Chapter One
Christ’s Sacrifice
Even Catholics who don’t know much about their faith have some vague awareness that they’re supposed to go to Mass on Sunday, at least in normal times. Ask them to describe the Mass, though, and they might tell you that it involves an introduction, a conclusion, and a collection!
Actually, the Mass (also called the Eucharist or the Divine Liturgy) has two main parts, the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. But rather than analyze its parts, I’d like to examine the Mass as a whole in terms of its three principal aspects so as to achieve a greater understanding. Now and always, the Mass involves a sacrifice, the presence of Christ, and a meal.
The Sacrifice of the Mass & Calvary
It’s important to understand what the Church means by the “sacrifice” of the Mass. The term is easily misunderstood and has caused much strife among Christians.
First of all, Church teaching reiterates what Scripture states very clearly: there is no other sacrifice except the one offered by Jesus onCalvary. Hebrews10:12says that Christ “offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins.” That sacrifice cannot be repeated. The Mass, therefore, is not a repetition; it is a re-presentation of that sacrifice.
Because Christ is a unique human being, the sacrifice He offered on the cross once and for all was a unique act. It was an act that took place at a specific moment in history and is therefore past.
But Jesus is also God, who is outside of time: past and future are always present to Him. This means that the historical events of Christ’s death and resurrection are also eternal acts that can be made present by the power of the Spirit.
Above image The Institution of the Eucharist by Ercole de’ Roberti. Public domain.
This is exactly what happens in the Eucharist. The power ofCalvary— the sacrifice that takes away sins, heals, and transforms — becomes present and available to us. It can be applied to our need.
Mass & the Resurrection
But for complete understanding of the Mass, that’s not enough. The cross is incomplete without the Resurrection. You can’t understand what happened on Good Friday apart from what happened two days later on Easter Sunday. This means that the Resurrection, too, is made present every time the Eucharist is celebrated. When we go to Mass, we’re present at the foot of the cross, watching the Savior give His life for us. And we’re also outside the open tomb with the risen Jesus and the women who greeted Him on that resurrection morning. “This is for you. I give My life to you,” Jesus is saying. “Receive My power.”
Understanding the Mass as a New Pentecost
Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice in order to bring us salvation and give us His Spirit. Pentecost is the fruit of the sacrifice of the Cross and the victory of the Resurrection. Thus, the Church teaches that every Mass is a new Pentecost, a new opportunity to receive the Spirit afresh (see theCatechism of the Catholic Church, par. 739).
To sum up, understanding the Mass is to recognize it as Christ’s sacrifice made present again. It’s not simply recalled, as if it had been absent or were merely a past event. It’s re-presented in all its majesty and transforming power.
Chapter Two
Our Sacrifice
In a very real way, the Eucharist is not only Christ’s sacrifice, but our sacrifice as well. The New Testament calls us “priests,” and priests are those who offer sacrifice. “Like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pt 2:5). If there is only one sacrifice, then somehow our priesthood associates us with Christ’s act of self-offering to the Father.
Sacrifice of Praise & Thanksgiving
The Mass is also our sacrifice in that we join our own offerings to Christ’s. First, we offer a sacrifice of praise and thanks. “Eucharist means first of all ‘thanksgiving,’” says theCatechism(par. 1360). We thank the Lord for His sacrifice, which is for us and our salvation. In the Eucharistic Prayer, a long prayer of thanks to the Father uttered toward the middle of every Mass, the celebrant speaks for us all. He thanks God for the creation of the world and for its goodness; he prays in thanksgiving for salvation history, for the whole human race is offered salvation through Jesus’ coming, death, and Resurrection.
During the Eucharistic Prayer, I always silently add in thanks for my personal blessings. I think of the natural blessings of home and work, of food on the table and the health of my family. I also thank God for my own salvation history, especially for plucking me out of danger I was heading into as a teenager — a journey that led many of my friends into drug and alcohol abuse. I thank God for bringing me together with my wife Susan, a woman who loves Him and loves me, and for having kept us faithful to Him and each other for many years. I thank Him for our own family’s salvation history.
If you haven’t already established the habit of adding your personal expressions of gratitude to the priest’s Eucharistic Prayer, try it next time you’re atMass.It’s a very appropriate mode of participating in that part of the Eucharist.
The Mass as Self-offering with Christ
But our Eucharistic sacrifice involves more than offering thanks for what God has done. It means offering ourselves in response to His self-gift. Note what Paul says in his letter to the Romans: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).
In a way, this is what the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament symbolized. Animals were very precious to the Israelites, and only the best were considered worthy for offering to God. These unblemished, perfect, animals represented — even substituted for — the life of the person who offered them. Sacrificing them was a sign of the worshiper’s complete gift of self to the Lord.
This brings us to the collection at Mass! Believe it or not, the collection is really important. Whether we put in the widow’s mite or have the means to give much more, our financial contribution represents the gift of ourselves. As it’s brought forward at the presentation of the gifts, along with the bread and wine, our financial contribution serves as a sign of our self-offering.
Giving & Receiving at Mass
It has to be said that many of us don’t give much of ourselves in the Eucharist. As a result, we don’t receive much back. The solution is to stop being the audience and learn to be actors in the drama of the Eucharistic sacrifice, as the Second Vatican Council exhorted us: “The laity at Mass should not be silent spectators. Offering the Immaculate Victim [that is, Christ] not only through the hands of the priest but also together with him, they should learn to offer themselves (“Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,”Sacrosanctum Concilium48).
And here’s a beautiful statement on the subject from Fr. Johannes Emminghaus, a German scholar: “In the Eucharist the Church enters into this total self-giving of Christ, and we individually attempt to enter into it as fully as possible. Merely to go through the motions of the Mass without this serious and complete gift of self would simply be hypocrisy” (J. Emminghaus, Eucharist:Essence, Form, and Celebration, 2nd ed. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1978, xxi).
Water Mixed with Wine, Our Offering in His
Offering thanks to the Lord and giving our whole selves to the Father together with Christ is what the Eucharistic sacrifice is about. Obviously, we are weak and our sacrifice is imperfect. Nevertheless, during the preparation of the gifts, we should be putting everything important to us on the altar. This includes our precious treasures of time, ambitions, desires, relationships, work accomplishments, family matters, trials, and temptations.
These are our contributions, but the sacrifice is still Christ’s. How could it be otherwise, since we died when we were baptized? “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,” says St. Paul (Gal 2:20). Anything that’s of merit or value in our lives is really Christ working through us.
Our offerings are added, then, to the personal sacrifice of Christ our head, giving us the privilege of sharing in His sacrifice to the Father. This is symbolized beautifully just before the consecration, when the priest mixes a small amount of water with the wine. The paltry sacrifice that is our life is like the water that is absorbed into the rich sacrifice of Christ, which is symbolized by the wine.
Chapter Three
Real Presence in Priest and People
Whether they’re Catholic or not, whether they understand it or not, most people have heard the term, “the real presence,” and know it has something to do with what Catholics believe about the Mass. Indeed, the Church teaches that Christ is really present in the Mass — and present in at least four different ways. Today we will look at two of them.
Real Presence in His Body, the Church
First, Christ is presentin the congregation. Jesus said He’s there whenever two or three are gathered in His name (Mt18:20), and usually the Sunday Mass congregation numbers more than two or three! Even when it’s hard to see Christ in our fellow Mass-goers, He’s really there. People may arrive distracted and preoccupied, but as they enter that church they’re no longer just scattered individuals, but members of Christ’s body. Whether conscious of it or not, they’re being drawn together into the Body of Christ.
At Mass we deepen our communion with thewhole Church, as well as with the Lord. That’s what the sign of peace is about. Though sometimes viewed as a trendy idea inserted into the Mass around 1970, the sign of peace is really a recovery of a practice of the early Church. It recalls what Jesus said in Matthew 5:23-24: “If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift.” The sign of peace is not so much intended as a opportunity for back-slapping fellowship as a sign that we hold nothing against anyone. It means we renounce all bitterness, resentment, and jealousy as we come as one body to receive the Lord together.
Discerning the Body
Often, our conscience is clear about not having committed any sins against the people in the congregation. We haven’t backed into someone’s car and not informed them, nor have we defamed anyone or robbed or defrauded them. But along with sins of commission, it’s important to take note of our sins of omission.
In his first letter to the church inCorinth, Paul upbraided the Corinthians for what they werefailingto do. Apparently, there were rich members of the congregation who were oblivious to the needs of the poor members. They’d eat a magnificent meal while the poor sat there hungry and thirsty, and afterwards rich and poor would all come together to celebrate the Eucharist. That’s seriously wrong, Paul told them. In fact, “that is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died” (1 Cor11:30).
“Discerning the body,” as Paul put it — discerning the fact that the community is Christ’s body in a very real way — is a serious matter. Christ is present in our fellow worshipers at Mass, and what we do or don’t do to the least of them, we do or don’t do to Christ (see Mt 25:40, 45).
The Real Presence of Christ’s Priesthood
Second, Christ is present at Massin the person of the priest. It’s not a question of whether the ordained minister is an exciting preacher or a particularly holy person. Many of our priests are in fact inspiring in holiness and powerful in their preaching. Others are not. But the good news is that Christ’s presence doesn’t depend on the priest’s personal virtue. Christ makes Himself present through the charism that the priest has been given through ordination. This is one of the reasons that the Catholic priest wears vestments when he celebrates the Eucharist: it signifies that he’s acting in the person of Christ, not in his own person.
Actually, Jesus is the only priest. Thomas Aquinas put it straightforwardly: “Only Christ is the true priest, the others being only his ministers” (Catechism, par. 1545). The ordained priest is an icon or image of Christ. Through him, Jesus makes His priesthood present in a very special way.
If you’re happy with your parish priest, if his celebration of the Mass moves you, that’s a tremendous blessing. Thank God for him! If he’s less than inspiring and somehow makes it harder for you to pray, then pray for him. Priests have an awesome responsibility and a very difficult job. All of them deserve our loving support.
One of the things I love about St. Francis ofAssisiis that he never took pot-shots at the clergy. In an age of widespread clerical corruption, Francis always thanked God for being able to receive the sacred Body and Blood from the hands of a priest, whether worthy or unworthy. More effectively than denunciations, Francis’s loving example brought about a change in priests, calling them to greater virtue and deeper life in Christ.
Chapter Four
Real Presence in Word and Sacrament
As we have seen, the Lord Jesus is really and truly present in the Mass in at least four distinct ways. In the previous chapter, we discussed His presence in the people and in the person of the priest. Now it is time to examine the third way He is present in the Mass, in the word of God. It’s a caricature to depict the Protestant church as the church of the word and the Catholic Church as the church of the sacraments. This is certainly not the case.
Christ’s Real Presence in the Word of God
The Catholic Church sees the Bible, the inspired word of God, as a priceless gift, and this is reflected in the Eucharist. In fact, the first part of the Mass centers on readings from scripture: one passage, a psalm response, sometimes another passage, and then a reading from one of the Gospels.
This Liturgy of the Word isn’t an abstract catechism lesson. Through the readings, the Lord wants to speak to us personally, cutting through all our defenses and penetrating to the depths of our hearts with a nourishing, challenging word leading us to conversion. This has happened time and time again in the Church’s history.
Two Encounters with God’s Word at Mass
Francis Bernardone, son of a cloth merchant inAssisi, walked into church one day during a period when he was searching for meaning in life. He opened the lectionary to this text: “Go, sell what you have, give to the poor, and come, follow me” (cf. Mark10:21). Francis knew this word wasn’t just for the Apostles 1200 years earlier; it was for him, right there and then. He walked out of church, did exactly what that scripture said, and so began a world-wide spiritual revolution that still impacts us today.
My own conversion began in a similar way. I had never missed Sunday Mass except when ill, but it didn’t mean a whole lot to me. I kept showing up, though, and because I was there, the Spirit suddenly one Sunday gave me ears to hear. The gospel reading — Jesus’ calling Peter to come and follow him — penetrated to the depths of my being. I was so impressed that I ripped out the reading from the missalette, took it home, and put it up on my wall. I started reading Scripture, and before long my life was transformed.
The Table of the Word
This is how the Lord wants to work in our lives, and we can cooperate by cultivating openness to the word heard atMass.It’s not just at the table of the Eucharist that we’re nourished. The pulpit is like a table too, as the Second Vatican Council explains: “The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord, since from the table of both the word of God and of the body of Christ she unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life, especially in the sacred liturgy” (Dei verbum, paragraph 21). We read the Scriptures first because they build up our faith. Christ is present in them, preparing us to discern the Real Presence of His Body and Blood under the signs of bread and wine.
Prayers Quoting Scripture
In addition to the readings, the word of God comes to us through the prayers of Mass. Listen carefully, and you’ll discover that these prayers are almost entirely scriptural. They’re either direct quotes or paraphrases like the Creed, which the Church Fathers put together as a summary of the essential scriptures.
Take the greeting that the priest usually gives us when he walks in: “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” That’s a direct quote from St. Paul: 2 Corinthians 13:13. Or the Gloria that we pray on most Sundays: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will.” That’s Luke 2:14. At every Mass we sing “Holy, holy, holy, Lord, God of hosts.” That’s Isaiah 6:3, with a bit of another scripture passage thrown in toward the end. What about “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world”? That’s what John the Baptist said (Jn 1:29). And then there’s my favorite, that great Italian, the centurion who told the Lord he wasn’t worthy to welcome him under his roof (cf. Mt 8:8); we quote him every time we pray, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof….”
Real Presence of His Body and Blood
The final and most special way that the Lord is present in the Eucharist is in His Body and Blood, present to us under the signs of bread and wine.
Jesus is God, and so He is omnipresent. But Jesus is man as well as God; His humanity can’t be present everywhere in the same way as His divinity. Jesus’ glorified humanity is at the right hand of the Father. In the Eucharist and only in the Eucharist, though, He makes His Body and Blood present to us in a totally real way. This is why the sacramental presence of Christ’s Body and Blood is so extraordinary. In all of the other sacraments Jesus gives us His grace, says St. Thomas Aquinas, while in the Eucharist, the “sacrament of sacraments,” He gives us His whole self, His divinity and His humanity.
Transformation of Bread and Wine
How is this possible? How can Jesus be present bodily under the forms of bread and wine? Many people have the impression that it’s all hocus-pocus. But the Eucharist is emphatically not magic. Rather, the transformation of bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood happens the same way Mary’s virginal conception did: through the power of the Word and the power of the Spirit. The incarnation may seem impossible, yet all Christians believe it. It happens the same way creation did: God spoke and the world was made out of nothing through the power of the Word and the Spirit. Likewise, in the Eucharist, the One who said “let there be light” says “this is My Body” and “this is My Blood.” Through the power of the Spirit invoked upon the gifts, an awesome change takes place.
About the year 1200 or so, as some Catholics were struggling to find a way to explain this change, they came up with the word “transubstantiation.” Many people struggle with this word today! One reason why we find it hard to understand is that the word “substance” has different meanings. For us, substance is something you can touch. Substance abuse, for example, has to do with tangibles like drugs and alcohol. In theology, though, substance means something that underlies what you can see and touch; it’s the unchanging essence of the thing that resides under its appearances. Surface characteristics — “accidents,” as theologians call them — have to do with everything that could be otherwise, be changed or altered — say, how long your hair is or how fat or thin you are.
Transubstantiation – a Unique Kind of Change
Transubstantiation, therefore, means that while everything looks the same on the surface, the underlying essence of a thing is changed. This is just the opposite of what happens in the world we see. Usually, appearances change while the essence of a thing stays the same. In the Eucharist, though, the underlying, invisible substance is transformed from bread and wine to Christ’s Body and Blood. Everything looks the same as before. Even with a microscope, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, for the level at which this change happens is far too deep for human probing. But in the Eucharist, Christ is as truly present in His Body, Blood, soul, and divinity as when He walked the roads ofGalilee, healing and preaching.
Chapter Five
Bread, Wine, and a Meal Like no Other
The Eucharist is a meal. It’s the Lord’s Supper, as well as a holy sacrifice. It has to be both. Christ becomes present so that we can not only see Him under the appearances of bread and wine, but also receive Him into ourselves. Very tangibly, He becomes our food.
This Meal, Our Daily Bread
Food is very important in Christianity. I’m happy about that, because as an Italian, food is important to me! But even those of us who deeply appreciate food might wonder why the Lord chose to make Himself present in this particular way. Why bread and wine?
Bread is our basic daily nourishment. The Our Father’s “give us this day our daily bread” is a petition for all our needs and necessities. The Fathers of the Church also understood it as a prayer for the spiritual nourishment we need on a daily basis — the Eucharist and the word of God.
Bread of Life – Physical & Spiritual Nourishment
If you want to understand the Eucharist, slowly read and pray your way through the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel. That’s where Jesus tells the crowd, “I am the bread of life,” presenting Himself as the bread “which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world” (John6:35, 33).
Jesus’ words connect the Eucharist with the manna that God rained down from heaven to sustain the people of Israel on their Exodus journey. Manna, too, has a deeper spiritual significance, because God provided it for more than the people’s physical survival. The book of Deuteronomy says it was also to show them that “man does not live by bread alone,” but by every word that comes from the mouth of God (Dt 8:3). Bread, then, is the sign of our daily nourishment, both physical and spiritual.
Wine & the Cup of Suffering
Wine is the blood of the grape, obtainable only by crushing the grape. It symbolizes the cup of suffering, the price Jesus paid for us so that we might be free. From this cup we too must drink, if we are to be His disciples. Remember the mother of James and John who requests a favor for her sons? “Hey Jesus, can you honor them with a special place on your right and left?” she wants to know. Jesus responds by asking the two a sobering question: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?” (Mark 10:28). Whatever seating assignment they end up with, He assures them, they will not escape this cup of suffering.
Festive Meal – Joy of the Messianic Banquet
Wine also symbolizes the cup of joy. In both Old Testament and New Testament times, wine was associated with festivity and special celebrations. “Wine cheers gods and men” and serves to “gladden the heart of man” (Judges9:13; Psalm 104:15). The wedding feast ofCanais a good example. By evoking suffering, wine points back to Jesus’ death on the cross; by evoking joy, it points forward to the messianic banquet in heaven.
Blood is Life
The symbol of wine — the blood of the grape that becomes the Blood of Jesus — is even richer in light of the Old Testament. There, blood is equated with life. It’s not seen as sustaining life; rather, for the Jew, bloodislife, and it belongs to God alone. It’s for this reason that the Mosaic Law forbids drinking blood or eating any animal that still has blood in it. Even today, Jews who keep a kosher table only eat animals that have been appropriately butchered and drained of all blood.
In the Eucharist, Jesus gives us a share in God’s divine life by giving us His own blood. His plan for us goes way beyond making us into decent folks who are scrubbed up and clean of gross immorality. Jesus came so that we might share in everything He has and become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).
Partakers of the Divine Nature
What is this divine nature? Essentially, it’s the inner life of the Trinity: three Persons eternally pouring themselves out in self-giving love for each other. This isagape, or charity, and drinking Jesus’ Blood gives us an opportunity to share in it. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly,” Jesus assures us (Jn10:10). Let’s not settle for just a tiny taste!
In order for us to stay alive, every cell in our body needs to be bathed with the blood that nourishes, cleanses, and purifies our system. Similarly, taking the Blood of Christ in Communion will bring us to full spiritual vitality. It will strengthen and cleanse our entire being — spiritually and even physically, if it be God’s will.
Communion – Coming to Him with Expectant Faith
The One we take upon our lips and into our bodies in the Eucharist is the same Jesus who raised Lazarus and healed the man born blind. Do we think about this enough? At Communion we receive Jesus, the risen Lord who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. Do we come to Him with faith that He can totally transform and heal us? When I go to Communion, I’m conscious of the spiritual sickness in my life and sometimes of physical needs, and I ask Jesus to heal and change me. I beg Him not to let me walk out of church the same person as I walked in.
Deep Intimacy, Wonderful Exchange
In every culture I know, breaking bread with someone is a way of expressing and deepening a relational bond. The Eucharist does this in a way no other meal can. We eat with God, He gives Himself as our food, and we’re transformed into Him. When we receive Him and consume Him under these signs of bread and wine, we becomeHim. What intimacy! What mystery!
The Eucharist is a great deal. Consider the exchange we’re invited to make. We come forward, put our humble gifts on the altar — our little sacrifices, imperfect good works, our need and brokenness — and what do we get back in return? We receive the Lord’s own life, bursting with power to heal and transform us.
In the Eucharist Jesus holds absolutely nothing back from us. He, the Bread of Life, gives us His entire self. May we, in the Eucharist, learn to return the favor and give Him both everything we have and everything we are.
Chapter Six
Eucharistic Adoration
If you haven’t noticed, the traditional practice of Eucharistic Adoration is making a comeback. Many were given the impression in the seventies that adoration was passe, a relic of pre-Vatican II spirituality. But all the Popes since the Council have emphasized its importance, and we see more and more parishes organizing regular, even perpetual, exposition and adoration.
But what do you do when praying before the Blessed Sacrament? First, let me point out what not to do. There are two extremes to avoid. At one end of the spectrum is hyper-busyness. This happens when a person feels so uncomfortable with quiet that they fill up every minute of adoration with nonstop reading or talking to God; this leaves no room for silent attentiveness to God’s voice. The other extreme I’ve encountered is the idea that it’s inappropriate to do anything except gaze on the Eucharist and be still. The problem here is that most of us aren’t equipped to walk in from our busy life, sit still, and be focused. Our minds are everywhere but on the presence of the Lord.
So how does one pray before the Blessed Sacrament? Since Eucharistic adoration is essentially a matter of lingering over the mystery of the Mass in a moment of contemplation, everything that happens at Mass is appropriate to do during adoration. In fact, church documents on the subject teach that we should take the Mass as our guide.
Notice that at Mass, we don’t jump into Communion right away. We prepare ourselves with repentance, with listening to God’s word in Scripture, with offering praise and thanks in prayers like the Gloria and the Eucharistic Prayer. We intercede for the needs of all. Finally, we receive the Lord and rest in his presence, giving ourselves to him and enjoying a deep union with him.
Each of these types of prayer is suitable for our times before the Blessed Sacrament. Certainly, there’s no obligation to always use them all or to follow the exact sequence in which they appear in the Mass. At the same time, our adoration should culminate as the Mass does, with simple resting in the arms of the Lord.
Silently repeating a word or short phrase can be a great aid in keeping us focused as we gaze on the Lord. One great tradition in the church is to repeat the name of Jesus or the well-known Jesus Prayer: “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” Also, certain Scriptures are especially effective in helping us recall that we’re in the Lord’s magnificent presence. One of my favorites is Psalm 46:10: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Another is Psalm 63, which speaks of thirsting and pining for God as in “a dry and weary land” and goes on to evokes the joy of gazing on God “in the sanctuary” and being filled, as with a banquet (verses 1-8). This, of course, is truly what happens in adoration: it’s a spiritual communion that fills our soul, as with a banquet.
For me, adoration is like spiritual sun bathing: I put myself in the presence of the Lord and allow myself to bask in the healthful rays of the Sun of Righteousness. I’ve spent many moments in adoration over the years and have received tremendous grace and healing of some very significant wounds. The Lord has also used these times to guide me in some remarkable ways. It was in front of the Blessed Sacrament that I discovered my vocation to become a theologian.
I must also confess that there have been many times when my adoration has wandered off into daydreams, distractions, and even sleep! Not every moment before the Blessed Sacrament is glorious, I’ve discovered, but if you persevere, you will have moments when the Lord touches you profoundly. They make all the struggles worthwhile.
Banner/featured painting The Vision of Saint Paschal Baylon by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Public domain.
