Lectio the Liturgy: Sunday, July 9, 2023

Julie Storr shares a reflection on the Prayer over the Offerings for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

This week we Lectio the Liturgy with the Prayer over the Offerings for the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. This week I found another layer in the prayer. It is like a prayer inside a prayer.

May this oblation dedicated to your name purify us, O Lord, and day by day bring our conduct closer to the life of heaven. Through Christ our Lord.

I want to look at a couple definitions as we begin. Oblation is "an offering or sacrifice." Dedicate, or dicata in Latin, also means "to give up."

As I looked at the meanings of these words, and how the first phrase of the prayer speaks of the offering we dedicate, another prayer came to mind, and this is how the two prayers fit together.

O Lord (Eternal Father,) I dedicate (I offer you) this oblation (the Body and Blood, Soul, and Divinity, of your dearly beloved Son). Did you recognize the Divine Mercy Chaplet?

The Divine Mercy Chaplet and the first phrase of today’s Prayer Over the Offering have the same teaching in them. We offer Christ to God on our own behalf. Along with this offering, we offer ourselves, putting ourselves in a position to be open to receive His mercy.

The next phrase of the prayer, day by day bring our conduct closer to the life of heaven, has a different wording in Latin. It A more literal translation would be: day by day, may this oblation carry us on to the action of the heavenly life.

Click to tweet:
The Divine Mercy Chaplet and the first phrase of today’s Prayer Over the Offering have the same teaching in them. #LectioTheLiturgy #CatholicMom

So often we go through Mass with our minds on the earthly participation. Perhaps we forget, or we may not realize, that the Sacrament of the Eucharist is a spiritual liturgy.

What we ask in the second part of the prayer is that our conduct, or our participation in the earthly liturgy, brings us closer to the heavenly liturgy.

God has allowed some worshippers to see the Mass in a spiritual realm, and if you would like to see what they saw, check out the video, The Veil Removed.

However to all of us, God has given the faith to believe and the grace to desire to be purified so that we can come closer and closer to living heaven on earth.

Thanks for praying with me.

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