Make Your Life A Liturgy

Rejoice always,  pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1Thessolonians 5:16-18

Several years back, I was at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, AL. I came outside of the church, having attended adoration, and I felt the Lord whispering, “make your life liturgy.” And it was in that moment that I understood the scripture, “pray without ceasing.” And it became something, not that I wanted to do, but that I wanted to be. I wanted to be a living liturgy.

The catechism of the Catholic Church defines liturgy like this;

It is this mystery of Christ that the Church proclaims and celebrates in her liturgy so that the faithful may live from it and bear witness to it in the world:

For it is in the liturgy, especially in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist, that “the work of our redemption is accomplished,” and it is through the liturgy especially that the faithful are enabled to express in their lives and manifest to others the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church. CCC 1068

It further states;

The word “liturgy” originally meant a “public work” or a “service in the name of/on behalf of the people.” In Christian tradition it means the participation of the People of God in “the work of God.” Through the liturgy Christ, our redeemer and high priest, continues the work of our redemption in, with, and through his Church. CCC 1069

So while for many people think of liturgy as just going to church on Sunday, it is so much more than that. It is in and through that Sunday liturgy that we are fed Divine Life. We are sent out on a pilgrim journey that should mature us to a place where our life becomes worship of God. We seek His will for us and work for His people and His Kingdom. Our life should become, in our very breath, a prayer without ceasing because we are so in union with God. Praying without ceasing doesn’t mean we pray for hours in the chapel everyday, it means that in all we are and do, we love God. And I have said this before, this is not something we earn, it is something we surrender ourselves to by actively choosing it and letting God do the work in us.

I bring this up because the church herself is on a trajectory, one that looks bleak at the moment. And we may be wondering what we should do because we have so little control. Everyday the news barrages us with problems in the church, problems in the world, from aliens, to rejection of the moral life by those in the church. We seem on a precipice of an abyss. But if all the daily Masses and Rosaries we have attended have only left us in anxiety and despair, then we really don’t know or trust God.

Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. John 14:9-10

Have we been receiving Him all these years and we still don’t know Him or the Father who is in Him? It’s a question we have to ask ourselves.

Are we still more afraid of those who can harm the body than can harm the soul?

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Matthew 10:28

We know and have been given the truth. We don’t have to make things complicated. We will be persecuted, but it always comes down to love. Where we love, God fills.

“I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues, 1and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the gentiles.  When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you at that time,  for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.  Matthew 10:16-20

And so, it is in these moments that I look to the Saints. Three men who were in the worst of situations we St. Maximilian Kolbe, Blessed Stanley Rother, and Father Emil Kapaun.

Born Raymond Kolbe he took the religious name Maximilian. He was simply known as prisoner 16670 to the Nazi’s. He celebrated Mass with smuggled bread. He took beatings for hearing confession. He sang Marian hymns while they tried to starve him to death. They lethally injected him. His life was a liturgy.

Fr. Stanley Rother cared for the poor and the sick. But a civil war in Guatemala where Catholics were being persecuted, made his name end up on a death list. Though he went home for a time, he returned to his people in Guatemala, to the people he loved, for the God he loved, even though doing so would put his life in danger, because he said, “a shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger.” They shot him to death. His life was a liturgy.

Father Emil Kapaun had a chance to escape the bloody battle in North Korea where Chinese soldiers descended upon the US Army’s 3rd battalion. But he didn’t choose to escape. Instead he chose to run to the front lines to rescue men. He was captured. The months that followed were brutal but Fr Kapaun would visit 200 soldiers a day and tend to their wounds and lead them in the Rosary. Every soldier there began to speak of him with reverance. Kapaun died in prison, but the men there remembered him doing acts of service for others. His life was a liturgy.

In the middle of the darkest of crosses, there these men stood as a light. The Eucharist they consecrated and received had transformed them. They knew the Father. They knew communion and so did everyone around them who saw them. They stood as a light of Divine Love. It is a love they surrendered themselves to and it surpasses understanding and elevates our nature. It is a love that is divinized. The Divine Will was seen in action in these mini-Christs who surrendered themselves to the mercy that the rest of the world rejects.

When the world brings down the hammer of injustice, surrender to God and let the iron scepter of mercy swoop in and light your soul on fire with love.

To everyone who conquers and continues to do my works to the end, I will give authority over the nations,
to rule them with an iron scepter,
    as when clay pots are shattered— “even as I also received authority from my Father. To the one who conquers I will also give the morning star.  Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Revelation 2:26-29