God the Holy Trinity is perfectly blessed in Himself. He is an infinity of subsistent being, needing nothing whatever outside himself. God the Father eternally begets God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from Father and Son together. These three divine Persons perpetually and infinitely rejoice in each other, and in the love and unity that They are. As absolute Truth, and absolute Goodness, God rightly praises Himself, and this praise is His endless and unbounded glory.
But then also: in order to pour out His benefits; to share His glory; to draw created beings into participation of His own infinite blessedness, God created the Universe. In the first place He made the Holy Angels, who are forever blessed by dwelling perpetually in God’s presence, and by blessing Him with all the power of their pure spiritual natures. God also made the material Universe, in all its vastness and multiplicity. None of this adds anything whatever to God, but it serves in some measure as an echo, a sign, an indication of the super-abundant fullness of God’s life and being, and of His boundless generosity in giving. God also made the human race. According to an inscrutable decree of His foreknowledge and predestinating plan, in the fullness of time, by a miracle of grace it’s impossible ever to fathom, God himself became a human being, a man, in Christ Jesus our Lord. This man, who was also God the Son, died for our sins, around 2,000 years ago, and rose again for our justification (Rm 4:25). In him we become Sons of God by adoption. In him we are called to holiness, and destined for heavenly glory.
Those who are baptised in Christ now have the blessing, the dignity, the vocation of being able to give back to God the glory that is his due. We praise and thank God in a way that is at last truly fitting, worthy, right and just. We praise and thank Him simply for being God. We praise and thank Him for creating all things, including ourselves, out of nothing, and for giving us life and all the blessings of life that we need and enjoy. And we praise and thank Him for sending Jesus Christ to be our Saviour and Redeemer, and our life, and our love, and our Lord.
All those blessings from God, you would have thought, should have been enough. But no: there’s more. Not content with becoming Incarnate, and teaching, and working miracles, and suffering, and dying, and rising again, and sending the Holy Spirit to be with us until he comes again; Christ Jesus also gave us the Catholic Church, and the Holy Eucharist. These blessings are, as it were, supererogatory, un-looked-for, surprising; but also in themselves they most wonderfully somehow contain, express, mediate, communicate all other blessings. They respond to our deepest need, to our perfect fulfilment, and to our greatest possible happiness. To live in the communion of the Catholic Church; to partake of the Holy Eucharist: this is to live as a member of Christ’s mystical Body; to belong to Him; and to possess Him as belonging, without reserve, to us.
The Holy Eucharist is given to us as our perfect sacrifice: our best means of participation in God’s praise of Himself. Through the Holy Eucharist we are caught up in Christ’s obedience to his Father, to the end; in his total self gift, out of love; in his dying, in order to wash away our sins, and to unite us to God. In the Holy Eucharist we even receive Christ himself, in his Body sacrificed and his Blood poured out. We do so in order that in him no possible blessing might be held back, and that we might receive all, all, all that God has and wants to give.
Of course the essential place for the Holy Eucharist is the Catholic Church. Receiving all God’s blessings, she then pours them back, and invokes them over the whole world. She exists in the first place in order to give God glory, in Christ Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit. She is our mother, who nourishes and teaches us, and intercedes for us. Sometimes too she makes us suffer. Sometimes she asks us to suffer with her, and to bear the wounds she must always carry, until she is consummated in glory.
Not of the essence of the Church, but nevertheless at her heart, is monastic life. I suppose that of all men monks are most supremely blessed, in that their vocation and life is simply to thank and praise God; to do that in which lies all the blessedness and ultimate joy of everyone. Some monks are also called to be Priests of the Catholic Church, in order to ensure the continuation in the monastery of her Sacraments, and above all the Holy Eucharist, which it is our joy to celebrate here every single day.
25 years of all that passes by with bewildering rapidity. Nothing much ever seems to happen. But at least Mass has always been said. I was wondering how often? Well, it’s possible to multiply 25 by 365. To that sum you need to add one for every leap year, and subtract one for every Good Friday; but then add two for every Christmas and All Souls Day. For me the calculation is thrown out a bit because on a few particular occasions I’ve had to say more than one Mass in a day. On two or maybe three days - but I truly think no more than that in 25 years - I missed saying Mass altogether. That brings me to a sum of (round about) 9,206 Masses. Let me presume more or less the same for Fr. Ambrose, who was ordained with me; though he’s had a lot more illness than I have; but then again many more occasions for saying more than one Mass a day. Anyway, 9,206 x 2 makes 18,412. Each Mass, we say, has infinite value; nevertheless, the value of one Mass has been multiplied around 18,412 times, because of a ceremony conducted here, by Archbishop Mario Conti, 25 years ago. Thank God for that! A lot of blessing has been involved there, for which to thank and praise Him!
What, though, is to be said of one who, without the slightest deserving, in fact massively to the contrary, has received the gift of faith, and reception into the Catholic Church, and consecration as a monk, and ordination as a Priest, and that for 25 years? Having received so much, what is there to do - but to ask for more? Exponentially more, and more yet after that! Among other graces and blessings without number for which we all ask, one or two stand out. The grace to be conformed truly to our vocation. The grace to be able to give God true glory with our whole life. Finally, the grace to persevere in His friendship, and in the faith of the Catholic Church, to the end.