Meditation for June 14, History's Greatest Event

What is the greatest event in human history? If one were to give this question in an examination what unexpected and startling answers he would receive!

The answer, however, is very simple. It is the Mass.

Such was the answer of the great writer Goyau. It ought to be the answer of anyone who seriously reflects upon the true value of things.

Is not the Redemption of the world, our Savior's death on the Cross which restored to us the divine life lost by original sin, the most important of all human events? Is not the sacrifice of Cal­vary re-presented at each Mass? The setting is different, of course, but the immolation is identical since in all respects it is the same One offering and the same One offered, in other words, the same Priest and the same Victim.

Have I a lively faith? Do I believe this to be true? Or, am I not rather like the rest of the world, like all human beings who imagine that the most important thing in the history of humanity is that which is most obviously human. The most important thing in human history is the Divine which is enclosed therein, and in particular the Sacrifice of the Son of God perpetually renewed in order to secure for us forever, in spite of our sinfulness, our ig­norance, our stupidity, that divine life without which we could not live.

"O Jesus, dead upon the Cross, continuing and renewing Your sacri­fice each day to apply its merits to us and to associate us as members with Your sacrifice as the Head, open my soul to a true knowledge of things, to a right sense of values, that through my participation each morning in Your renewed sacrifice, I may understand that there is nothing more wonderful in the world, nothing more important for the world even when denied and ignored by it."

I will pray for all those who do not know, who forget, who dis­dain or who fight against this Great Truth.
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Adapted from Meditations for Religious
by Father Raoul Plus, S.J. (© 1939, Frederick Pustet Co.)