Greetings,
For the last several days I have been on the Spring
retreat of the clergy group of The American Inklings, and missed sending, or
reading, any e-mails. Now I am back and
trying to get caught up, and not doing too well at that today because of all of
the new things happening, but here is the next e-mail.
Before
the retreat break we talked about bread.
Now some thoughts on the wine.
“I am the true vine.”
We were created to delight, as God does, in the resident
goodness of creation. We were not made
to sit around mumbling incantations and watching our insides to see what creation
will do for us. Wine does indeed have
subjective effects, but they are to be received gratefully and lightly. They are not solemnly important psychological
adjustments, but graces, super-added gifts.
It was St. Thomas Aquinas who gave the most reasonable and relaxed of
all the definitions of temperance. Wine,
he said, could lawfully be drunk usque ad hilaritatem, to the point of
cheerfulness. It is a happy example of
the connection between sanctity and sanity.
Robert Farrar Capon
It was with good reason, then , that some people, when
they heard the apostles speaking in every tongue, said: “They are filled with
new wine.” For they had become fresh
wine-skins, they had been renewed by the grace of holiness, so that when they
were filled with the new wine, that is, with the Holy Spirit, they spoke with
fervor in every tongue...Celebrate, then, this day as members of the one body
of Christ. Your celebration will not be
in vain if you are what you celebrate, if you hold fast to the church which the
Lord filled with his Holy Spirit.
African homily, Sixth century
Similarly, the wine of Christ’s blood, drawn form the
many grapes of the vineyard that he has planted, is extracted in the winepress
of the cross. When men receive it with believing hearts, like capacious
wineskins, it ferments within them by its own power.
Cyril of Jerusalem, Fourth century
The wine of the psalter [Psalm 116]
and the wine of heaven are the same, and they are ours, because whether in
heaven or on earth there is only one chalice, and that chalice itself is
heaven. It is the cup Jesus gave to his
disciples on the night when he said to them: “With desire have I desired to eat
this Pasch with you.” There is one
mystery in the kingdom of heaven, which is the light of that kingdom, replacing
the sun, moon and stars. It is the light
also of the psalter and of the church on earth, though it shines in
darkness. Its light is wine. It was of this wine that Jesus said: “I shall
not drink the fruit of this vine again until I drink it with you now in the
kingdom of my Father.” He had just
chanted the psalms of the Hallel with his apostles. He knew his blood would flow like silence
through our psalter.
Thomas Merton
But it is not only the martyrs who share in his passion
by their glorious courage; the same is true, by faith, of all who are born
again in baptism. That is why we are to
celebrate the Lord’s paschal sacrifice with the unleavened bread of sincerity
and truth. The leaven of our former
malice is thrown out, and a new creature is filled and inebriated with the Lord
himself. For the effect of our sharing
in the body and blood of Christ is to change us into what we receive. As we have died with him, and have been
buried and raised to life with him, so we bear him within us, both on body and
in spirit, in everything we do.
Leo the Great, Fifth century
Your & His,
DED
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