the Word and we prayed often
for the poor souls in purgatory that they might go through
their reconciliation process and come to love all with no negativity.
As the liturgy of the Word taught us more and more of the lost
things we came to see how the theological virtue of hope was
being strengthened by all of our prayer, for the Our Father
brought us to pray: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.” And the Glory Be taught us to pray:
“As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world
without end. Amen.” And that was the pattern of our spiritual life.
So we came to see that sex had to do with beginnings and death
with endings and that religion dealt with both and the eternity
that was there before sexual beginnings and our mortal endings.
Of course, as a second-year fifteen-year-old student I thought
a lot more about sex than about death and it was as if
I was coming to mourn a sex life and family I could never have.
I,2.6 Nourishing Agapeic Affection in the Liturgy of the Eucharist
The second part of the mass that we prayed twice a day was
the liturgy of the Eucharist in its offertory, consecration, and communion.
As our teachers and especially Father Bernard taught us,
the Eucharist makes history become present and our hope
becomes so real that our agapeic love makes real for us
our faith in all that Jesus did 2000 years ago and it makes real
our hope in a future life with Jesus and all he came to save.
At the consecration of the mass when the bread and wine became
the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus my heart grew
in affectionate love as I prayed: “I praise, love, worship and adore you.”
Adoration is a special kind of feeling that we might have for
the baby Jesus and for the suffering Jesus and for God once
Jesus makes God known as the love between the persons of God.
A lover might feel this love for his beloved and a parent might
feel it for a baby and adoration is a kind of affectionate
feeling that can grow as we say prayers of love for each other.
Twice a day in the liturgy of the Eucharist at the making
sacred of the bread and the wine we were reminded of Jesus’
incarnational love that went beyond atonement justice as
the Son of God became flesh that he might even suffer and die
for us to show us the love that loves all others even enemies
with a love that goes out to them as more important than ourself.
As we prayed with an adorational affection at the consecration
there was cultivated in our hearts an affection for everyone
even those who hurt us or disgusted us so that we could
see through any of their faults to the person for whom Jesus died.
The sacrifice of the mass at the consecration not only brought
forth the body and blood of Jesus into the bread and the wine
but also as they were separated there was a renewal of the
very sacrifice of Jesus as he died for us upon the cross.
From Jesus’ agapeic affection for us we learned to have that for others.
I,2.7 Nourishing Agapeic Friendship with the Eucharist’s History
The middle part of the liturgy of the Eucharist focused on Jesus
as present with us in the present moment there on the altar
when as the lamb of God he came to die for us again out of love.
As St. Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 11:26,
Until the Lord comes, therefore every time
you eat this bread and drink this cup,
you are proclaiming his death
and so anyone who eats the bread
or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily
will be behaving unworthily
toward the body and blood of the Lord.
Receiving Jesus in communion in his body, blood, soul, and divinity
was the highlight of our day and St. Paul called it the agape meal.
We came to the seminary that we might become priests and offer
the sacrifice of the mass for God’s people throughout our lives.
The whole purpose of the daily mass and communion was that we
might spend our lives growing in love for God with our whole
heart, mind, and soul and in loving all our neighbors as ourselves.
We learned from Jesus and the monks who taught us how to love
especially our enemies by praying for them even at communion.
In the seminary we were warned about the dangers of being
special friends with some to the exclusion of others and we learned
that as priests we had the common task of bringing the kingdom
of love to all humans that we might all live in communion.
In receiving communion together we became friends in the
common task of bringing communion to all the peoples of the earth.
God is the love or agape between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Human persons have an equal dignity
