While He suffers for me I have not even the presence of mind or the discipline to wait a moment with Him.
Scott Hahn writes in “The Lamb’s Supper” about the Mass…
“The Mass is the ‘once and for all’ perfect sacrifice for Calvary, which is present on Heaven’s altar for all eternity. It is not a ‘repeat performance’. There is only one sacrifice, it is perpetual and eternal, and so it needs never be repeated. Yet the Mass is our participation in that sacrifice and in the ternal life of the Trinity in Heaven, where the Lamb stands eternally ‘as if slain’.”
And I have been reflecting on that today.
You see, Saint Padre Pio once said that if people really understood the value of the Mass, there would be police lined up at the doorway of the Church to keep control of the crowds trying to get into the Church.
And I have been thinking about that as well. You see, the Mass is the most powerful prayer that a soul can pray, and yet so many times there are distractions. Sometimes, the priest does not speak well in his homily and this distracts me from the Blessed Eucharist. Sometimes I am too hot or too cold inside the church and this is a distraction. Sometimes, I ma feeling unwell or tired or irritated about something that has happened before I even left my home that day. Sometimes, people sitting around me distract me with their own distractions. Sometimes they sing too loudly or speak too softly. Sometimes, their hair is messy or their clothes are inappropriate or sometimes, it is just not my day and every little buzzing seems to fill my ears and I cannot hear anything of the most Holy prayer in front of me for the distractions inside my head.
And I have been thinking about that today – because all of Heaven stops and all the angels and the Saints celebrate the Mass with me. And there I sit inside that church completely oblivious and terribly distracted from the Eternal Sacrifice. And that means that I am distracted from the eternal sacrifice of God – right there on the Cross.
And today it occurs to me that Christ – my Beloved – hangs from that Cross, bearing the weight of my sins in every wound of His Holy Body, and while He suffers for me I have not even the presence of mind or the discipline to wait a moment with Him. And in this I am no better than the disciples who would not stay awake in the Garden and pray with him the night before He died. And I am no better than the disciples who ran away from Him and hid rather than witnessing His agony on the Cross.
And it occurs to me today that it must be a terrible suffering for the Son of Man to suffer such agony in front of me and to have me completely and utterly ignore Him…
That must be such terrible terrible suffering for God…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.