John Bunyea ǀ Catholic News Herald
By now, the celebration of summer has begun – with festivals, parades, and seasonal practices that make for fun in the sun.
The Church does not celebrate meteorological seasons, but this time of year does have its own feasts (Pentecost, Trinity) and processions (Corpus Christi) and rituals (Sacred Heart novena).
Both types of summer celebrations share a sense of seasonal joy. But those of the ecclesiastical kind arise from a different vision than the secular ones.
More significant than fun in the sun, our devotional festivities express an essentially “apostolic” vision of life in this world.
To be apostolic in vision... is to recognize that Christians don’t see some things differently than others: they see everything differently in the light of the extraordinary drama they have come to understand. To be apostolic is to do more than assent to a set of doctrinal truths or moral precepts, essential as they are; it is to experience daily the adventure that arises from the encounter with Christ; to view events and people moment by moment in the light of that vision; to be cause by the perilous and joy-filled work of learning to be transformed into divine beings headed for eternal rapture in the exhilarating embrace of God” (Christendom to Apostolic Mission, pp. 74-75).
St. Francis de Sales embraced this apostolic vision; as a Doctor of the Church, he communicated it with an inspired sense. In his Introduction to the Devout Life, he describes our Sunday celebration in especially evocative terms, as
The sun of all spiritual exercises – the most holy, sacred, and supremely sovereign sacrament and sacrifice of the Mass, center of the Christian religion, heart of devotion, and soul of piety, the ineffable mystery that comprises within itself the deepest depths of divine charity, the mystery in which God really gives himself and gloriously communicates his graces and favors to us” (II:14).
As light is necessary for life, so the Mass is the Church’s sun. But unlike any other day, Sunday celebrates what is supremely sovereign; as a sacred moment, it is set apart (“holy”) in both time and place, in recognition of God’s doing, not ours. Our weekly feast memorializes the redemptive self-sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross; it makes real God’s salvific presence in the world.
As the heart of devotion, our Sunday celebration enlivens us from within; as the soul of piety, it touches upon and transforms that which is profoundly spiritual about being human. Being fundamentally sacramental, not just social, Mass is mysterious; it “works” through the ineffable power of divine grace. It discloses the depths of divine charity by re-presenting the Father’s condescension to/for us in Jesus through the Holy Spirit. In this way, we can see and hear and experience again the gift of God’s sharing the grace and favor of His eternal love with us.
We celebrate all of that every week! The more we adopt this sacramental sensibility, and revive our appreciation of Eucharistic faith, the more joyous summer will be.
Fr. Thomas Dailey, OSFS
The John Cardinal Foley Chair of Homiletics & Social Communications
Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary
