"Inspectio Cordis": 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 6

Even if we aim at the maximum of love, we do not enter the Kingdom by accomplishment, effort, or competition with others. Rather, we love like Jesus because we are freely loved — as He is — by the Father. Just as we receive Holy Communion as a gift — symbolized by the Host being placed upon our tongues or hands — so we receive eternal life as a gift.

By Fr. Thaddaeus Lancton, MIC

A gaze of the heart. Examining the depth of one’s heart. There is no one way to translate the Latin title Inspectio Cordis, given to the collection of meditations for Sundays by the Founder of the Marians, St. Stanislaus Papczyński (1631-1701).

These meditations, published weekly on Fridays in preparation for the Sunday Mass, follow the style and purpose of our holy Father Founder. While his original text is worth reading, his examples and style can feel outdated to the modern reader. As his spiritual son, I will attempt my best to imitate his style and imitate his ministry of preaching to hearts. The goal is to allow Jesus to gaze into your heart and teach you self-examination, leading you to a more fruitful reception of Holy Communion, where there is a true encounter of our hearts with His Sacred Heart – especially fitting during this period of National Eucharistic Revival.


27th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle B
October 6, 2024

Before Holy Communion 


1. “It is not good for the man to be alone.”
After repeating on each day of the creation that “God saw that it was good,” we now hear that something is not good. God — who is a Trinity of Persons – creates man in His own image and likeness, which means that man more fully reflects God through communion rather than solitude. Only through a life lived in a communion of love – with God and with neighbor — do we fulfill God’s original plan for us. While we all need moments of solitude to be alone with the Lord, we are never called to be alone in isolation. That loneliness is the effect of sin, as isolation is a horrible foretaste of hell.

To save us from such disaster, the Father not only created Eve to accompany Adam, He also gives us His Son in Holy Communion, so that we are never alone, even in death, where no other human on earth accompanies us. By receiving Holy Communion, we are to live and extend that communion of love to everyone we meet.

How do you experience loneliness? How do you experience Jesus’ presence in Holy Communion? How can you remain in the grace of Holy Communion throughout the week?

2. “Blessed shall you be, and favored.”
The world perceives the “fearing the Lord” — keeping His commandments and walking in His ways — as a negative inhibition that prevents freedom. Yet, the Psalmist exclaims with joy how blessed — a word repeated five times in the Responsorial Psalm — is the one who fears Him. Nor is this blessing something ethereal or solely spiritual: it takes the form of a wife, children, home, the prosperity of one’s city, and more.

The Catechism (n. 1) states that God created us to share in His beatitude or eternal happiness. By walking in His ways, we place ourselves in the position receive anew His blessings upon us not some but “all the days of our lives.” A life lived in accord with the Gospel is the only happy life, for Christ always walks that path with us.

How do you perceive the commandments – as a burden or a gift? How do you experience the Father’s blessings in your life? Where do you need His blessing?

3. “For it was fitting that he… should make the leader to their salvation perfect through suffering.”
Christ was, of course, perfect. But He endured the Cross — the seeming opposite of any divine blessing — to be made “perfect.” He used the suffering of the Cross to perfect our weak, fallen human nature by persisting in heartfelt love, trust, and obedience to the Father, and thereby, loving us “to the end” (cf. Jn 13:1). Such perfection — the ability to enter glory and be “divinized” by the grace of the Holy Spirit — is the greatest of all blessings the Father can offer. For only then do we share fully in the priesthood of Christ by offering ourselves with Him out of selfless love.

But it certainly does not seem such a blessing when we face the Cross. Yet, just as surely as we believe the bread and wine are transformed into His Body and Blood, so we believe that the Holy Spirit transforms us from sinners into saints through suffering.

Do you consider suffering a blessing or a curse? Where is the Holy Spirit perfecting you through suffering? How can you unite that suffering with Christ in the Eucharist? 

After Holy Communion

1. “Is it lawful…”
The way the Pharisees pose the question reveal both their intention to possibly trap Jesus as well as their minimalist approach in relation to God. What is “lawful” or permitted is not necessarily what God intends. We see this every day in the drastic difference between what He permits (which we see in the endless reports of evil and tragedy on the news) and what He desires (which is what Jesus teaches in the Gospels).

How often we, too, can fall into a trap of minimalism, seeking “permissions” to fulfill our will, apart from His. But Jesus died upon the Cross to free us once and for all from the bondage of sin and its effects, so that we can live up to the maximum of imitating His faithful love. That may seem like an impossible task, but when we receive Holy Communion, we receive all of Jesus’ love which empowers us to love as He does.

Where do you struggle with a minimalist attitude? Where do you seek “permission” to fulfill your own will? How can you live according to the “maximum” of Jesus’ faithful love?

2. “Whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.”
Even if we aim at the maximum of love, we do not enter the Kingdom by accomplishment, effort, or competition with others. Rather, we love like Jesus because we are freely loved — as He is — by the Father. Just as we receive Holy Communion as a gift — symbolized by the Host being placed upon our tongues or hands — so we receive eternal life as a gift. Living the grace of Holy Communion entails being like a child, as St. Thérèse describes:

It is to recognize our nothingness, to expect everything from God as a little child expects everything from its father; it is to be disquieted about nothing, and not to be set on gaining our living.… To be little is not attributing to oneself the virtues that one practices, believing oneself capable of anything, but to recognize that God places this treasure in the hands of his little child to be used when necessary; but it remains always God’s treasure. Finally, it is not to become discouraged over one’s faults, for children fail often, but they are too little to hurt themselves very much.

This may seem to be a task beyond our capacity, but we grow in this grace by focusing not on ourselves but on our Father who loves us so much. 

Where do you struggle being "like a child"? How can you receive the Kingdom as a gift, just as you receive Holy Communion? How can you focus on our loving Father?

3. “Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”
Through Holy Communion, the Father unites us with His Son. In doing so, we are united to His Mystical Body, the Church. The Holy Spirit constantly works to bring all things and all people into communion with Christ in the Church. Satan, on the other hand, works to bring everything and everyone into division and isolation. The Apostles unwittingly — by blocking the children as they approached Christ — served Satan’s intention of division rather than building bridges to Christ.

Not only are we called to fidelity in marriage — where the union of Christ with the Church is made sacramentally visible — but to build this communion through each relationship that we have. God has united us through Holy Communion in the Body of His Son, and we must not separate what He has joined together. For this reason, Holy Communion not only gives us grace but also the task to foster this unity in our thoughts, words, and deeds. 

Where do you sow seeds of division or place obstacles before others? How can you help build bridges between Christ and others? 

Next week: 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 13.
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BELH

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