On the Eucharist: Thoughts from the Pew (5). The 3 Most Ignored Dialogues The Collect. Prayer over Offerings. Prayer after Communion.

That there may not be a repeat of same sentiments later, these 3 most ignored dialogues - occurring at various stages of the Eucharist- have been grouped as a single thought herein.

The devil is in the details. The devil’s strength at preventing the potency of the Eucharistic value lies in distractions to the details of these 3 short, precise and potent prayers: The Collect, Prayer over Offerings and Prayer after Communion.

Who is it that has not had his mind distracted out from these interludes, book read prayers that act as fulcrums and milestones, signalling the next phase of our Eucharistic journey, where faith brings the future to the present for the few discerning and listening minds?

Who, like an ‘O yes’ Member, has not thoughtlessly responded ‘amen’ to these discourses out of which only the sages know the efficacy of such mustard prayers, said within the one true holy, catholic and apostolic church, Christ’s body on earth?

Perhaps we are distracted because we regard these prayers as either not contemporaneous or detailed enough to reflect the pressing motives of our modern longings. But it is here, where dialogues in time opens the heart of eternity.

The potency of these short discourses lie in their collegiality and universality; here, eternity communes with time and speaks of a positive destiny for he who is able to grasp them.

On the Eucharist: Thoughts from the Pew (4). Gloria!

Happy is he whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered Ps 32:1.

This is what happens when atrocities are undeservedly forgiven: Happiness!

Having purged ourselves within the threshold of Signum Crucis, and having passed through the Confiteor’s door, we enter the Gloria room where we behold an interlock of heavenly spirits and a first foretaste of the joy and activity of heaven.

We become absorbed in the Trinity, and with all heavenly hosts we sing praises to God in worship, thanksgiving and adoration. Gloria is what they do in heaven. The Divine dance, Gloria is a waltz with God. How the trumpet should blast, and the bell should ring, and the drum should roll at every Mass in which the Gloria is sung!

How tepid our hearts are, how tepid. We see nothing and feel nothing of this unison of the abode of glory. While some display only an external gesture, leaving one to wonder if anything is left of a deep awe which this reality should provoke; Others remain nonchalant, with neither movement nor singing -as if bored, and awaiting the period to sit- aloof from the wonder which we all struggle to catch.

Gloria is an experience of the heart. We see and feel it deeply in the recess of our being. It is a worship in spirit and in truth (Jn 4: 24). It is heaven, it is salvation, it is happiness, it is what takes place within the household of God. Our hearts should dance more than our body, for this is entirely a spiritual scene.

We enter heaven and we experience something more than a banquet, something akin to a jamboree, but a jamboree of the heart where we are awed by the Trinitarian Person of God.

It is no wonder why the Church has paused the Gloria in favour of a long Confiteor during Lent, to show that it is ‘not yet Uhuru’, and that within the great Lent of this age, we can catch a glimpse of His glory in the great Gloria at Easter.

And I soon experienced this at Mass: For I thought Gloria was the summit, until I realised the house I entered had become a journey, and I had to move on.

On the Eucharist: Thoughts from the Pew (3). Confiteor

From the threshold of the Sign of the Cross we enter through into the straight door of the Confiteor.

How laden with danger and judgement the whole Eucharistic journey is without a proper and truthful individual Confiteor, and yet how distracted and unengaged we become against this responsibility at Mass.

Not him, not her, not anyone, but through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault!

Our ‘Mea Culpa’ becomes otherwise perilous and nothing but a vain service - with neither remorse nor transgressional disdain - when we do not live the spirit and truth of this act of contrition.

While we are spared the embarrassment of public penitence, we should not lessen the necessity to complement our sincere confession to the Father with that to our Brothers and Sisters at Mass. We are, after all a society of sinners.

Responsibility of our sinfulness is the gateway to the fruitfulness of the Eucharist. What perilous path that we expose ourselves without this truth!

How extremely beneficial the office of the Blessed Virgin is in mastering this science of our sinfulness and disproportion in the face of the loftiness of the Eucharistic journey. The Blessed Virgin reveals the truth of our nothingness, littleness and lowliness. The way up is down, and Mary is that down personified.

There are two sides to the love and truth of the Eucharist: It is that of Judgement and of Mercy. Morality cannot be our escape, our alibi is in cultivating a proper attitude, where we can look at our rottenness with courage, and without denial or despair, by the Confiteor’s gate.

The Sacrament of Penance should be multiplied. It is an efficacious act of exorcism. It’s got two big children at Mass: The Confiteor and the Agnus Dei.

It is at Penance that we learn to live and not to shy away from the Paradox within which we are saved.

On the Eucharist: Thoughts from the Pew (2) Signum crucis

On the Eucharist: Thoughts from the Pew (2)

Signum crucis

As is often typical at Mass, the Sign of the Cross becomes a hurried, thoughtless gesture where we become oblivious of the trouble and triumph that is contained therein. Yes, trouble and triumph.

By this mysterious gesture, we enter a judgement to the destined path of Trinity for the aware. The cross is at the same time a beginning and an end; a misery and a victory, misery for the unaware and victory for the faithful. Our baptism becomes our alibi and the impetus that forges us on to heaven.

The sign of the cross is the very same sign that shall appear as our judgement at the end of time (Mt 24:30); a judgement already begun at Mass, starting from that simple gesture.

I do not judge myself, I only, in my wretchedness, stick with the Church and the faith of Peter, where I realize that this journey is a done deal; that the war is a won one. 

Signum crucis is the beginning, the threshold of His house, whence, staying put benefits more than lingering at the tents of the wicked (Ps 84: 10). 

How often necessary it is then, that we multiply this sign daily. It becomes a judgement to the world, a judgement where opinionizing is useless and only mercy is necessary.

I realize then why, at Mass, after the gesture of the cross, there comes quickly a plead for mercy: the Confiteor.

On the Eucharist: Thoughts from the Pew (1).

Sitting at Mass one day I became bombarded with varied distractions, and it was during this powerlessness and disproportion with reality that this thought was born. O blessed distraction!

God’s presumption about my proportion begs of my correspondence. I am shaken by my sins and the Environs's distractions in the face of this entire Cosmos acting as One. 

Crying kids, ringing phones, chatting adults, rambling thoughts, the irreverence of both Priest and Laity, interested only in getting the job done.

The Church calls it the source and summit of the Christian life, I experience this profound mystery as a work and war at creation. 

The Eucharist is the life of Christ, of the Israelites, of the Church, of Creation; that which was, is and will be, happening in time and as presence. 

The Eucharist is the covenant of mercy and of judgement, but a judgement consumed by mercy for the aware.

More importantly, as I discovered on the pew: the Eucharist is a journey, a journey through which I want to travel from obedience and curiosity, exploring my discoveries each week during this Lent and unto Easter tide.

EUCHARIST

 

Eucharist is a judgement, but a believer is not judged, but through it, passes from life to life. An unbeliever is judged in his ignorance, and it can be a terrible thing to receive the Eucharist into a heart that is skeptical. 

How then do we rate faith? A mustard seed type we were told is necessary. This mustard faith is found in humility. No man is worthy. We must dig more and more into this realm of unworthiness if we are to profit more from the Eucharist.

Without true and practical humility, we harm our receptiveness of the Eucharist. It is not morality as much as humility that determines our faith, thus a gateway towards receptivity of the Eucharist.

Don't receive callously. 

The Signs of Time (Part 3) Hope

 “You can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it you do not discern this time? " Lk12:56

Introduction

As various protagonists get stationed in preparation for epic global dramas, the paradigm of which I shall attempt to describe from an uncensored perspective, through the lenses of my experience, taken by flesh from within my Yoruba race; by a personal and collegial union from my Nigerian entity; from an acquired discovery in science, through my Western education; and from a spirituality borne of my Christian experience.

Out of my four experiences, I hope to show how easily recognizable historical manifestations occurring in our age will be critical determinants of a civilisation and enlightenment that has dawned upon us.

1.       Yoruba

A People, The Curse and the Long War

The British Colonial masters, on entering the Niger-area, encountered little problem in penetrating the Yoruba hinterland because they met with an already disintegrated and divided entity torn in bitter rivalry that had become a norm for almost a century.

The Yoruba civil war was one of the longest of such in human history, the root cause of which was believed to be the consequence of a curse meted by a king who ruled Oyo, the Political capital of the vast race, a backlash of treacherous acts by his disgruntled Generals.

Yorubas, a people of over 50 million, domicile in at least 3 continents, emanated from Oduduwa, a spiritual protagonist who settled in Ile-Ife. Oduduwa’s descendants are as such a spiritual race and Ile-Ife, its primordial source is considered the spiritual capital of the Yoruba people.

Principalities and the New Religions

Latter religions in Yorubaland: Islam and Christianity, seem inept at engaging with its cultural norms and spirituality because of an entire scepticism and a morbid dread of its cultural reality from a faith perspective.

When we refuse to engage, we lose influence, when we lose influence, we become aloof from our environment and its cultural realities. This results in a perpetuation of spiritual crises between the people and the Principalities of the land to which their fore fathers have sworn allegiance, the result is a loss of meaning and an anthropological irrelevance prone towards being swept off by ever increasing foreign and alien forces.

Ojaja the Second

Last year saw the emergence of Adeyeye Ogunwusi, Ojaja the second as the 51st Ooni of Ile-Ife, a personality poised to stop the tide of this decay by public gestures geared towards freeing minds once shackled within an unspoken ideological and spiritual demagogue.

By publicly acknowledging Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour in church and bowing down in worship of one supreme God in mosque, Ojaja’s unparalleled gesture goes deeper than a mere ephemeral action, it is one of reconciling the past within the present realities of a new enlightenment.

I once met with an Ile-Ife Prince who claimed that the key which controls the destiny of the land of Cuba is in Ooni’s palace. I do not know if this is true, but his affirmation is a pointer to what I have in mind. We often do not realize what powerful grasp the principalities of a land have in relation to the well-being of its subjects, until they move to reconcile ancient pledges and oaths from past ancestors with present cultural realities such as this Ooni is doing.

Reconciliation: The Journey Forth

The initiative of humbly reconciling deep rooted animosity amongst various Yoruba Obas is another positive  gesture for posterity. Political disintegration can be repaired from a spiritual retraction, such that, a curse once emanated from Oyo, the Yoruba political capital would for once be repaired through the gestures of a king from Ile-Ife, the source and spiritual capital of the Yoruba people.

Unprecedented moves towards opening the Yoruba culture and its weird beliefs towards an engagement with the whole world would also prove very beneficiary. Let all ancient doors rise, and let Him enter, the king of glory.

Oduduwa is back to remake his root and to put things into their proper positions and order.

Something very necessary and spectacular is happening in our age.

2.       Nigeria

Wole Soyinka’s Abiku

I recently read a commentary on Professor Wole Soyinka’s age long poem ‘Abiku’, where the commentator claimed that Wole Soyinka had the Nigeria’s situation in mind while portraying the ‘Abiku’ phenomenon, and that the Nigerian case, borne out of a forced marriage between unwilling partners, is doomed towards an unending hopeless perambulation like the Abiku scenario.

 The case of  ‘Abiku’ was an inherent spiritual entanglement where babies were usually born to die soon after birth, such that no amount of medical expertise physical or spiritual, would prevent such repeated experience of child mortality. This was once prevalent in Africa, hence Soyinka’s perfect depiction of the hopelessness of the Abiku’s case in his famous poem.

While I do not share the commentator’s view, but the reality of the Nigerian project which seem at times to be swinging back and forth, may tempt many to lose hope and consider it an Abiku case. For me reality is positive, and I know Nigeria is destined to move and stay forward however the present situation may appear to the contrary.

Our Economic Ordeal

The current President may be faulted regarding his leadership approach but I do not see many faulting him on personal corruption. He inherited an economic malaise borne of an entity that has mortgaged its destiny on America’s caprices, such that when the latter raises its financial interest rate, it creates  fresh pangs, made worse by her capitalist shipping their funds back to yonder and its dwindling oil prices.

The process of reconstruction is painful and prolonged, and it is also not helped by a popular psyche that has crystallised within a culture of corruption. The shear system and structure of Nigeria is such that one is tempted to say that it is impossible to circumvent without an element of corrupt ideology. A country where the righteous few suffer more than droves who have taken corruption as a norm.

My Belief

I believe, I know, that at the trench of this dark tunnel of recession and corruption lies the bright tunnel of liberation. Nigeria crouches smartly as a protagonist of goodness and progress, even while many so-called champions of civilisation are obviously petrifying amidst evils positioned for a cosmological rivalry with goodness. Nigeria I see, is poised to shine as a harbinger of universal goodness that many  nations shall look up to in time not very far off.

3.       Science and Technology

Those who see absolutely  no connection between science and religion, be they People of faith with a disgust of science or scientist who loathe faith, may be on the path towards grave errors, because there will always be a close connection between reason and faith.

Science -to me- is not spelled to be a champion of the forthcoming civilisation, but it shall increasingly be a valued and more relevant pointer back to the clarity of mind, consciousness and faith which shall see its rise.

The Rise of the Inanimate

Technology and the inanimate are taking control. the possibility of the inanimate controlling animate seem confusing to many and can be put forward as a revisit of the many Science fictional plots, but an inanimate civilisation is already in place, and not only are the they taking over, but we, the animates are being directed and made to think as them which are the works of our hands. Humanity is already crystallizing and mortgaging its consciousness to technology.

Man and the Other-World lings

10 years back, ideas like UFOs, aliens, extra-terrestrials, find more reality in the context of science fiction, but today, many Scientists, including NASA believe that before the year 2030 there would be an official confirmation and pronouncement about the existence of extra-terrestrials and their interrelationship with us.

It is believed that the U.S intelligence are already in close communication with extra-terrestrials. Not that these are particularly surprising to me , I grew up within an extra-terrestrial cultural reality, but we shall have to reconsider our place within their universal reality and clarity if they are regarded as far more intelligent than humans.

The question we shall have to consider quick is whether these extra-terrestrials are angels or demons, or a combination of both.

Global Warming

Global warming and the rise of its sceptics may be another pointer to an impending inferno. The denial of global warming by a minority of scientist would find an escalation by Trump’s ascendancy, the latter has bluntly denied the impact of fossil fuel on global warming and has vowed to overturn any progressive overture towards ameliorating its effect. This is worrying because America is the world’s highest environmental polluter, and when America does not support sustainability, the next highest polluter, China, is sure to back off too, then every other person’s effort at curbing global warming would then be Infinitesimal.

The God Particle

There is a seemingly silent, hidden but apparent revolution from science that to me is having and would have far greater effect on the destiny of humankind than any that I have described so far.

Switzerland’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and its accompanying God Particle project is a frivolous quest with a curiosity only reminiscent of the biblical tower of Babel. And it appears the Babel effect is already at play as events in the world delve deeper within the sub-normal quantum particle rules of the LHC discoveries. Events manifests, from playful issues as Leicester winning the EPL to very serious matters like Trump winning the US election.

Education presents the capability of forecasting the future and preparing accordingly a challenge against militating issues, and by so doing, create, acquire and formalize the capacity to transcend and surmount these rules that may militate against the learned. But, down within the quantum world, the rules that apply are no rules.

These are bad times for the extremely formal and methodical; and for forecasters, poll experts, fortune tellers and gamblers.

4.       Christianity

If there is anything called the Christian spirit, it is the fact that Christ has come to gather everything in authentic unity, freedom, peace and happiness. To any authentic inclusive effort therefore, a Christian must adhere. Giving as excuse the potential threat of any inclusive effort in the name of preventing the emergence of an anti-Christ, one-world government is itself an anti-Christian rhetoric.

The Francis’ Effect

The emergence of a star genius, Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis in 2013 immediately portrayed an unbounded concept mercy and a limitless integration that I can only refer to as a drastic opposite of the excess of our modern-day materialism and consumerism.

The Francis’ story finds a good parallel with the Ooni phenomenon regarding inclusivity, but on a much larger scale. I may never know if the Ooni actually has the key controlling Cuba, but I know these Popes have the key governing humanity’s destiny.

Rich in Mercy

Can there be a limit to mercy? Francis, not only includes, but makes champions of outsiders: Non-Catholics, Non-Christians, Polytheists, non-Deists. Conveying synods, embracing every Christian charism, promoting peace within religions, admitting the remarried, ‘not judging the gays’, unifying and befriending every creature, and even writing a scientific encyclical towards the prevention of our environment. It’s a sort of mercy sometimes bordering on embarrassment.

In 2015 he proclaimed an extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, giving free passes of mercy to even the most addicted of sinners; but wait… within this plane of existence, is there really anything like a free lunch? Can there be anything like a reaction without an action? Does not, even the mercy of God require faith and trust to function?

I trace the present quantic consequence within the English world, to the effect of a replacement of 'all' to ‘many’; of 'you' to 'Spirit' and of 'I' to ‘soul’, at Mass.

The Aftermath

Francis is performing his God given mission and will go, but we that remain shall have to clear up the mess produced as an aftermath of this radical form of mercy to an unbelieving generation.

A created form of apostasy shall reign which would further launch us deeper within uncontrollable quantum realms, previously unchannelled regions that are necessary to be crossed towards the dawn of a new enlightenment and liberation.

Conclusion

What is at stake within this Signs of Time, is the unity of the material and the divine, it is about progress, it is about commonwealth, it is about hope, it is about the Christmas we celebrate today!

Merry Christmas to you all