Our readings for Sunday are here. Since the Feast Day of St Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits and The Spiritual Exercises is on July 31st, we’ll keep the image and quotes of Jesuits! And, of course, Fr Dennis Dillon was a Jesuit aka a member of the Society of Jesus abbreviated “S.J.” or often just “SJ”.
These are my notes, and interpretations of Fr Dennis’ homily from the Mass of
- August 3, 2014 8:30AM
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Fr Dennis references this Daniel Berrigan, SJ poem-like quote:
“Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even.” Daniel Berrigan, SJ.
In 2014, we reflected on —
- Extraordinary ordinariness and ordinary extraordinariness.
- Jesus chose to leave himself to us in ordinary bread
- As in Hebrew Scriptures, God gave and became manna to the Jewish people during the Exodus and challah for the Sabbath.
- Bread is something we all need; the daily sort of food we all and each need to sustain ourselves. (rl — With respect for those with wheat- or grain-based dietary restrictions and your substitute essentials.)
- So, we now have this awesomeness of the Divine in the most ordinary of foods.
- In the Communion line
- Our hand gesture is the gesture of both offering and receiving. (rl — Keeping in mind that spiritually, we are to offer all of our self to God at the Altar — in imitation, not exchange. We can never match the Gift …. so no “exchange.”)
- At our parish, St Mary’s in Ann Arbor, D2 noted the joy of the Communion line in the diversity of faces and hands in receiving styles.
- D2 kept this quote of his fellow Jesuit as a reminder of the ordinary extraordinariness of our Savior and Sacrament, and how we ourselves meet Him in the world — the one who hungers, the one who feeds us all, and the moment within should we be able to be the one who offers a gift of food.
Our image today is a mural in El Paisnal, El Salvador, seen in this Jan. 29 photo by Rhina Guidos. It features Saint Oscar Romero and town native the Blessed Fr. Rutilio Grande, S.J. surrounded by rural men, women and children, in the community the Jesuit Father Grande served from 1972 until his March 12, 1977, assassination. Fr. Grande spoke of his dream of a communal table where everyone, including the poor, had a place to eat and a right to have a say in matters that affected them. Catholic News Service photo by Rhina Guidos.
The Surest Sign 