Te Deum laudamus!: Fr. Aidan Logan

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Friday, April 18, 2014

Good Friday Sermon of Fr. Aidan Logan, O.C.S.O.

Below is the text of Fr. Aidan Logan's sermon which was delivered during the Tre Ore service at Assumption Grotto. He is seen above taking the Blessed Sacrament from the Altar of Repose to the main Altar just before Communion on Good Friday.

Sermon

Good Friday, 2014

Assumption Grotto Church, Detroit

But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead,

they did not break his legs,

but one soldier thrust his lance into his side,

and immediately blood and water flowed out.

An eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true;

he knows that he is speaking the truth,

so that you also may come to believe.

For this happened so that the Scripture passage might be fulfilled:

“Not a bone of it will be broken.”

And again another passage says:

“They will look upon him whom they have pierced.”

We are so used to hearing the gospel accounts of our Lord’s passion and death that we can miss things that that for those who wrote them and who first heard them were of great importance. The piercing of our Lord’s side and the blood and water that poured out is a case in point. Jesus is dead. The perfect and eternal sacrifice is complete. What more can be said? A great deal!

In sacred scripture blood is much more than a biological phenomenon. Blood is the very stuff of life. We might even say that for Moses and the prophets blood was where the soul resided. And in a certain sense they were right. Remove the blood or stop the heart of any living thing and death is inevitable.

From the very beginning blood has almost a personality of it’s own. Behold, said God to Cane, your brother’s blood is crying out from the ground. The blood of the Passover Lamb saved the firstborn of Israel. The covenant of Sinai was sealed with blood sprinkled upon the altar, the book of the law and the people. The Law of Moses forbade the consumption of blood and contact with blood rendered one ritually impure. Because the spilling of blood meant death, contact with blood incurred, if not absolute guilt, then at least involvement in death.

This explains why the crowd was so perplexed and even outraged when, in response to their question “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Jesus said: Unless you eat he flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man you have no life in you. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.

One of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance and immediately the flowed out blood and water. Not just a trickle but a flow and in reality an overwhelming torrent! For this is not any ordinary blood and water coming from a dead body hanging on a cross. This is the lifeblood of God-made-man.

In St. Matthew’s passion narrative we read:

When Pilate saw that he was not succeeding at all,

but that a riot was breaking out instead,

he took water and washed his hands in the sight of the crowd,

saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood.

Look to it yourselves.”

And the whole people said in reply,

“His blood be upon us and upon our children.”

“His blood be upon us and upon our children.” These chilling words, like so much else in the passion of Christ, are words of unintended prophesy. Uttered in hatred they reveal to us the infinite love of God.

Is it not better that one man should die for the people? … All hail, king of the Jews! … I find no guilt in him. … Over his head they wrote the accusation: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.

His blood be upon us and upon our children. And it is. It is upon all of us. By our sins we are all implicated in his death. By his mercy we are washed clean of sin in his blood. His blood cries out from the ground more loudly and eloquently than that of Able. Not to accuse of sin but to call down upon us the mercy and love of God. His blood marks the doorposts of our souls warding off the angel of eternal death and beaconing that angel who will lead us to eternal life. His blood be upon us and upon our children.

This flow, this mighty torrent of blood and water is the sacramental life of the Church. It is inexhaustible. It springs up wherever the waters of Baptism flow, wherever the Chalice of Salvation is lifted up. Our Lord calls to each of us from the royal throne of his cross:

Washed and be made clean! Come, drink of the fountain of eternal life!

His blood be upon us and upon our children. What better prayer can we offer on this Good Friday? How else can we respond to the infinite love of God revealed to us on the cross? Is there any other way to accept with all our hearts the boundless mercy and compassion of God revealed in our Lord Jesus Christ than to say with all our hearts: His blood be upon us and upon our children?

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Thursday, April 17, 2014

Holy Thursday Sermon of Fr. Aidan Logan, O.C.S.O.

Fr. Aidan Logan is spending Holy Week at Assumption Grotto and below is text of his Holy Thursday sermon.

Sermon

Holy Thursday, 2014

Assumption Grotto Church, Detroit

For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread. And giving thanks, broke, and said: Take ye, and eat: this is my body, which shall be delivered for you: this do for the commemoration of me. In like manner also the chalice, after he had supped, saying: This chalice is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as often as you shall drink, for the commemoration of me.

For as often as you shall eat this bread, and drink the chalice, you shall shew the death of the Lord, until he come. Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself: and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. Therefore are there many infirm and weak among you, and many sleep.

These lines from tonight’s epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians are the earliest written record we have of the Last Supper and the Institution of the Holy Eucharist, the sacrament and the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. In this epistle, this letter of instruction, St. Paul not only recounts the words and actions of our Blessed Lord but also lays out for us the foundation of our Catholic Faith concerning the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and Holy Communion in the Body and Blood of Christ.

Under the old Law God’s holy people offered animal sacrifices in atonement for their sins and in thanksgiving for God’s mercy. Along with daily sacrifices for individual sins and the sacrifices offered on special occasions, like the birth of a first-born son, the sacrifice of the Day of Atonement in the fall of each year was the principal offering for sin and the Passover Sacrifice offered at the first full moon of spring was the great act of Thanksgiving for the deliverance of Israel from bondage in Egypt. From the first Passover to our Lord’s own day every firstborn male of man and beast was to be sacrificed to God. Of course the Jews never offered human sacrifice; firstborn sons were redeemed with the offering an animal sacrifice. So, when the scriptures tell us that Mary gave birth to her firstborn son, we are being told that from the first moment of his conception he was a sacrificial victim. Along with the sacrifice offered to redeem a first-born son, the yearly Passover sacrifice recalled that night when the angel of death passed over the homes of the Israelites marked with the blood of the Passover lamb.

Of course God made it clear again and again through his prophets that, in fact, he needed no animal sacrifices but rather that his people needed to sacrifice themselves, their hearts and minds, to him. For a people whose wealth and status was found in their flocks and herds the gift of an animal to God and its death meant a death to themselves and the things of this world. Those animals were just symbols of what was really going on: the formation of a people, day by day and year by year, in preparation for that greatest and final sacrifice that would put an end to all others.

And so it was no accident that our Blessed Lord entered upon the course of his passion on the very night when all of Israel fulfilled for the last time God’s command to sacrifice and eat of the Passover Lamb. In all the other sacrifices those who offered them received back a portion of the animal to take home, cook and eat. Other parts of the animal were burned upon the altar or given to the priest for his and his family’s upkeep. Of all the sacrifices, only the Passover Lamb remained whole, not one of its bones broken, roasted and eaten by the family that offered it. So of all the sacrifices, that of the Passover Lamb involved a total consumption of the victim. By eating the Passover Lamb they themselves became the sacrifice and accepted once again their vocation as God’s holy people.

The sacrificial Passover feast also included unleavened bread, the food of nomads, and wine, the fruit of the Promised Land. And so it was that the Word Made Flesh, reclined at the Passover Feast of lamb and bread and wine with his apostles and taking the stuff of the Old Covenant transformed it into the very heart of the New Law and the one perfect sacrifice.

In this he turned the whole dynamic of sacrifice on its head. For now it is God Himself who not only offers the sacrifice, but IS the sacrifice. And being God-made-man, the sacrifice is perfect and need never be repeated. Being God-made-man his sacrifice is beyond time and eternally present before the throne of mercy and justice. Being God-made-man his perfect sacrifice not only forgives sins like the old sacrifices, but goes to the very heart of the matter and heals the alienation between God man caused by sin. Not only that but from now on those who partake of this sacrifice under the appearance of bread and wine do not become one with a dead animal that nourishes the body for this passing life. No, those who enter into union, Holy Communion, with the Body and Blood of Christ become radically one with the risen and glorious Lord Jesus. In Holy Communion we share in the life of God Himself.

All of which brings us back to St. Paul and the Corinthians. Their behavior, aside from dispelling any romantic notions we may have of the early Church, clearly showed that they did not realize what they were doing, or more importantly what God was doing, when they came together to offer the Eucharistic Sacrifice and receive Holy Communion. In fact, St. Paul goes so far as to say that, rather than eating and drinking of the source of eternal life, their feasting calls down upon them judgment of God. In fact, he sais, they are really sound asleep as far as their Christianity goes.

On this Holy Thursday evening when all of Christendom enters mystically and sacramentally into the Great Three Days of Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection, we might ask ourselves if we realize what we are doing here and what it means to be one with the perfect and eternal sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ in his Passover from death to life.