NORBERTO C. NAZARENO
The Encounter
We thank You, Lord, “for making us worthy to stand before You” at this Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It is a distinct honor and privilege! With your special grace, we are called to participate weekly, and for some of us, even daily to encounter You, the Divine, in a personal and communal way.
Nothing else can be better, not even an audience with the President, the Queen, nor the Pope, for we are there with You, the only One, the Almighty God, who has allowed us to call You Father…and You, in turn, call us Your children!
Our Offering
We come with our true selves, standing naked before You. You see us through and through. We cannot hide anything from You. So please, “look not at our sins, but the faith of Your Church” as You gather us around Your altar “In the name of the Father, of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Please continue to keep us in Your fold.
We would have come with other offerings to You, our God, who made heaven and earth, a God who gave us the breath of life. Likewise, we would have offered our finest accomplishments, finest harvest, finest chicken, finest pig, or finest lamb. Finally, we would have laid them as our sacrificial offerings on Your altar, to bleed and burn and later partake off.
Lamb of God
But You gave us Your Son to be human like us, to be our sacrificial lamb. “(You) humbled (Yourself) so that we can share in Your divinity.” You sent Him to be humiliated, to suffer and die for us, to be our perfect sacrifice, our unblemished lamb whose blood He willingly poured out for us. You suffered all these in the most ignominious criminal way to overcome Evil and to open the gates of heaven for us. And as final proof, You have resurrected to show that You have overcome death – that “death is a fiction.” It is not the end but the beginning of our eternal and glorified life.
At the sacrifice of the Mass, we are called to participate in as “we remember, we celebrate, we believe!”
Thank You, Lord, “for making us worthy to stand before You” at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass!
Feast of St. Norbert, Bishop – June 6, 2019