Images of a Communion

I don’t think I really began to understand the concept of the communion of saints until second semester of sophomore year. I knew saints were models of faith, and they have lived at various points throughout history, and we could ask them to pray for us. But they often seemed obscure, distant, and inaccessible to me. Until last year.

During the second semester of sophomore year, I took a class called The Christian Imagination that served as educational background for my role as a Mentor-In-Faith at a summer conference for high school students called Notre Dame Vision. The professors of my class led a tour of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart about halfway through the semester. They gave us forty-five minutes to wander and explore the overwhelmingly stunning artwork that adorns the windows, walls, and ceiling of that sacred space. I studied the prayerful facial expressions and bodily postures of the men and women depicted all over the building, and noticed stories I recognized. Saint Bernadette’s vision of Mary (a scene similarly depicted at the Grotto). The death of Saint Joseph (what better way to die than in Mary and Jesus’ arms?). Moses receiving the Ten Commandments.

Image from an upload on wikimedia.org.

Our time of wandering amidst these images in the Basilica prompted my mind to wander back to my own summer participating in Notre Dame Vision as a high school student, during which our college-aged mentors (now my upcoming role) had challenged us with the question: “Their gifts changed the world. How will yours?” Their, meaning the saints’, gifts had certainly changed the world. That’s why their images were all over the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. But how could my life and my gifts be compared to people whose lives were remembered in such a way that they had been turned into art in my primary worship space? I wanted so badly to understand. 

I snapped out of my reverie when our professors called us to gather as a class near the gleaming golden tabernacle at the front of the Basilica. We took turns sharing our various observations about the sacred artwork we had been reflecting upon, knowing that our professors probably had a bigger point to make that was about to be revealed. They did.

They had us turn and face the entirety of the main worship space in the Basilica. Look at the walls. The windows. The towering ceiling. All covered in images of holy men and women who have gone before us. Look at the pews, where we are invited to sit upon and kneel and stand near while celebrating the Eucharist. Look at the huge empty space in between the pews and those walls, windows, and ceilings. Waiting to be filled with song and praise.

When we celebrate Mass, our professors explained, we join up our prayers with those of holy men and women, not the other way around. We do not ask the communion of saints to join us in our prayers, but rather enter into the communion of saints ourselves when we celebrate the Mass. It's a taste of heaven. The Basilica of the Sacred Heart (and other similar holy spaces) is a gift that invites us to more fully enter into this reality by visualizing the communion which we enter into: the sound waves of our song and praise literally expand as they fill up the physical space in the Basilica, while our prayers join up with the prayer of the communion of saints above and beyond the walls and ceilings of the church itself.

Image from blogs.nd.edu.

This image of my prayers being joined up with those of the communion of saints has become a primary one for me in my worship and prayer, both when I celebrate Mass at the Basilica on campus and when I am in other worship spaces.

For example, while at home this past week for fall break I had the privilege of attending Mass at my high school. We were certainly not in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart: a high school gymnasium is a bit of a drastic shift. But the imagery stays the same; I was seated on the ground floor, with bleachers packed full of students rising up on either side of me. Throughout Mass, I realized another image of the communion of saints was being presented here, as we are all called to use our gifts in the world as the saints who came before us did.

Yes, we are all called to be saints. Today. And Mass at Jesuit High School, with packed bleachers reaching toward the expansive ceiling, and prayers lifted up far beyond, presented me with yet another image of that call.

  

Asking saints to pray for us outside of Mass connects us to these holy men and women, too, and utilizes their special holy capacity for prayer and closeness to Our Father. This practice is a fantastic one to learn how to follow the call to be the saints we were created to be, too. One of my favorite images of the act of asking for the intercession of saints came from a friend at the conclusion of the summer at Notre Dame Vision. “This might be sacreligious,” he laughed, “but sometimes when I ask a saint to pray for me, I imagine them up there saying, ‘Duh…what do you think we’re doing?!’” 

As we lift our prayers up, they enter into a community of constant prayer and praise. This community is called the communion of saints, imaged on the walls and ceiling of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Imaged by the people making up the Body of Christ at Mass at my high school. Imaged when we live our lives as the walking, breathing, dynamic saints we are called to be.

Image from dailydomer.nd.edu.

We celebrate All Saints' Day on November 1^st. Read more here.

Go Irish! Beat Midterms (Prayerfully)!

This week is anything but ordinary on the Notre Dame campus. Each time the question “How is your week looking?” is uttered this week, it is done so with great trepidation. Typical responses are tossed out and accompanied by wearied looks: “Crazy.” “Stressful.” I have assigned these words to my week in various conversations, too; after all, three exams and several papers do not fit my concept of an ideal week.

BUT, there is great hope…

Last November, I published a post on praying without ceasing in which I discussed how ordinary actions can be offered as prayers of thanksgiving. Something as mundane as washing dishes after hosting friends in my dorm room for tea became an act of prayer for me.

Reflecting on this piece got me thinking about how we can view midterms week and other times of academic stress through this lens, as well. That five-hour chunk spent at the library can be offered up to God in a prayer of gratitude for the gift of education. The effort of hand-crafting an essay can be used to praise God for His creative power. Working hard to chip away at a problem set may not seem prayerful at the surface level, but it can be made so by putting away our phones and other distractions and offering our focused, hard work in prayer.

In fact, the act of focusing, the act of paying attention, can help us cultivate better prayer lives.

Simone Weil, French philosopher and teacher, reflects on the refinement of such attention in Waiting for God. She writes that “school exercises…are extremely effective in increasing the power of attention that will be available at the time of prayer” if students actively engage in their schoolwork with the intention of prayerful attention. I find her reflection on long hours of studying hopeful: “Never in any case whatever is a genuine effort of the attention wasted.” Simone also comments on finding joy in schoolwork:

“The intelligence can only be led by desire. For there to be desire, there must be pleasure and joy in the work. The intelligence only grows and bears fruit in joy. The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running.”

Approaching schoolwork with faithful attention, oriented toward a desire to cultivate a better prayer life through the practice of focused attention, then, yields many fruits. Including JOY!

In New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton offers this beautiful reflection on attentive work:

“To do the work carefully and well, with love and respect for the nature of my task and with due attention to its purpose, is to unite myself to God’s will in my work. In this way I become His instrument. He works through me.”

We are called to do everything for the glory of God, whether picking apples, running cross country, or studying for midterms (1 Corinthians 10:31). Being a student is a vocation. As college students, the best way we can live into our common vocation is to focus in and offer our studious efforts in prayer. Through paying attention to our studies and by intentionally offering them to God in prayer, our work will bear many fruits. We will cultivate the ability to better pay attention during our daily lives, whether in prayer (encountering God) or daily conversation (encountering others), and we will realize the full potential of the joy of learning.

Midterms week may still be “crazy” and “stressful,” but it can also be prayerful and full of joy.

Go Irish, Go!

"I Want That Bread!"

This past weekend was father-daughter weekend in my dorm, which was a joyful occasion to say the least. My dad and I went on all sorts of adventures around campus and in South Bend, from a stadium tour to meals at town establishments such as JW Chens and Chicory Café. We spent a weekend in gratitude for one another’s company and the company of other dads and daughters. The picture below sums up our time together pretty well:

Joy.

On an unrelated note – or perhaps not so far from the mark, after all – the Eucharist has been on my mind a lot recently. Just before I left home to come back to school for this semester, my parish priest told a fantastic story that highlights the Eucharist in a special way:

Several years ago as Fr. John held up the consecrated host for the assembly to see during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, a four-year-old member of the congregation pointed at the Body of Christ and yelled, “I want that bread!” A comment from a four-year-old such as this one could be rightfully deemed adorable and then written off as a typical outburst from someone who hadn't yet made it to post-Mass coffee and doughnuts. But Fr. John took the child’s comment seriously; the Gospel reading for that day included John 6:51, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever,” and John 6:53: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink of his blood, you have no life in you.” And Fr. John gave this four-year-old girl the benefit of the doubt in assuming her exclamation was founded in her excellent listening to the Gospel.

Fr. John’s faith in one of the youngest actively participating members was well placed. When he approached the child and her mother later to ask about her comment, the girl was eager to find out whether she would get to receive the special bread next time. She couldn’t wait to eat the “living bread,” and didn’t want to lack life because of her inability to receive it. Fr. John, grinning ear to ear I am sure, explained to his young friend that her First Communion would be coming up in a couple years, and she would get to receive the “living bread” then. Until her First Communion, the blessings she received during her Baptism would sustain her. The young parishioner seemed delighted and satisfied by his answer.

What if we all displayed a similar enthusiasm for the Eucharist? What if we, too, could cultivate an attitude and a culture where the comment “I want that bread!” is not an exclamation reserved for children who don’t know any better? What if the lesson to be learned is not the child’s, to be quiet in Mass, but the rest of the congregation’s, to adopt her joyful attitude towards the Eucharist?

The other day, a couple friends and I had an awesome conversation about the Sacraments. One friend explained her approach to the Sacrament of Eucharist: during Communion, she looks around and thinks something along the lines of, “Wow. We are all receiving Jesus right now.” We decided that it would be appropriate to approach one another on Monday mornings (or any time) and excitedly announce: “You’ll never believe what happened to me yesterday! I received the Body of Christ!” In doing this, we decided we would be encouraging a more joyful appreciation for the Eucharist and for Jesus’ real presence in ourselves and in one another.

To me, an image of this treatment of the Eucharist is something like the photo of my dad and I above: joy-filled, with arms outstretched, and in community with one another.

Maybe we, too, will have the courage – or perhaps the reckless enthusiasm – or the love – to shout, “I want that bread!” with the way we live our lives.