At the heart of Jesus (in sinu Jesu) we learn to imitate him in life death and resurrection. There we learn to participate in his ministry of preaching, healing, and bringing all into communion with God and one another. Jesus’ very calling of his disciples was to fill them with his love just as the Father has loved him. He called them, he sent them out, he gathered them, he accompanied them in His love.
Having the love of Jesus personally and within the community his followers are to be a living sign of the same love, peace and reconciliation. Thus, the community becomes a sacrament of love and salvation. Jesus lives in us, and we, united in his love, together make his body. We celebrate and participate the reality of Christ in word and in sacrament, in worship and in our life. He has gifted to us his real, true and substantial presence of his body and blood, that we may participate and live that in reality of our life. Without Christ, there is no significance of the sacrament. Without the attitude of sacrifice, love and generosity, without communion with God and one another the worship and honour of the Eucharist is a hypocrisy. If we are not mindful of Christ and his attitudes, and the eucharistic devotion turns out to be an honour of a wonderful and magical bread, we are missing something, really, truly and substantially. That will end up in a cultic devotion without the person of Christ being honoured in reality though the worship is done in his name. Eucharist is not just a miraculous bread. From being bread centered, Eucharistic spirituality must rediscover itself to be Christ-centered.
The very key for reconciliation, communion and sacrifice is the aspect of self -emptying of Christ. Through that the Word came in human form and continues to come to the world. The world is not enemy of God, the world enjoys the embrace of divine love. Some arrogant expressions of ‘run away from the world’ is to approach the manifestation of God very negatively. However destructive and evil are the affairs that go on with the human societies, God continues to love the world and manifests divine actions within the processes. God wants us to participate in the divine actions for which we have been called and sent.
Jesus does not want to be a devotional object. He wants our commitment in his continuing mission in the world. A romantic imagination of being with him all the time ‘escaping’ from the faces of others is not what the purpose of self-emptying he had. We need the Eucharist, we participate in the celebration, and we adore him in the sacrament. But the Eucharist is not just there in the monstrance or in the bread. ‘That person’ in the Eucharist wants to extend the communion and sacrifice we celebrated to wherever we are. It is thus the Eucharist makes us the living signs of the kingdom of God. In a ‘complete detachment’ where ‘God is my everything,’ or ‘God is my sole love’ Jesus would ask us a total commitment to serve everyone without reserve. A totally private and isolated relation expected in Eucharistic devotion is a cultic one. It is not at the heart of Jesus, in sinu Jesu.
The sacrifice of Jesus cannot be limited to any customs and rituals. The adamant attitudes that hold that only the traditional old Latin mass is the true mass cannot be from the heart of Jesus. Those opinions preserve certain ideologies that promote conservative structures. Attempts to create divisions in adamant traditionalism is not at the love of Jesus. Even the liturgy that they hold on was not there from the origin of Christianity. The liturgical reform of Vatican II is within the renewal that the council envisions. We the people of God, mutually nourished by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, build up and grow as the body of Christ. Recognising the universal call to holiness the church desires to shine as the universal sacrament of salvation. Our liturgy must reflect this common vision. God is not enthroned, but God dwells among and within the people of God. That indeed was at the heart of Jesus, in sinu Jesu.
The vision of the Council extends through sixteen official documents dealing with various topics from Divine Revelation, Church in the Modern world, to relations with non-Christians. The American and other media were unable or unwilling to approach the documents on their own terms. It led to the dominant bias that the Council’s far-reaching changes as breaks with Church tradition. American catholic evangelism is seen to be only true catholic faith, and others are worldly adaptations and corruption in the church. This was given a rapid spread by the pseudo-charismatic movements (respecting the genuine charismatic renewal), through preaching, different programmes, and books of ‘visions.’ Along with seeing the glorification of the old and the tendency to ignore the new, we also need to try to understand who are unwilling to accept the Vatican II reform and why. Having that in mind we may be able to understand ‘In Sinu Jesu.’
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