This week we Lectio the Liturgy with the Prayer Over the Offerings for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
O Lord, our God, who once established these created things to sustain us in our frailty, grant, we pray, that they may become for us now the Sacrament of eternal life. Through Christ our Lord.
My husband and I recently finished watching a series on AppleTV. During the final episode of the last season of the series, the characters and story lines were all put together. After seeing how everything was completed, I wondered what it would have been like to have watched the last episode first, somewhat like reading the last chapter of a book before you read the first one.
That made me wonder, what if we read the creation story the same way? We would start with reading Genesis 1:27, “in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Then, we would go back and start reading at verse 3. If we read it this way, we would see that everything, light, day and night, water and dry land, vegetation, and animals were all made in anticipation for final ending, “male and female he created them.” (v. 27)
In the prayer this week, as we pray over the offerings, we learn that the created things on the altar, the bread and wine, which are fruit of the vegetation created on the third day, were made with the intention to sustain human life, however…
While God was busy creating, He already knew what was going to happen in the last episode, or the sixth day of creation. In His planning, He made everything so perfect that it would be ready to support human life. He made sure the we would have everything we would need, both physically and spiritually.
For us, water is to drink and wash, however, for God it was meant to convey to us the death of sin and a new life of grace. The oil from the olive trees was meant to be an anointing of the Holy Spirit. The wheat and grapes become bread and wine, and are meant to be our spiritual food. The difference between the plain gift of nature and the supernatural gift is an in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit.
As I pondered the difference between the gift before, or the plain gift, and the gift after, the Spirit-infused gift, I began to think about the creation of male and female in Genesis 1:27. Just like the gifts of nature, after an in-dwelling of the Spirit, we, too, become awakened to to the supernatural and those little gifts of bread and wine, now the Body and Blood of Jesus, bring our human person, now a child of God, into union with Him, both now and into eternal life.
Thanks for praying with me,
Julie