July 7, 2014 Faith Formation

July 7, 2014    St. Francis Parish Adult Faith Formation Group

V:  God, come to my assistance.
R:  Lord, make haste to help me.
V:  Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
R:  As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.  Amen.
V:  Lord, set aflame my heart and my entire being with the fire of the Holy Spirit, that I may serve you with chaste body and pure mind.  Through Christ our Lord.
R:  Amen.
V:  Let us pray for our Sovereign Pontiff Francis.
R:  The Lord preserve him and give him life, and make him blessed upon the earth, and deliver him not to the will of his enemies.

AH 517  O Jesus We Adore Thee

AH 623  Be Thou My Vision

Continue with last week’s quotes:

(from A New Song for the Lord, Pope Benedict XVI)

            ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever’(Heb. 13:8).  This was the profession of those who had known Jesus on earth and had seen the Risen One.  This means that we can see Jesus Christ correctly today only if we understand him in union with the Christ of ‘yesterday’ and see in the Christ of yesterday and today the eternal Christ.  The three dimensions of time as well as going beyond time into that which is simultaneously its origin and future are always a part of the encounter with Christ.  If we are looking for the real Jesus, we must be prepared for this suspenseful tension.  We usually encounter him in the present first:  in the way he reveals himself now, in how people see and understand him, in how people live focused on him or against him, and in the way his words and deeds affect people today.  But if this is not to remain simply second-hand knowledge, but is to become real knowledge, then we must go back and ask:  Where does all this come from?  Who was Jesus really at the time he lived as a man among other men and women?

….

            The Enlightenment then treats this thought quite systematically and radically:  Only the Christ of yesterday, the historical Christ, is in fact the real Christ; everything else is later fantasy.  Christ is only what he was.  The search for the historical Jesus clearly locks Christ into the past.  It denies him the today and the forever. . . But the more authentic this Jesus was supposed to be, the more fictitious he became through this rigid confinement to the past.  Whoever wants to see Christ only yesterday does not find him; likewise, whoever would like to have him only today does not encounter him.  Right from the beginning it is of his essence that he was, is and will come again.  Even as the living one, he has also always been the coming one.  The message of his coming and staying belongs in a fundamental way to the image of himself.  It turn, this claim to all the dimensions of time is based on his own understanding of his earthly life:  he perceived it as a going forth from the Father and simultaneously as a remaining with him; thus he brought eternity into play with and connected it to time.  If we deny ourselves an existence that can span these dimensions, we cannot comprehend him.  One who understands time merely as a moment that irrevocably passes away and who lives accordingly thereby turns away in principle from what really makes up the figure of Jesus and what it seeks to convey.  Knowledge is always a path.  Those who reject the possibility of such an existence extended in time have in fact thereby denied themselves access to the sources that invite us to embark on this journey of being, which becomes a journey of discernment. . . . “

1.       When does the Mass begin?

2.      What is the purpose of the “fore-Mass?”
3.      Preparation done by the priest: inner and outer.