St Louis Cathedral

6/26/2011

This week Leo I and Augustine......

          When I moved to New Orleans for the second time in 2008, I walked through St. Louis Cathedral and claimed it as part of my home. Having grown up in “the second oldest city in the U.S.” I love wandering historical places where I know people have walked for hundreds of years. I can picture people from the past in the French Quarter.  I love the feeling of walking into the cathedral and knowing that for centuries, people have come to the site to reach for God.

            Along the same lines, I have read the Office in the Readings as part of praying the Liturgy of the Hours.  I like reading things from the early Church Fathers, or one of the saints. I love that old and ancient words can be so vital in our modern world and give me small treasures that help me through the day.

This week Leo I (c. 400 – 461) and Augustine (354-430) are speaking to me twice in Chapter 1 of Johnson’s chapter on sacraments and in the Divine Office. Their inspiration for me combines in a recipe something like this.

Augustine relates the word to sacraments, “The word is joined to the element and the result is a sacrament, in itself becoming, in a sense, a visible word as well” (Johnson 2).

Leo I brings in, “It takes great strength of mind and a faithful and enlightened heart to believe without hesitations in what escapes the bodily eye and to desire unswervingly what cannot be seen.” (Johnson 4)

In Sunday’s Office of the Readings Leo I says, “In the preaching of the holy Gospel all should receive a strengthening of their faith. No one should be ashamed of the cross of Christ, through which the world has been redeemed.

“ No one should fear to suffer for the sake of justice; no one should lose confidence in the reward that has been promised. The way to rest is through toil, the way to life is through death. Christ has taken on himself the whole weakness of our lowly human nature. If then we are steadfast in our faith in him and in our love for him, we win the victory that he has won, we receive what he has promised.”

            Today, the excerpt from Augustine the Liturgy of the Hours has “When day was fading into evening, the Lord laid down his life on the cross, to take it up again; he did not lose his life against his will. Here, too, we are symbolised. What part of him hung on the cross if not the part he had received from us… nailing our weakness to the cross”

            This activates thoughts for me, about our humanness, in weakness and in our need for tangible things. Sacraments give us both and are always mixed together with the word and Jesus’s gift to us through His cross and resurrection. It’s a favorite thing, moments with two of our church fathers….

Johnson, Maxwell E, ed.  Sacraments and Worship. Louisville. Westminster John Knox. 2012.

            Print.

Office of the readings:   http://universalis.com/20150301/readings.htm