April 23, 2010
Friday of the Third Week of Easter
By Melanie Rigney
There was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias, and the Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight and ask at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul. He is there praying, and in a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him, that he may regain his sight.” (Acts 9:10-12)
Go out to all the world and tell the Good News. (Mark 16:15)
“For my Flesh is true food, and my Blood is true drink. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” (John 6:55-57)
Piety
O God, send forth your Holy Spirit into my heart that I may perceive, into my mind that I may remember, and into my soul that I may meditate. Inspire me to speak with piety, holiness, tenderness and mercy. Teach, guide and direct my thoughts and senses from beginning to end. May your grace ever help and correct me, and may I be strengthened now with wisdom from on high, for the sake of your infinite mercy. Amen. (St. Anthony of Padua)
Study
Transubstantiation.
Now there’s an easy topic for a laywoman to write about.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time the past few years ministering to inactive Catholics (after reactivating my own spiritual life) and talking to others whose gifts are in this type of evangelization. It’s a pretty universal that the thing people who are away miss the most, the thing that often draws them back, is the Sacrament of the Eucharist. And yet, many inactives are a bit surprised to learn or relearn that as Catholics, we believe Christ is truly present in the bread and the blood. Just as importantly, they sometimes don’t get that the sacrament doesn’t end when they return to their pews. Rather, they now are armed with the nourishment to go forth and, as the Catechism says, “fulfill God’s will in their daily lives.”
Fulfilling that will and using it to spread the Good News can be challenging. We’re called to use this great gift not just to share the News with our friends and family, but also with total strangers and, even more difficult, with people we do know and find particularly difficult to love. Consider the struggle Ananias has with the Lord in today’s first reading. Paul certainly wasn’t easy for Ananias to love; after all, he’d been persecuting Ananias’s friends. But ultimately, he obeys and goes to lay hands on Paul, and the rest is history. And yet, without Christ’s true presence, Ananias may have said no. And without Christ’s true presence following his conversion, Paul may not have been capable of an evangelization ministry that lives on more than 1,900 years after his death.
Transubstantiation. It’s an outward sign of grace that changes us internally and externally. It draws us closer to God… and feeds us as we seek to live lives that help others to know Him. Let it transform you.
Action
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has a nifty quiz about the Eucharist at www.usccb.org/catechism/quizzes/eucharqz.shtml. Check it out (to see the answers, click on the hyperlink in each question).
