Down in Adoration Falling - Letter from Bishop Olmsted

 


We recently celebrated the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday.  This includes a beautiful tradition of transferring Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament to a chapel outside the Church for adoration, before the celebration of Good Friday and the absence of Our Lord's Eucharistic presence in churches around the globe.

While honoring Our Lord, the Church sings the magnificent hymn to Our Lord in the Eucharist written 800 years ago, by St Thomas Aquinas, the Pange Lingua.  ("Sing my tongue the Savior's glory").  It includes the line "Down in adoration falling" (veneremur cernui).

Recently Bishop Olmsted of Phoenix, Arizona, wrote a pastoral letter to his flock with this title, about the importance of understanding and living out the mystery of the Holy Eucharist.

I highly recommend reading it.  It is a bit long (about 100 paragraphs) but if you read about 10 paragraphs a day, can finish it fairly quickly.

I am going to adopt some of his ideas for our own parishes.

Although this is not the focus of the letter, Bishop Olmsted does courageously address in it the question of why pro-abortion Catholic politicians should not receive Holy Communion. He indicates that not all issues have the same weight as the grave sins against life such as abortion and euthanasia.

We should pray that high-profile Catholic politicians who do work to promote sins against life, such as Mr. Biden, Mrs. Pelosi, and Mr. Becerra,  would take his teaching to heart.  

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