16 Sunday Ordinary Time Prayer after Communion

This week we Lectio the Liturgy with the Prayer After Communion for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Graciously be present to your people, we pray, O Lord, and lead those you have imbued with heavenly mysteries to pass from former ways to newness of life. Through Christ our Lord.

We ask God for only two things in the Prayer After Communion this week and those two things give us much to meditate on.

First, we ask God to graciously be present. We know that in the Mass God is present, so we are not asking Him to be where He already is, we are asking Him to be gracious. Used here, gracious also means favorable, or beneficial, however, as we ask God to come with his favor, we need to know where to look for HIm.

We find Jesus in the Mass in many places, in the Scripture readings and even in the silence. As I was thinking about Jesus present in the Eucharist, I pondered the Last Supper, which is a part of our remembrance of the Mass.

At the Last Supper, as Jesus held up the bread, He broke it, saying, “This is My Body which will be given up for you.” At that moment, Jesus was not only present physically, He was present sacramentally. That same bread that Jesus held in His hand, that He told His Disciples to “take and eat” is the same Bread of His Presence that we receive at Mass.

As we take and eat, we are imbued with heavenly mysteries. In the Latin form of the prayer, for “imbue”, we find the word imbuisti, which means to color, or to dye. It is the introduction of one thing into another so as to affect it throughout. (Merriam-Webster) When we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, one thing, that is Jesus, is brought into another thing, that is us, and we are affected throughout, body, soul, and spirit. We only need to be open to receive, which is the second thing.

With the disposition to receive, and we are imbued, we pass from former ways to newness of life. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.”

St. Gregory wrote, “A new creature he [Paul] called the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in a pure and blameless soul removed from evil and wickedness and shamefulness. For, when the soul hates sin, it closely unites itself with God, … having been transformed in life, it receives the grace of the Spirit to itself, becomes entirely new again and is recreated.”

I don’t know about you, but I can tell you that there are many times I want to be recreated and this prayer, this Scripture, and the words of St. Gregory tell us how: be open to receive, let yourself be imbued with heavenly mysteries, and let yourself be led. God does the rest.

Because of the Cross, we can experience newness of life and it all comes to us because of the grace that God brings with his presence.

Thanks for praying with me,
Julie