We all have decisions, goals, challenges, dreams, and responsibilities in life. As Christians, we need to remember that God has a plan for our lives. I am firmly convinced that God’s plan is better that anything we can come up with. I frequently hear people tell me, “Father, I never pray for myself.” While humility is an important Christian virtue, there is one prayer I believe we should all pray every day, “God what is your plan for me, today, this week, for my life.” Yet, when we pray that prayer, how do we hear the answer? A fundamental belief of Christianity is that Christ reveals God to us. The opening words of St John’s gospel state this beautifully, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” We can find God in the beauty of ocean waves or a child’s smile, but personally, I like it when God uses words.
In the early 1960s the bishops of the Catholic Church came together to explain, in contemporary language, who Christ is and what it means to be His disciple. One of the two foundational documents of the council says, “In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will (see Eph. 1:9) by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature (see Eph. 2:18; 2 Peter 1:4).1” Christ is the Word of God who reveals the hidden purpose of His will and offers us a share in His life. We all know that the bible is the inspired word of God and most of us know that there is more that just the bible. God speaks to us not only in Sacred Scripture but also in the Sacred Tradition, the teaching of the Church. The council document goes on to explain this, “Hence there exists a close connection and communication between Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. For both, flowing from the same divine well-spring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end.2” That “same end” is the divine life of God, referred to above, that “Christ, the Word made flesh” reveals to us.
I know what a bible is. I can hold one in my hand. But what is Sacred Tradition? Sacred Tradition includes divinely inspired dogmatic statements from councils and popes, but our most frequent encounter with Sacred Tradition is in the sacramental worship of the Church. The celebration of Sacraments makes Christ present, so it should be no surprise that the prayers they contain are inspired by the Holy Spirit. When the Church celebrates the sacraments, she confesses the faith received from the apostles, “The law of prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays. Liturgy is a constitutive element of the holy and living Tradition.3”
All this has a practical application in our lives. We all need a routine of prayer. We all want to hear God speak to us. Most of us would like to get more out of the bible. The celebration of Mass is a wonderful guide for all of that. The prayers and bible readings from Mass are inspired by God. Working these readings and prayers into our daily prayer lets us hear God’s voice and keeps us connected to Christ in the Eucharist. Take for example the opening prayer for the Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, “O God, by whom we are redeemed and receive adoption, look graciously upon your beloved sons and daughters, that those who believe in Christ may receive true freedom and an everlasting inheritance.” Who doesn’t want true freedom? God here makes that our com-munal prayer, but also wants us to understand the source of true freedom. We can only become truly free by the reconciliation we are offered by God and living that reconciliation as His adopted children, “creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.” (Romans 8:21).
This prayer reminds us that reconciliation and family life are inseparable. Family is where we share our life and learn to be human. The harmony of family life depends on how the members understand the need to recognize our own faults and offer forgiveness to others. Christ offered His life on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins. At the consecration of the Eucharist ,the priest speaks the words of Christ over the chalice of His blood, “which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Right after the consecration, we pray for human unity by our communion in Christ, “Grant that we, who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son and filled with His Holy Spirit, may become one body, one spirit in Christ.4”
As Catholics we know that the Mass, as our encounter with Christ, is the most important thing we do, but not the only thing we do. We often hear that we must be Christians seven days a week, not just Sunday. Maintaining a daily routine of prayer and using the prayers and readings from Mass is a powerful way to keep God in mind, to hear Him speak, and to stay connected to the purpose of Sunday worship, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
1Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation #2, Second Vatican Council, scripture citations from the original. The other foundational document was “The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.
2Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation #9
3Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation #8 citing Prosper of Aquitaine Letter #8; Catechism of the Catholic Church #1124
4Third Eucharistic Prayer, Anamnesis
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