrite we are for our sins, the more grateful we are for their forgiveness, the more fully we take part in the sacrifice of the Mass, with ourselves being victims with Christ.
He is the perfect offering, and we can go with Him if we choose.
In this sense we are invited to our own ceremony of liberation.
Sacrament: what do we eat at the Banquet?
We eat the Body of Christ, and this food works differently from other meals we have.
To eat the Body of Christ means to be united with Him in His saving activity.
As we are set free from our sins we are transformed within to become people like Christ, to be able to make reparation for our sins, to bring the perfect will of God into operation at our level.
We grow in our capacity to love, which means also the capacity to suffer for that love, to lay down our lives for others.
This also will depend on how fully we engage ourselves with the process.
It is possible to be at a Mass but not be personally committed.
It is also possible to be vitally interested in all that happens and willing those things to take full effect.
This we hope is our attitude as we gather here right now.
We accept God's invitation, we offer with Christ the perfect sacrifice, we receive as food the full effects of our salvation and sanctification.
We are brought in from the cold, we are welcomed by the Master of the feast, and then enabled to be like that Master, as disciples always should want to be.
Sadly so few understand all this, relative to the world’s population.
People refuse the invitation because they think they have better things to do. I am busy with my work or my house or my life or whatever. I have no time to be set free from sin and have my whole life put back on track! I have no time to thank God for creating me and then persevering in love even in the face of my sin.
Instead He has put in place a way of saving any sinner if only there is a spark of response.
Some are very weak as a result of being so far away for so long. God knows how to nurse those who are not ready yet for full sacrifice.
He knows how much He can ask of each person. He will not tax anyone beyond his strength, but He will make us all stronger over time.
We had better accept that invitation!
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