Thought for the Week, August 17, 2025

Continued from last week

God uses his word to instruct us and to direct our steps through life to him who is our origin and goal. In the Rosary, Catholics have a devotion that places one beside Mary, the perfect receptor of the Word. Kneeling beside her, we are associated with the one whose full consent to the will of God changed the course of history, and who intercedes for us as she tells us: “Do whatever he tells you.” And the extent to which we embrace the will of God is the extent to which we know peace in our life.  The way to put God first is to embrace his commandments as they guide our steps through the many crossroads and bye ways of life.      

It has already been said that we put God first by following his word, by keeping his commandments.  The Catholic tradition do not just speak of the word of God but of word and sacrament.  God is put first by taking the sacraments seriously. For if God uses his word to instruct us it is by his grace that he assists us.  In and through the sacraments, we receive what has been proclaimed to us in the word.  And the sacraments are the ordinary means by which he imparts his grace on us.  We must not just be hearers of the word, we must be its doers.  And the sacraments enable us to be doers of the word.  They enable us to put God first at decisive moments of our lives. 

Of these sacraments, the Eucharist is source and summit of our Christian life.  Baptism is the gateway to other sacraments.  It opens the way for us to ascend the summit of our sacramental life in the Holy Eucharist.  And in the Eucharist itself, we are brought into vital union with Christ such that, in this food, Christ whose food is to do the will of the Father becomes our food so that we can do the will of the Father.  He himself acts in us so that we can put God first. Whoever wishes to put God first must appreciate the great gift that the Eucharist is, the great food that St Thomas Aquinas wrote so much about, the “sacred banquet in which Christ becomes our food, the memorial of his passion is celebrated, the soul is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us.” This is the Church’s greatest act of thanksgiving in which Christ offers himself to the Father and to us. 

St Catherine of Siena was brought to know the benefits of the Eucharist in the Dialogue when the Eternal Father said to her:  “Dearest daughter, contemplate the marvelous state of the soul who receives this bread of life, this food of angels, as she ought.  When she receives this sacrament she lives in me and I in her.  Just as the fish is in the sea and sea in the fish, so am I in the soul and the soul in me, the sea of peace.  Grace lives in such a soul because, having received this bread of life in grace, she lives in grace.  When this appearance of bread has been consumed, I leave behind the imprint of my grace, just as a seal that is pressed into warm wax leaves its imprint when it is lifted off. Thus does the power of this sacrament remain there in the soul; that is, the warmth of my divine charity, the mercy of the Holy Spirit, remains there.  The light of my only-begotten Son’s wisdom remains there, enlightening the mind’s eye.  [The soul] is left strong, sharing in my strength and power, which make her strong and powerful against her selfish sensuality and against the devil and the world” (Dialogue, 112). 

At Santa Sabina Basilica in Rome, the Generalate of the Dominican friars, there is a painting on the ceiling of the Chapel of Saint Catherine which is an artistic representation of St Catherine’s mystical experience.  Jesus is depicted as giving his own heart to St Catherine in response to her request, her burning desire to have the heart of Christ.  The Eucharist is where Jesus gives his very heart to those who desire to be like him.  In the words of St Catherine, in and through the Eucharist, the soul lives in Jesus and Jesus lives in the soul.  “When she receives this sacrament she lives in me and I in her”.  The Christian is able to receive the heart of Christ by receiving the Eucharist in the right disposition.  And when the heart of Christ is in our heart, when our souls live in him and he in our souls, then, like him, doing the will of the Father becomes the food that nourishes us most. 

Whoever wishes to put God first receives the Eucharist in the right disposition by preparing for every celebration of the Eucharist through attentive reading of and meditation on the word of God, through constant examination of conscience.  Before I present myself to receive the Eucharist, I must know how I stand before God and neighbor. I must be conscious of an ever present need for penance and reconciliation.  We must constantly seek reconciliation in and by a spirit of penitence, that is, by a constant awareness of sin and by being disposed to seek divine mercy especially in sacramental absolution.  Concretely, the Eucharist gives the divine assistance needed to put God first when we prepare for its reception by our awareness of our sinfulness, of the availability of God’s forgiving love, and by our disposition to receive mercy. 

Finally, there is the way of the Church.  For if we speak of the Eucharist we must speak of the Church.  The Eucharist makes the Church and the Church makes the Eucharist.  Communion with the Church enables us to put God first. She has always been full of faults yet full of holiness, a cohabitation of saints and sinners in which even the saints are not sinless but are sinners with contrite hearts.  She is neither a stranger to sin nor a stranger to sinfulness.  Yet in her can be found God’s throne of mercy.  She has always been and she remains the leaky boat of the apostles of which much is written in the Gospels.  She goes through threatening winds, always in danger of capsizing.  Yet, the greatest danger that confronts the Church is not the hostile secular media but the many iniquities of her sons and daughters, clerics and lay, who conceal her holiness.  Of these many sins of her sons and daughters she must continually ask for mercy from her Lord in the liturgy: in the Kyrie eleison and in the Gloria, in the Eucharistic Prayer and in the Pater Noster, in the Agnus Dei and in the Communion Rite. Within her walls can be heard in whispers and in loud voices: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof….”  They are the words of the Church on the lips of her children.  Yet, the very fact of sin in the Church points to the mercy of God in the same Church.  The wrongdoings of her sons and daughters provide proof of God’s justice (cf. Rom 2:5-7).  For where sin abounds the grace of God abounds even more.  Despite many faults which have been constantly and forcefully brought before the court of public opinion, God in his mercy continues to use the Church and her sinful Priests and Bishops as agents of his forgiving love.  

God uses imperfect instruments to communicate his perfect word.  He uses imperfect human language to proclaim his perfect message.  He uses the Church, a fragile vessel made of clay, as bearer of the imperishable treasure that his mercy is.  The sins of sons and daughters of the Church are signs that God allows us to be prisoners of our sinfulness so as to liberate us.  God allows sins in the Church so as to teach us that he is the one who forgives, the one whose love conquers our sins, the one we must put first.  When everything about us is crumbling, and those we trust disappoint us, there remains something that is constant.  It is the love of God which endures forever.  We do not run to God out of fear.  We cling to God in love.  And he allows us to cling to him even when we do not deserve it.   

To put God first is to acknowledge his love in all things and in every situation, in good times and in bad.  It is to allow this love to inflame love in us: love of God above all things, and love of neighbor because of God.  It is to live a life that renders unceasing honour, glory and praise to the God who instructs us by his word and assists us by his grace present in the Church and in her sacraments, even as the Spirit that blows where he wills makes elements of sanctification present outside the Church. Concluded.

Father Anthony Akinwale, OP