Splendor Burning in the Heart of Things (Midweek Message)

Splendor Burning in the Heart of Things

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

June 19, 2019

Tomorrow, the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, is in the Church of England Calendar, the Feast of Thanksgiving for the Holy Eucharist (Corpus Christi).  Here at Trinity, we will be using the prayers for the day at our noon Healing Eucharist and at 5 p.m., as part of a worldwide thanksgiving celebration by my religious order (the [Anglican/Episcopal] Society of Catholic Priests) for 25 years since our founding, we will observe an ancient devotion of the Church: Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.  In this devotional practice, we pray before and meditate upon the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, and then receive the priest’s blessing with it.  All are welcome. 

  

Last Saturday (June 15) was the feast day of English Mystic and Spiritual Director, Evelyn Underhill.  Here is a poem of hers honoring tomorrow’s feast:    

Corpus Christi 

Come, dear Heart!
The fields are white to harvest: come and see
As in a glass the timeless mystery
Of love, whereby we feed
On God, our bread indeed.
Torn by the sickles, see him share the smart
Of travailing Creation: maimed, despised,
Yet by his lovers the more dearly prized
Because for us he lays his beauty down—
Last toll paid by Perfection for our loss!
Trace on these fields his everlasting Cross,
And o’er the stricken sheaves the Immortal Victim’s crown.

From far horizons came a Voice that said,
‘Lo! from the hand of Death take thou thy daily bread.’
Then I, awakening, saw
A splendour burning in the heart of things:
The flame of living love which lights the law
Of mystic death that works the mystic birth.
I knew the patient passion of the earth,
Maternal, everlasting, whence there springs
The Bread of Angels and the life of man.

Now in each blade
I, blind no longer, see
The glory of God’s growth: know it to be
An earnest of the Immemorial Plan.
Yea, I have understood
How all things are one great oblation made:
He on our altars, we on the world’s rood.
Even as this corn,
Earth-born,
We are snatched from the sod;
Reaped, ground to grist,
Crushed and tormented in the Mills of God,
And offered at Life’s hands, a living Eucharist. 

Grace and Peace,

Tony+ 

#Adorate!  #SCP2019