Tuesday of the Twenty-ninth Week of Ordinary Time

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/102312.cfm

You were at that time without Christ, alienated from the community of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have become near by the Blood of Christ.



Personally, I wish everyone would share the Chalice of the Lord at Mass. I know some are alcoholic and even the touch of alcohol might send them back into their addiction. I respect that. But there are all the others who miss the symbolic importance of the Chalice.We have "become near (to one another and to God) by the Blood of Christ." We are "strangers and aliens no longer," and this mystery is too important to be taken lightly.

The Chalice reminds us of the enormous price God has paid for our salvation. No one should drink it casually or hurriedly.  Nor should anyone walk away from the opportunity to share the cup without serious thought. 

I quit drinking alcohol thirty-two years ago, but I have always drank from the Chalice because it is not wine. Our church insists upon that. It is the Blood of Christ. It has none of the emotional and historical overlays of alcohol for me. Rather, it has all the mysterious power of every scriptural reference to blood, wine and the vine -- from the murder of Abel to the Wedding Feast at Cana to the New Wine of Pentecost to the "Grapes of Wrath" in our Civil War song. Even John Steinbeck's novel and John Ford's movie appear in this mysterious ritual. It is about justice for the oppressed:

Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground! Now you are banned from the ground that opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.

It is about our willingness to

...do justice and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.

Of course there will always be that human aversion to meaning, our busyness that ignores the deep invitation. That Voice speaks to us in every moment of life.  But as we learn to pay attention to prayer and gestures and ritual -- perhaps aging helps, and the discipline that age demands of the formerly young -- we will become more prepared to enter the Sanctuary where we must spend eternity. 

That moment before the proffered Chalice, that bow and careful acceptance of sloshing liquid in our awkward hands, that sip and taste of the unfamiliar sweetness and that swallowing must awaken our sense of God's passion for us.Perhaps, as they approach the altar, the elderly among us will remember those ancient words,

Introibo ad altare Dei: ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam. 

I will go to the altar of God; to God who is the joy of my youth. 

And they will speak to our children of sacred substance.