Dearest Goddaughter (LTR-50) - Breathless

Dearest Goddaughter,

Two young men - who were in R.C.I.A. preparing to receive the Sacraments at the Easter Vigil that following week - came up to me after my Ordination Mass (March of 2019). They were left "breathless" by their experience of their first "major" Mass.

There were KofC Sir Knights, altar servers, deacons, priests, the men to be ordained, and, of course, our Bishop. It was a beautiful Mass. Everyone lifted up their voices giving God praise and worship. Who would not be left "breathless" by the beauty of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?! I remember my first time experience the Triduum, it left me breathless to think that we get to experience the heavenly banquet right here on earth at Mass.

When I hear how some people "do not get anything out of Mass," I pray for them because, as Jesus tells us in today's Gospel, their hearts are not in the right place. When they prepare their hearts for Mass, through prayer, meditating on the readings for Mass, and falling in love with Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, then the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass will leave them breathless in the same way that Queen Sheba was left breathless by what she witnessed.

Love,

Bỏ Phúc

P.S. These are the readings for the day: 1 Kgs 10:1-10 and Mk 7:14-23 (below).

. . .

Jesus summoned the crowd again and said to them,

“Hear me, all of you, and understand.

Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person;

but the things that come out from within are what defile.”

When he got home away from the crowd

his disciples questioned him about the parable.

He said to them,

“Are even you likewise without understanding?

Do you not realize that everything

that goes into a person from outside cannot defile,

since it enters not the heart but the stomach

and passes out into the latrine?”

(Thus he declared all foods clean.)

“But what comes out of the man, that is what defiles him.

From within the man, from his heart,

come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder,

adultery, greed, malice, deceit,

licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.

All these evils come from within and they defile.”