TRANSCRIPT:
Hi there. A few days ago, the Gospel reading was Matthew 16. And as I went to meditate on it, I somehow- like in a dyslexic way- pulled up Matthew 13:16 instead of Matthew 16:13. And in that portion of the Gospel, Our Lord is saying “Blessed are the eyes that see, blessed are the ears that hear,” and He’s referring to the Apostles and the disciples of that time who were able to see the Messiah, to hear His words, to speak with God directly, and to have that experience.
And what was extraordinary about this, of course, was I was on the wrong page, but I was thinking, “The Old Testament prophets, they knew the Messiah only very dimly, very darkly. They really had no concept of the Triune God. They did not really know Jesus. And yet, they were so favored that we call them the ‘prophets’. And yet, in comparison even to the apostles, we have been favored by God in an extraordinary way where most of us, for the entirety of our lives, have had the sacraments on demand.
In my own parish here, we have confession available four days a week. We have adoration five days a week. There’s daily Mass. The pastor is more or less available constantly. So we literally have the ability to spend five days a week gazing on our Lord, to be in conversation with Him at adoration.
The Apostles only had him for three years, and then He was gone for the rest of their lives. Most of us- I’m 45- have lived the entirety of our lives having close, easy access to our Lord, and it just made me think of how blessed we are. And I’m ashamed to say that before this year, before the COVID lockdowns affected access to the sacraments, I’d never really thought about how grateful I should be for having that kind of access to God and with the clarity that we now have because of the development of the Church’s teaching and the refinement of our theology. I hope this has been helpful to you in some way. God bless you.