9781644135945

The Time After Pentecost
received into the Church. “O God, Thou dost manifest Thy almighty power chiefly in
showing mercy and pity” (Collect). The Church, called out of the midst of the Gentiles,
knows that she was a sinner, entirely unworthy of being called to God’s mercies. She
went up into the temple, seeking God; like the publican of the Gospel, she stood off at
a distance hardly daring to lift up her eyes towards heaven. She could but pray: “O God,
be merciful to me, a sinner.” There was nothing she could offer, no works of which she
could boast in the sight of God; she could bring only her misery and unworthiness and
the confession of her sinfulness. God accepted this confession with mercy and love. He
sent His only-begotten Son to lift her out of the misery and filth of sin, to purify her in
His blood, and to make her His virginal bride and queen. “This man went down to his
house justified rather than the other.”
Israel, once the chosen people, by boasting of its loyalty and fidelity to the law, causes its
own rejection: “Every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he that humbleth himself
shall be exalted.” But the Church knows herself to be the recipient of God’s mercy; whatever
she calls her own in the way of graces, virtues, and blessings, she knows is only the product of
God’s purest mercy and undeserved love. “O God, Thou dost manifest Thy almighty power
chiefly in showing mercy and pity” (Collect). Day after day she is the repentant publican who
makes his pilgrimage to the temple. She is well aware of the fact that her children are bound by
the fetters of sin and concupiscence, unworthy of grace and pardon. Day after day, however,
she recalls the power of God’s mercy and, together with her children, prays for all: “O God, be
merciful to me, a sinner.”
With the Church we approach the Holy Sacrifice with the sentiments of the humble and repentant
publican. Bowing down at the Confiteor we confess: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima
culpa. At the Kyrie we ask pardon and mercy for our many sins and infidelities. At the Offertory
we bring our gifts to the altar: a repentant heart, which places its confidence in God’s mercy
alone, and not in its own faculties of intellect or will: “To Thee, O Lord, have I lifted up my
soul: in Thee, O my God, I put my trust.” For “I can do all things in Him who strengtheneth
me” (Phil 4:13). “Receive, O holy Father, almighty and eternal God, this spotless host which
I, Thy unworthy servant, offer unto Thee, my living and true God, for my own countless sins,
offenses, and negligences, and for all here present.”
With the Church we come to adore and to sacrifice, and, together with the sacrifice of
Christ, to be received by God. Christ the Lord celebrated His sacrifice on Golgotha in the spirit
of humility. In like manner we will be able to partake of it only in so far as we enter into the spirit
of Christ’s humility. The more we enter into that spirit during Mass, professing ourselves worthy
of death and willing to die with Jesus, the better we shall be able to celebrate a resurrection with
Him at Communion, when we shall be exalted and glorified by His life within us. “He that
humbleth himself shall be exalted.”
Prayer
O God, who dost manifest Thy almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity; increase
Thy mercy towards us, that we, seeking the way of Thy promises, may be made partakers of Thy
heavenly treasures. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
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