Crazy Stable

Resurrection, by Fra Angelico

Prayer to the Risen Christ

Lord. help us to be thankful. Let the gratitude which we owe you and your Mother always accompany us from now on; let it become fruitful and perceptible everywhere in our service. Let us be people redeemed who really fill their whole life with your redemption, who accompany you everywhere, who seek to do your will, as you do the will of the Father.

Let us not only enjoy the fruit of' your suffering and redemption, but rather help us - beginning today - in our attempt to know you as our brother, our true redeemer forevermore in our midst. Help us never to forget that you are there, that you have answered our unfaithfulness with faithfulness, our disbelief with ever greater grace.

Let every day, whether hard or easy, become one which includes the explicit, or at least the hidden, joy of knowing that you have redeemed us and, in returning to the Father, you take us along. We ask you for your Easter blessing in which the blessing of the Father and the Spirit are contained. Amen.

--Adrienne Von Speyre

“The Shroud is an image of silence. There is a tragic silence of incommunicability, which finds its greatest expression in death, and there is the silence of fruitfulness, which belongs to whoever refrains from being heard outwardly in order to delve to the roots of truth and life. The Shroud expresses not only the silence of death but also the courageous and fruitful silence of triumph over the transitory, through total immersion in God's eternal present.”  

--John Paul II, May 24, 1998, pastoral visit to Turin

Image: Shroud of Turin, digitally modified photonegative

Prayer Before a Crucifix

BEHOLD, o good and most sweet Jesus, I fall upon my knees before Thee, and with most fervent desire beg and beseech Thee that Thou wouldst impress upon my heart a lively sense of faith, hope and charity, true repentance for my sins, and a firm resolve to make amends.

And with deep affection and grief, I reflect upon Thy five wounds, having before my eyes that which Thy prophet David spoke about Thee, o good Jesus: "They have pierced my hands and feet, they have counted all my bones." Amen.

Image: Crucifix, Basilica della Consolata, Turin

Holy Thursday. Tonight will be the Mass of the Lord's Supper, a liturgy of unearthly beauty and heartache that will conclude by removing, in solemn procession, a golden monstrance—that sun-flared medieval repository for the consecrated host—leaving its usual sanctuary open and empty. Then, at the "altar of repose," we will kneel before a little flat piece of bread while a choir sings "Tantum Ergo Sacramentum." The scent of lilies and incense will fill the air. It will be, depending on your point of view, the dizzying celebration of a divine romance or an atheist's laugh-riot. 

You know which supper this is, and by whom. Click for the whole thing.That is what I love about the Catholic theology of the Eucharist: We take Christ at His word. "This is my Body...this is my Blood." Seriously? Oh, yes. It's why I love the lavish Baroque monstrance and hated the Seventies-era "authentic" wooden vessels and earthenware plates that the Kumbayah crowd bought for the altars.  "We are 'star-stuff,'" intoned Carl Sagan, as he spun our physical connection to the Big Bang. Well, our God who made the stars makes Himself bread stuff. Wine stuff. Body and blood stuff. Us-stuff. Bring out the good china.

Here is my favorite prayer in the entire world: the "Anima Christi," a post-Communion litany. Every line is fathomlessly deep and instantly accessible. (I know my "malignant enemy," and you know yours.) The Latin rocks, so I'll give that, too. I've seen translations that take out the word "inebriate"...not on your life.

The 'Anima Christi'

Soul of Christ, sanctify me

Body of Christ, save me

Blood of Christ, inebriate me

Water from the side of Christ, wash me

Passion of Christ, strengthen me

O good Jesus, hear me

Within Thy wounds hide me

Never let me be separated from Thee

From the malignant enemy defend me

In the hour of my death call me

And bid me come unto Thee

That I may praise Thee with Thy saints  

Forever and ever

Amen

And in Latin:

Anima Christi, sanctifica me.

Corpus Christi, salva me.

Sanguis Christi, inebria me.

Aqua lateris Christi, lava me.

Passio Christi, conforta me.

O bone Jesu, exaudi me.

Intra tua vulnera absconde me.

Ne permittas me separari a te.

Ab hoste maligno defende me.

In hora mortis meae voca me.

Et iube me venire ad te,

Ut cum Sanctis tuis laudem te.

In saecula saeculorum.

Amen

Icon of Our Lady, Basilica Santuario della Consolata I call it the Big Liturgical Kahuna, but the next few days are more rightly called the Easter Triduum. Lent is wrapping up. Fasting, as usual, was a disaster (not a pound lighter), but prayer-blogging has been a blast. I hope you have enjoyed sharing some wildly over-the-top spirituality from our Catholic tradition (and a few others), and that non-Catholic visitors might have glimpsed some of the mad poetry that is our heritage. For Holy Thursday and Good Friday, I have saved the best for last, so check back!

Before all eyes turn to the Cross and Resurrection, I must share my go-to prayer to Mary. I'm not much of a Rosary girl (although I dug mine out on 9/11). But the "Memorare" is the prayer I say in the elevator on the way to the doctor to find out what kind of lump it was.

My relationship with Mary has "evolved," as we say these days instead of admitting we were wrong. Growing up in the 1970s, I found her rather irrelevant: What kind of role model was both Virgin and Mother? One to make all us gals fall short, it seemed.  Much later, pregnant and searching to allay my fears, I stumbled on New Agey advice that described how Native American women would connect to a female spirit ancestor. Wait, I've got one of those. The experience of childbirth erased the sappy image of a thousand holy cards and replaced it with a gutsy human whose body did the hard work of bringing a precious Life into this world. And motherhood shocked me with its intimacy and fierce protectiveness; if a broken heart could link Heaven and Earth, hers must have been the one.

The Memorare offers a rare thing: the consolation of a guarantee, "no prayer left unanswered." Intercessory prayer to Mary is one of the things that Protestants historically hold against us Catholics, but we cannot help ourselves; we find the concept of a Heavenly Mother irresistible, as apparently did God Himself. In Turin, when I went to see the Shroud in 2010, I visited the Basilica of the Consolata, Our Lady of Consolation. The icon shown above reigns over this shimmering high-Baroque confection of a church, and she's lovely. But what won my heart was a side-aisle festooned with hundreds of home-made ex-voto pictures attesting to La Consolata's miraculous intervention.

The paintings and drawings evoke a homey panorama of human suffering. The perils of war—exploding shells, prison camps—are well-represented. But so are the torments of watching a child languish on a sickbed. 

Grateful amateur artists also depict a catalog of random catastrophes across the decades, and in each La Consolata floats overhead, guiding the victim to safety. Or perhaps, for some, she waved them securely into the Pearly Gates.

Yes, those stern Protestant Reformers were probably right that we need only pray directly to God. But we Irish and Italians know there are times when you just need to talk to your mother.

The 'Memorare'

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession, was left unaided.

Inspired with this confidence, we fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins and Mother; to thee do we come; before thee do we stand, sinful and sorrowful.

O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not our petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer us. Amen.

Ex-voto, Basilica della Consolata, Turin