In the School of the Host

From Fr. Mark:

The hard and rugged paths by which a novice walks towards God are set before him in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.  The novice has only to gaze upon the Sacred Host to discover the true spirit of his vocation.

In finem dilexit. “Before the festival day of the pasch, Jesus knowing that his hour was come, that he should pass out of this world to the Father: having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them unto the end” (John 13:1).  Showing His “love unto the end,” Jesus walked towards His Father along the hard and rugged way of the Cross, leaving us the adorable mysteries of His Body and Blood as the abiding memorial of His Passion.  The true spirit of our Benedictine life is one of participation in Our Lord’s Eucharistic kenosis (self–emptying).  Compelled by an excess of divine pity, it was not enough for Christ to become for our sake “obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:); He chose to perpetuate the kenosis of His passion, even after His glorious resurrection and ascension in heaven, in the adorable Sacrament of His Body and Blood.  In the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar we find Our Lord Jesus Christ in a condition of profound humiliation that, until His return in glory, announces the mystery of His death. “For as often as you shall eat this bread and drink the chalice, you shall shew the death of the Lord, until he come” (1 Corinthians 11:26). (Read more.)