Schola Christi - Holy Day and Sacred Hour

Schola Christi, The Oratory Lecture Series and Homilies from The Pittsburgh Oratory

On the second Saturday of March, Members of the Secular Oratory gathered with Fr. David for a discussion on 'Holy Day and Sacred Hour.' The group read and reflected upon a brief selection from 'Meditations Before Mass' by Msgr. Romano Guardini.

"It is the Paschal Mystery that becomes the cypher through which we understand the Divine Repose of the Sabbath. The Passion, Death and Resurrection of our Lord unfolds the deepest meaning of God's rest. Guardini writes: "The divine repose of the Sabbath now mingles with the triumph of the Resurrection. Into the hum of peace breaks the fanfare of victory. Promise and fulfillment have become one! For the Sabbath looked back in eternity to the beginning. Sunday looks forward in eternity to the end, to what is to come."

And this Divine Repose finds its expression in time in the Holy Mass. Eternity enters time! "This entry is the holy hour, the constantly recurring “now.” It is not as though there existed one hour which man reserves for his God; God Himself, bearing His salutary destiny, enters into the hour, which attains self-realization through Him. It now becomes part of the new creation. Through such an hour time contains eternity, and eternity embraces time."

For a brief moment, time enfolds eternity. Even in our adoration of the Blessed Sacrament when the Host is exposed to our gaze during Mass and one might say even when exposed for our worship during Adoration, we must not lose sight of this reality and allow it to become something banal! Rather we must let this reality permeate us and take this seed of eternity back into the world with us.

http://scholachristi.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-holy-day-and-sacred-hour-divine.html