Heart of every holy mass - Part 1
The center and summit of the entire celebration of the Holy Mass is the Eucharistic Prayer. It includes texts that begin with a dialogue preceding the preface (i.e.: "The Lord be with you", "Lift up your hearts ...") until the text before the Lord's Prayer (Our Father). The American edition of the Roman Missal, the basic liturgical book, contains several different Eucharistic Prayers. They all have the same prayer scheme, the same double inner purpose: giving thanks to God for the whole work of salvation and the transformation of the sacrificial gifts into the Body and Blood of Christ for the consumption by the faithful.
We recognize all the Eucharistic Prayers as one, solemn and at the same time lyrical hymn and homage paid by Christ and with Christ (in the person of the celebrant) to God the Father.
The Eucharistic (Thanksgiving) Prayer is at the heart of the Holy Mass. It is its essence. Each Eucharistic Prayer is made up of several thematic units. We find in it such elements as: preface, singing / recitation: Holy, Holy, Holy, the first request to the Holy Spirit for the sanctification of the gifts given, the Word of Consecration. After it we have the acclamation, i.e. the answer of the faithful gathered, then the reminder of the great works of Christ, the second prayer to the Holy Spirit (this time asking for the sanctification of those who will soon receive the gifts of Consecrated Bread and Wine), intercessory prayers for various states of the Church, also for the dead. The final part of the Eucharistic Prayer, which accompanies the lifting of the paten and the chalice by the celebrant, is a homage paid to God the Father through Jesus Christ in union with the Holy Spirit. The whole liturgical assembly is joined to this homage by the acclamation of the word "Amen."
Feast of Saint James, Apostle
Saint James the Apostle, known as the Greater or the Elders, to distinguish him from the other Apostles from the group of the Twelve of the same name, was the son of Zebedee and the brother of St. John the Evangelist. He held the office of the first bishop of Jerusalem and was the first of the Apostles who die as a martyr and beheaded in Palestine in AD 44 by order of King Herod Agrippa.
According to incredibly old stories, immediately after Pentecost, Saint James went to the Iberian Peninsula, bringing Christianity there. He is the Patron Saint of Spain and Portugal. After the death of St. James, his disciples stole the body of the Saint and, in a boat without oars, carried by the sea, reached Galicia in northern Spain. There the Body of the Saint was placed in the grave, but the burial place was forgotten for centuries. It was rediscovered in the 9th century.
From then on, Santiago de Compostela became an important place of pilgrimage for Christians, and in the 12th century it was recognized as the third - after Jerusalem with the tomb of Christ and Rome with the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul - a holy place of Christianity.
Commentary on Today Gospel (Mt.20:20-28)
You can believe that the Lord Jesus is the Son of God and the Savior, when at the same time does not worry about the mystery of the cross or the promise of eternal life. The moment when the mother of James and John asks the Lord Jesus for special privileges for her sons is significant. Is when The Lord Jesus is just taking his last journey to Jerusalem and announcing to his disciples that he will be crucified there, but that he will be resurrected on the third day - and the disciples do not hear it at all. They only understood that this was their Master's most important journey to Jerusalem, and that the messianic kingdom would finally be established. The Lord Jesus goes to Jerusalem to die on the cross and tells them clearly about it, and they care mainly about their place in His Kingdom.
This is worth to remember: faith in Christ, where there is no place for the mystery of the cross, is a deformed faith. "Can you drink the cup that I am about to drink?" Jesus asks the sons of Zebedee, candidates to pursue a career in his Kingdom. "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him take up his cross and follow me." To bear the cross also means to love when it is difficult. To carry the cross means to hold fast to Jesus, even when it is unfashionable. To bear the cross is to be faithful to God's commandments, even when various people convince us that it does not make sense. To bear the cross is to want to serve rather than be served.
If one does not understand all this, there is probably no hope of eternal life in him. The apostles John and James and their mother - at the moment when they asked for honors in Jesus' Kingdom - were deaf not only to the words about the cross, but also to the words about the resurrection.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george