This week we Lectio the Liturgy with the Prayer After Communion for the Third Sunday of Easter. In this prayer, we ask God to do two things, to look and to grant.
Look with kindness upon your people, O Lord, and grant, we pray, that those you were pleased to renew by eternal mysteries may attain in their flesh the incorruptible glory of the resurrection. Through Christ our Lord.
Having God look at us seems to often come up at Christmas time. Parents warn their children, “You better be good, Santa is watching you.” It’s interesting how that makes kids want to behave. But if you tell someone that God is watching, they often get offended or they begin to fear that God is going to judge them.
However, there is another way to consider how God looks at us. I was praying with someone some time ago, who, in response to the question, “God, what do you think of me now?”
esponded with, “I feel like a little kid on a playground and the Father is delighting in watching me play.”
So often we assume that God watches us just to see when we mess up, however, I believe the opposite is true. Our Father watches us because He takes delight in us. He is not offended by us or by our sin, because His nature is to love.
In the next petition of the prayer, we ask that God would grant that as He renewed us in eternal mysteries, the Eucharist, we would, in our flesh, attain the glory of the resurrection.
The first time I first prayed this prayer, my first thought was, “what does our flesh have to do with it?”
When it comes to our flesh, we find in Romans 8:11 that if the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us, He will give life to our mortal bodies as well. Matthew 26:41 tells us that while the spirit may be willing, our flesh is weak. Perhaps this verse gets tested every time I drive past a Dairy Queen and want ice cream. (I seldom cave, though.)
In addition to our body, flesh also refers to our human nature. In 1 Corinthians 5:21, we read that Christ, who knew no sin, became sin. He took on flesh and our human nature. He did not sin, but the “Father made him a victim for the sins of the world.” (St. Cyril)
As I prayed into our flesh and His glory, I had a sense of a black blob with a spike being driven into it and that blob was our sin. I thought it was a rather odd concept, so I prayed into what it meant. As I did, what came to mind was another time a spike was being driven into sin, as Jesus was nailed to the cross.
We know how that exchange goes, the Crucifixion leads to Resurrection. As we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, we experience the same. The power of the Risen Lord in Holy Communion drives a spike into our sin. What we receive in return is Jesus, the eternal Mystery, filled with glory.
Wouldn’t it be something if every time we receive Holy Communion, our sin is less than it was the time before? Wouldn’t it be something if every time we receive Holy Communion, we would remember, “Less sin, more glory?”
Along with the glory comes the strength to say to our flesh, “The three of us, spirit, soul, and body, are working together for more glory because we have been raised with Jesus from the dead.”
Thanks for praying with me,
Julie