Let us prepare for tomorrow's Sunday, little snog, every weekend that we have students from Syracuse here with us, so let us do our best that the Mass tomorrow may be a real act of worship, of prayer, and of edification of our souls. Now the Mass tomorrow, as you know, is again the same texts as those of the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost, and then the texts That means the collect and the epistle and the gospel and the secretion and the post-communion are from the sixth Sunday after the Epiphany.

[01:15]

That is always in the last part of the Sundays after Pentecost is always the exchange between the with the Sundays after the Epiphany, depending on how Easter fell, or the year, how many Sundays there are, then after Pentecost until the first Sunday of Elkland, the beginning of a new school ecclesiastical year. The idea of God, you realize that the ecclesiastical hearers, one cannot say, we don't know exactly, the first Sunday of Advent is a completely new thing, a completely new beginning. That is not the case. Even the number of the Sundays of Advent changed in some way. The history of the liturgy of the Church

[02:19]

shows that there is a development in which the Advent season was more and more brought into equilibrium, so to speak, with the Lenten seasons. So there was a tendency to extend the Sundays, and you can see that practically these last Sundays of the old ecclesiastical year already have the same topics the same predominant thought as also the Sundays of Advent and, one can say, the entire Christmas season. As soon as the actual year is on the decline and the darkness of the winter, the night of winter begins to be on the increase, That is then the time when the church turns our thoughts away from the, oh, how can one say, from the earthly, our earthly interests, to speak, and concentrates, our focuses, our attention on what we call the last things, the second coming of Christ.

[03:42]

And you know that in this, and can in fact in some way divide the ecclesiastical year simply in two parts. One part which is devoted to the redemption, Christ's work of redemption, that means his sacrifice on the cross, the preparation for it in Lent, and the fruits of it in the time after Easter, and the Sunday is also after Pentecost. And then the other half of the ecclesiastical year is concentrated around the mystery of Christ's coming, of Christ's appearing apocalypse. And that is the topic which predominates in the worship and the thinking of the church, at the time that the natural light goes down the sea.

[04:48]

Then we concentrate on the supernatural light, on that splendor that Christ brings into this world through his first coming in the flesh and through his second coming in glory. And those two comings, that's what Advent means, it means coming, they are always seen together because the first coming of Christ anticipates in some way already the second coming. And we as church now, we stand in between his coming in his earthly flesh and his coming in glory. So for us, the one, the coming, which has taken place in the past, else the one which will take place in the future are by the church who stands in between the two, seeing together.

[05:53]

That is the beautiful essence of contemplar, to contemplate, contemplation, to see together. going into the continuity and to see the parallel between the first and the second. Now, in the text then of the Mass tomorrow, I wanted to call your attention especially to those songs which, now those are the 23rd, Sunday after Pentecost, and which the scholar of the whole congregation sings, and the three processions, which take place in the course of the celebration of Holy Naps. One is the introit procession, coming into, before, into the presence of the altar, and into the presence of the curios, of the Lord, that's the introit possession.

[06:59]

Then the second possession, which is that of the offertory, where the faithful come with their gifts. And then finally the last possession, where we all gather together around the altar as the holy table from which we receive the bread of life. So these three possessions and each one of them is accompanied by an antiphon. And I want to call your attention to these three because they are in a beautiful inner continuity. The beginning is the introid antiphon when we enter into the church. Then we sing, the Lord said, I think thoughts of peace and not of affliction. You shall call upon me, and I will hear you, and I will bring back your captivity from all places.

[08:06]

That is when we enter into the sanctuary. Then the second of the offering is, From the dead I have cried out to thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my prayer. From the day I have cried out to thee, O Lord. And then third is the communion versicle. Amen, I say to you, whatsoever you ask when you pray, believe that you shall receive, and it shall be done to you. Now you see there right away, if you look at the very form of it, the intro it, They are words of the Old Testament taken from the prophet Jeremiah, the 29th chapter. In fact, taken from the letter which Jeremiah the prophet wrote after the catastrophe of the fall of Jerusalem and the Jewish people being brought way into Babylon to captivity.

[09:21]

And these are words, let's say, of the Old Testament, words of promise, let's say, words of the Father. The second, the offertory, where we are apt in bringing our gifts, in which our being and our life is represented, they are words of marriage. Words which come out of the heart of the congregation. From the dead I have cried out to thee, O Lord, Lord, hear my prayer. And the Holy Communion, those words are taken from the New Testament. And they are words of Christ. They are words of fulfillment. Holy Communion is the answer, one can say, to the promise of the enjoyed.

[10:24]

Holy Communion are the thoughts of peace that the Father thinks for us. And we receive these thoughts of peace when we receive the body and the blood of our Lord and Savior. That is the meal, the peace of Christ, the Old Testament says. So, Let's just turn still to the intro. You must always have, we interpret an intro, have before your eyes the, let us say, the standard situation. These masses are masses which were composed and which in some way carry with them also the local collar of the city of Rome and of the Roman Basilica. Now the characteristic feature of the Roman basilicas is that when you come into them, then right away the row of the archers carried by the columns leads you and leads your eye to the altar and then from the altar up into the axe.

[11:36]

And in the axe you see always represented the gloriously reigning Lord the curious. The one who says, when you see me, you see the Father. The glorified Christ who is, no one can say, the visible manifestation of the Father. So it is this, when the community comes into the basilica, enters the church, there this picture greets them. And it begins to speak, as it were. Usually, This figure of the curious has in his right hand, the, in his left hand, the gospel opened. And then there is written, see in that book, for example, heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall never.

[12:39]

So it is the manifestation there of the gloriously triumphant Lord who is our peace and who manifests these thoughts of peace to us in the words that he has given us. He is the teacher of peace, Magister Parchus, and he shows us this risen Lord, he is, as it were, the predominant figure which rules and thrones above and rules the events of history. The host law of events here on earth is really only a veil. But behind this veil is the dominant figure of the Christ, the gloriously waning Christ, who has died for us, who is risen and is now enthralled at the Father's white hand and therefore has the keys, the keys to the past and the keys to the future.

[14:01]

He is the Lord of history. He is the one who will appear as soon as this curtain of earthly events has come to an end, is being rolled away, and we see behind him the one who dominates and guides human history, and that is the God who has conquered Christus Victor, Christ the Pope. Now it is that voice which we hear at this moment. You see, the church leaves in this fall season. The leaves are pouring from the trees. The whole life is, as it were, ebbed down. The year has long passed its climax. Now our life and our vitality are going down everywhere.

[15:05]

And so therefore we are filled with thoughts of, I would say pessimistic thoughts, but with thoughts of doubt. It's a time in which we realize how transitory the things of this world are. We feel the burden of it. The church, of course, turns our eyes at this time, the fall, representing the transitoriness of all the things. The church turns our attention to the second coming of Christ. When this world is morally old, as it is in fall and in winter, then that reminds us of the newness of Christ.

[16:07]

When this world is growing old, then a new hope is rising. And that new hope is Christ's second part. And therefore, when the general picture of this world invites us, let us say, to pessimistic thoughts about the vanity of all earthly things, Now that in the eyes of church is like rolling away the whole curtain of these earthly events and seeing behind it the dominant figure of the Prince of Peace. And his words, therefore his message, his glad tidings we hear. They are communicated to us in Holy Scripture, of the Old Testament, and of the New Testament, doubtfully and including the Apocalypse, the book of Revelation.

[17:12]

And here this is, this intro it is, let us say, apocalyptic. The Lord says, I think thoughts of peace and not of affliction. What was actual fact were the Jews who had lost the temple and had lost the earthly city of Jerusalem and had lost their kingdom and were in exile and felt the burden of defeat and the loneliness and helplessness of exile, what was good to them, this message that I shall admire us, At the command of the Lord said to them, that of course also applies to us and to the church. So it is with great joy that we hear the message of the curious Christus that comes down as well from that axe from the throne at the right hand of the Father.

[18:20]

I think thoughts of peace and not of restriction. You shall call upon me and I will hear you and I will bring back your captivity from all places. So with that the Mass starts, with this promise, this prophecy, this glorious future, this rising of our hope for the return from captivity into liberty, which liberty then is fully realized for us in the mystery of Holy Communion. There we really are around the Father's table as his three children and taking part not only in force of peace, but one can say in the power and the life of peace. So then we go from there to the offertory. The offertory, you hear these words,

[19:23]

which are so familiar to you, from the psalm de profundis. From the depth I have cried out to thee, O Lord. Lord, hear my prayer. From the depth I have cried out to thee, O Lord. There, of course, is a cry which is directed to God out of the situation of the exile, out of that exile. in a helplessness, that weakness, lostness, which is part of our existence here on earth. The human life is held, as it were, in a precarious way and on a thin thread. It is held into nothing, into the abyss of nothing. And constantly we find ourselves confronted with the manifestations of that nothing Our human existence is so frail, so questionable, so insecure.

[20:32]

Everywhere around us, death, sudden sickness, sudden something happens, and the man who still, short time before, was in the full power of his thinking and was planning and thought may go wrong organically and the whole thing is just thrown off and is brought to the edge of the grave so therefore we realize that that's the meaning of thought of this season that we taste that precariousness of our earthly human created existence The prayer of the church, the worship of the church, is always realistic. Certainly the church, as the mouthpiece of the Father's mercy here of love, holds out for us the good hope, the glad tithing, the divine promise, but as a promise not of human achievements,

[21:52]

but a promise of divine grace. Not a promise that we shall accept, but a promise that God shall descend to us. That is also the whole situation out of which these words of the introit were said. Jeremiah sends this message full of hope, which, however, is contrary to the message of the false prophet, who said and told the people, just gather together, get organized, and throw off the yoke of the Babylonians. That was the earthly promise. That was an appeal to the earthly resources of Israel. That was in fact a dream. It was a completely unrealistic dream.

[22:53]

The false prophets have lost contact with reality because they always promise to people the impossible things that they could achieve by their own power. And it's the illusion of pride. But it pleases the people. while the prophecy of Gerald Myers was, for 70 years you will stay with them and just accept it and stay there and build homes, get together and form families and continue with your life as a people peacefully, living together in peace with those that are around you. And then God will call you back, bring you back from the captivity.

[23:56]

So it was the promise of a redemption, of a divine redemption, not an appeal to self-redemption. That's the tremendous difference. So here also at the Overtory, which is the moment in which we bring our earthly gifts, to the altar, in which we, as it were, take an active part in the sacrifice. It is as if the church would warn us not to overestimate the drop of water which we put into the chariot of God at the altar. That small or that red or that little earthly that we have to do. Don't pay too much attention to what you give to God. Don't only and always think what you want to do for God.

[25:02]

See the other way around. What God wants to do with you. See what God has given you. Therefore, listen to the word that comes from above. Receive the gift that God gives you, Father God. Be ready to be redeemed. Be ready to believe. That are the saving virtues of the Christian. So therefore, here the offertory, where we come with our gift, the church puts these words into our mouth, from the depth I have promised, cried out to thee, O Lord, Lord, hear my prayer. So that wonderful word of humility and of faith at the moment in which we, as it were, become active in the mass, reminding us that what we do at the operatory is by no means a contribution

[26:11]

but is by all means nothing but a prayer. And then we come to the communion, and in the communion then, we hear the words, Amen, I say to you, whatever you ask when you pray, believe that you shall receive, and it shall be done. And that are the words of Christ, who is there with us at the altar, who is our bread, Who gives himself? Whatever you ask when you pray, that is so important. Treat with all wrongness. That means what you ask in prayer. There are two ways of asking. Appearing before God and putting before him our request. And there is the other way in which we appear before God, praising him, thanking him what he has given us, submitting our entire will to him.

[27:24]

Not my will, but your will be done. That is what we call prayer. And any petition which is brought before God on the hands of prayer, That is the picture which we heard. So also here, we receive whatever you ask, believe that you shall receive. And that is such a beautiful word which is so deeply true and realized at the moment in which we receive holy company. Whatever we ask in prayer, We receive it right here. But because what do we ask in prayer? We ask in prayer that we become one with our Lord Jesus Christ and that through him and in the Holy Spirit we may praise the Father because that is our salvation, that is our blessedness, that is our joy,

[28:36]

That is the fulfillment of our entire human existence. That is the thing we were created for. And therefore, we ask for it in prayer, addressing ourselves to the Father as creatures that need help of our Lord Jesus Christ, that have to be redeemed by him shedding his blood for us and giving his body for us. And that is what we receive in Holy Communion. So that there is the peace, the thoughts of peace are fulfilled, and these thoughts of peace, which we receive in the very person of our Lord Jesus Christ in Holy Communion, they are also the divine answer to all our human beings.

[29:37]

And he pulled me up and pulled me out. He usually said, right now, I'll pay for that.

[29:42]

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